District leaders, principals, and classroom teachers right now are trying to figure out how to best do the seemingly impossible. With every day that passes, the start of the 2020-21 school year is drawing closer and not everybody knows what that will look like. Some schools will not be opening on the first day of classes and, in other districts, it’s yet to be decided what the approach will be. Throw in some political pressure and we’ve got a pretty volatile, potentially dangerous, and likely fluid situation for the rest of the summer and the first few weeks of the year. Then, there’s the question of trauma. Students aren’t going to be returning to the same places and seeing the same faces that they know, making SEL something that school leaders will have to factor in as well.
SEL in Returning to School
It’s tough to know what to expect if and when teachers and students return to school, so, in a lot of cases, educators are spending the summer preparing for a lot of different things. On top of all the logistical preparations they need to make, like lesson planning, deciding on in-person versus hybrid content, ensuring physical distancing, and obtaining sanitizing products, they’ll also need to consider the social and emotional states of their students. Some of them may have been traumatized by the sudden upending of their lives back in the spring and being isolated from family and friends over the last few months probably didn’t help. In many ways, a return to the classroom will provide them with a form of healing, but it won’t be all that simple. Students will have to learn a new way of receiving their education, interacting with their friends, and even eating their lunches before they truly reclaim their comfortability.
One of the best things school leaders and classroom teachers can do to help students return to normal is to create learning environments that allow everybody time and space to appropriately process what’s been happening, heal together, and start thriving again. Keeping things tied to traditional SEL approaches can help teachers in this case and remembering the most important elements of SEL can as well. These include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building, and decision making. Teachers might also want to consider that the meanings and methods for highlighting each of these also may have been altered over the course of the last few months. Not only have students had to deal with a worldwide pandemic (and possibly death), for example, many of them were probably angered or even personally affected by issues of racial injustice. Determining students’ current states of mind will be key for educators in navigating an effective social and emotional return for them.
Teachers can help students reflect on their own self-awareness by helping them better understand what they’re feeling about these two major events. They can also help kids recognize their strengths and understand their own biases or anything else that might be unclear. In terms of self-management, that will be key in helping kids develop resiliency, especially if they’ve suffered a loss. Knowing how to process their emotions in this time will be crucial. As for social awareness, teachers can incorporate this by educating their students collectively on the health, social, personal, medical, economic, and other impacts COVID-19 has had. Presenting them with facts and letting them draw conclusions will help them gain a better understanding. Finally, to bolster relationships, teachers can focus on grieving and learning together and, to incorporate decision making, they can encourage students to consider the repercussions of their actions, helping them to think things through rather than acting compulsively.
Creating the Right Kinds of Learning Environments
If and when all schools do reopen, educators are going to have to be careful—careful not to get too excited too soon. Just because a school reopens does not mean it will stay open long term. We know by now that anything can happen and teachers have to remember that. What we mean is they can’t get too excited and start hugging students (seems obvious), but they also can’t get too excited and just jump right back into how they’ve always taught. In many cases, they will first need to address a lot of the trauma brought on by the events of the last few months. And, in order for them to do so, they need to help students to see that they’re in a safe space for sharing, discovering, and better understanding their emotions. Students have had to keep learning without much structure, cope with emotional stress, and more, which means that teachers might have to address this in a safe space upon a return.
To help every student become socially and emotionally strong, the ideal environment for learning should be one that’s equitable. In order for educators to get there or at least get as close to there as possible, they should start with building relationships with each of their students. This could involve something as simple as a smile and a friendly greeting each day or whatever else seems appropriate. Developing a routine with individual students or with the class as a whole can make everything feel more comfortable—even if learning is happening remotely at the start of the year. Teachers can also incorporate SEL activities and teaching opportunities on a regular basis, helping students to see how many of the lessons they learn involve the chance for social and emotional development as well as learning content.
To put these intentions into practice, educators can work to alter their daily lesson plans and assignments to incorporate SEL concepts. Meeting with students one-on-one each day (even virtually) can also be an effective way to build connections that lead to students expressing themselves more effectively. When it comes to remote learning in particular, there are still plenty of opportunities for teachers to promote and practice social and emotional strategies with students, including by assigning work they’re able to connect with on an authentic level and helping solidify a true sense of belonging. Especially in the first few weeks of the new school year, establishing connections with students is going to be important. They’ll want to find a way to feel safe in school or trust that they’ll be taken care of if learning remotely and building the right kinds of environment can go a long way.
Restoring Relationships with an SEL Focus
For many students, especially the younger ones, everything they knew about school changed. They went from being with their teacher for six or seven hours a day to only seeing them through a screen for an hour or two (at most) each day. The minds of young kids are programmed to respond to routine and, when schools shut down in the spring, the routine they knew was replaced with a different routine. Now, many of them may have gotten used to the new, remote routine and forgotten a bit about what in-person schooling was like. Teachers need to be aware of this and, especially since most students will have new teachers to start the new school year, there should be an extra focus on building relationships in the first couple weeks of school—whether those take place in person or online. To do so, teachers can start by evaluating how SEL efforts have been successful in the past.
If there were SEL efforts or programs in place in your school prior to the pandemic, that would be the ideal place to start. Reintroducing some of the experiences and concepts to students once the new year begins could help provide some familiarity and essentially jog their memory after the long absence from focusing on them. This can also help provide teachers with a foundation for how to get started with teaching SEL this school year and give them a foundation to build on throughout the year. If there are resources within your school community—perhaps from a school counselor—now would be the perfect time to review them and craft a plan for implementation (we know teachers are extremely busy and stressed out, so hopefully anybody who’s created resources can also suggest ideas for implementation). Searching throughout the school community or the education community at large can also yield some useful SEL resources for teachers.
Any strategies used by teachers should ideally be able to be implemented in an equitable way throughout a class of students meaning that they should support the academic, social, and emotional development of those students as a whole. Any resources created by school leaders can also be used by parents to help ease their students into this transition and back into going to school, especially if they have fears of potentially getting sick. Beyond that, if students are going to be taking part in hybrid learning, that presents something else that’s entirely new. Focusing on SEL in this case can help them get comfortable with this type of learning more quickly and help them manage any stress they might be feeling. When teachers can work directly with students, ask for their feedback, and place a priority on their social-emotional well-being, the start of the year could get a lot easier.
Communication Strategies As the School Year Nears
Some schools in the United States are scheduled to begin the 2020-21 academic year in as soon as two weeks. Others have six or seven weeks left to fully figure things out, but there is an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty hovering over so many of them. In addition to teachers, bus drivers, custodial staff members, cafeteria workers, and other school employees literally having fear for their lives, parents are starting to become stressed out all over again at the prospect of another month, quarter, semester, or even a full year of remote learning. As worried as many educators are about what’s to come, parents are going to be sharing that emotion with them either way. So, communication from school and district leaders is going to be key over these final weeks of the summer and into the start of the year.
To be blunt, parents are going to be stressed out arguably as much as teachers with whatever method of learning the leaders of their children’s districts choose to use. If remote learning remains in place to start this school year, they’re going to have to once again figure out how to balance their own job responsibilities with making sure their children attend classes, meet with teachers, and complete work. Plus, that gets all the more complicated when there are two (or more) children in the house fighting for device access and bandwidth. On the other hand, if they’re sending their children to school each day, they’re undoubtedly going to be fearful of them getting sick. In school, they’d theoretically be six feet away from anyone else at all times, but you can’t guarantee that will ensure safety. Thinking about the fact that their kids are in a room with 15 or 20 others who have been with their families who have been to work or to the store or to a restaurant isn’t going to give too many parents a whole lot of comfort.
The importance of school leaders being transparent and offering regular updates is going to be on display over the next couple of months. If school leaders truly believe that all students and staff members will be safe, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s just as important. Messages will need to be communicated efficiently and consistently to parents. Having someone within their child’s school system that they can trust can go a long way in helping to reduce the fears that parents have. And, if social-emotional learning is going to be a part of the reopening plan, let them know that, too! Chances are they’ll be supportive of the extra attention given to SEL with all of the events that have taken place since their kids were last in a school. As school leaders, communicating with parents also presents an opportunity to listen to them, hear their concerns, and work together to try to (somehow) do what’s best for everyone.
The Importance of Developing an SEL Plan
If your lucky enough to have your school safely reopen for in-person classes in the fall, that’s both good news and bad news. It’s good for obvious reasons, but it could be bad if it leads to health issues, additional stress for teachers, some teachers refusing to come back, and casting another dramatic shift in the way students are receiving their education. For those reasons and a few others as well, it’s important that school leaders welcoming students back into the building have a plan for addressing social and emotional concerns early on. The world is a very different place now than it was when kids left the classroom in mid-March and the events of the coronavirus pandemic alone have likely caused trauma for students—especially the younger ones. If not handled successfully (or even addressed at all), it can ultimately have adverse effects on these kids throughout their lives.
Simply seeing how the coronavirus has killed so many people in America alone can strike fear in children and, just as importantly, can affect their mental state. Traumatic experiences like this can have an effect on how students learn as well, including their ability to focus, their ability to make careful decisions, and how they manage everyday stress. If a young student has been affected by the pandemic firsthand with a death in the family, for example, they might even have trouble connecting with new peers and teachers or forming new relationships. So, while academic needs may be as dire at the start of this school year as they have ever been, social and emotional needs are probably equally as required. Whether opening the year in-person or remotely, both students and parents probably need some time to address their concerns, share their thoughts, and express their fears and feelings.
Other adverse effects of school closures on students, in addition to seeing and hearing about so much devastation, can include students having been neglected, abused, or isolated. As they return to the classroom, the states of their mental health could be widely varied and teachers need to be prepared for this possibility. As important as social-emotional health is, it also has its connection to academic achievement and it’s possible that students are unable to truly learn and return to normal unless their emotions are in check. In fact, students with high social-emotional health tend to do better academically, socialize more positively, get in trouble less frequently, and suffer less stress. If school leaders can find a way to use SEL to achieve all (or even some of these) factors at the start of the year, we think things will run more smoothly!
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