Armen Kassabian has a Masters in TESOL from Long Island University. With over 12 years of experience in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages and teacher training, he brings a renewed passion for learning and teaching to every class and workshop. He has trained teachers in Mauritius, Madagascar Brazil, Martinique and Uzbekistan. He infuses technology with a human touch. E-mail: armentesolcoach@gmail.com

 

Abstract

This article highlights the role and importance of Social and Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom. It also reveals three methodological approaches teachers can take to support and enhance their students' social and emotional intelligence skills.

 

Introduction

The need for teaching social and emotional intelligence skills to students is of paramount importance.  Educators around the world teach students academic skills, but the majority of schools do not have formal programs to teach social and emotional intelligence to students. This may be because of a lack of funding, time in the curriculum or belief that such softer skills will not benefit students' professional and academic lives in the future. However, this is an erroneous perception.

My name is Armen Kassabian. I have been working as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages and teacher training for the past 14 years. I’ve personally witnessed that schools that teaching students social and emotional skills that give  them the skills to make the world a better place, as they equally care about their academic development as well as their relationships with peers and to their emotions.

According to Roger Weissberg, who wrote an article titled, Why Social and Emotional Learning Is Essential for Students, he outlines some of the benefits for students:

• Know and can manage themselves
• Understand the perspectives of others and relate effectively with them
• Make sound choices about personal and social decisions
• More positive attitudes toward oneself, others, and tasks including enhanced self-efficacy, confidence, persistence, empathy, connection and commitment to school, and a sense of purpose
• More positive social behaviors and relationships with peers and adults
• Reduced conduct problems and risk-taking behavior
• Decreased emotional distress
• Improved test scores, grades, and attendance

Students are often taught that success is primarily based on individual academic success. This leaves an underlying assumption of focusing more on oneself than working collaboratively or to learn the skills of how to show care for others. However, the skills of social and emotional intelligence can be taught in even simple ways in our classes, to mitigate the challenges young people are facing around the world.

Weissberg goes on to explain that “our focus in teaching should be on the kids: seeking to teach them skills such as anger management, cooperation, and negotiation. The other focus is on the classroom, to see if changes in its atmosphere can improve students’ chances of acquiring these and other important social skills.”

This article will give three simple suggestions teachers can use in their  classrooms to have a more socially and emotionally intelligent approach built into the daily routines of students.

 

Daily Routines to Help Students Connect with Themselves

Routines are what create successful classrooms, with authentic student to student and student to teacher interaction. From the first day of school, teachers should decide the routines that they want to use in their classroom and how long they want each routine to be. Routines can have both mental, emotional, physical and academic benefits.  Having these intentions clear from the beginning of our academic year, creates a sense of regularity in how teachers teach and what students are expected to do, say and feel, each day in class.

Routines I’ve used in my high school classes often involve some amount of mindful movement and breathing to release tension, time to share feelings and teach students words to better name whatever they’re feeling. In addition, Teachers can include a quote, uplifting chant or daily reflection questions, that relates both to the class theme and to students' lives. This takes a degree of creative thinking on the behalf of the teacher, since they must teach students how to think more holistically about learning. This gives students a sense that learning in the classroom is not divorced from real life, but intricately interconnected with life lessons as well. What we teach our students can help them become happier, healthier, more self-reflective and smarter citizens.

By creating a short time for students to express their emotions and personality during a lesson, they can build a sense of trust and create a culture of acceptance, support and safety. Each student comes with their own emotional baggage and perceptions, and this cannot be ignored in any classroom no matter how hard educators only want to teach the materials.  Teachers can not only teach their subject area, but can also teach students how to better regulate themselves and relate to their classmates in more compassionate ways.

 

A Safe Space for Students to Connect with One Another

In the United States, Americans live in a country that faces the threat of danger in regards to school shootings. We teach our students to prepare not only for their school subjects and fire drills, but also to hide in the corner of the room, close the shades and lock doors to remain safe, if faced with an active shooter. According to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, the U.S. ended 2021 with 693 mass shootings. The year before it saw 611. And 2019 had 417. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter.

This degree of violence occurring in schools or certain communities in the United States, also occurs in many countries around the world. It may be related to domestic abuse or substance abuse in a family, racial, religious or ethnic discrimination or other forms of discrimination, that results in violence that directly or indirecly impact our students’ lives.

Teachers must be sensitized to create a safe space of trust in each classroom, which allows students to not feel judged or repressed when difficult emotions come up in class. When a student is acting in a way that we as teachers deem as inappropriate, it’s very possible that the young person is struggling and is in pain, and that behavior is a result of an internal or external struggle. This in no way justifies the behaviors that some young people may have in our classrooms, but it is important for educators to reflect not just on what our students do, but also ask why they do and say what they do in our classes.  This can better help us establish stronger supportive relationships with our students.

Creating a circle time in a class can be a healing action to support students in order to create a safe classroom space. In “Building Community With Restorative Circles,” Marieke van Woerkom describes “a technique for proactively building the skills and relationships students will need when challenges arise.” Circles teach students about how to use a talking piece, take turns listening to each other and speaking and responding to prompts. This can build the skills of students to relate better to each other and to create a supportive classroom environment.

 

Connecting with the World through International Digital Exchanges 

The need for students to also learn about and from students around the world, can also build their skills in intercultural communication. Students learn a lot when they can meet students from diverse backgrounds from around the world. Teachers can research safe ways for their students to do internatinal exchanges using secure forms of communication. It’s best to have students work in small breakout rooms and to discuss different topics that relate to their lives in some way. Teachers prepare students before the meeting for the encounters. Teachers build stronger relationships with their students and teach students how to participate  in international exchanges by engaging in this form of intercultural communication.

One English teacher named Lusine Jhangiryan, works in a school in Russia. She noticed that her students were not regulary using English in the class, as they often used their first language and were not very motivated. When she began to have her students meet other students online, she noticed their motivation and interest in English became remarkably higher.  She went on to participate in Kidlink, an online exchange to help students connect with each other around the world. Students gain a deeper respect and interest in a foreign language, when they can use it with peers of a similar age.

Another Global educator is named Kohei Nakashima, from the Toyota Minami High school in Japan. He created weekly meeting times for students from around the world during Covid quarantine. Students seeing teachers who can talk about their students has a powerful impact on them as well. Such initiatives by educators such as Kohei and Lusine,  truly break down the barriers and perceptions we may have about people who are different from us. International digital exchanges also build students' confidence in their public speaking as well as their ability to listen deeply to their peers. Students must learn from each other, take turns speaking and learn how to speak about a plethora of subjects. One teacher's classroom truly becomes a microcosm for the world. By having teacher role models who teach students how to care about the world and learn about the realities of students on the other side of the globe, their students begin to build their social and emotional awareness as well.

 

Conclusion

In this paper, the importance of social and emotional intelligence has been shown to build educators' awareness and knowledge about the value of teaching such skills to their students. But of course, no teacher can teach a subject that they have not first internalized, practiced and learned themselves. By teaching students to connect to themselves, their peers and the world more deeply, teachers can create more caring classrooms that have a balanced approach to academic, social and emotional development.

 

References

Diaz, J. (2022, May 25). 27 school shootings have taken place so far this year. NPR. Retrieved May 31, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101050970/2022-school-shootings-so-far

Weissberg, R. (2016, February 15). Why social and emotional learning is essential for students. Edutopia. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-sel-essential-for-students-weissberg-durlak-domitrovich-gullotta

Woerkom, M. van. (2018, March 12). Building community with restorative circles. Edutopia. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/building-community-restorative-circles  

 

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