Each May, students at Health Sciences High and Middle College choose four questions for staff to organize curriculum around during each quarter of the following year. These questions allow for curriculum integration across subject areas and help kids make connections between their classes. What's notable is that the winning essential questions tend to focus on social-emotional issues. That's what students want to talk about. Recent questions included, "What makes you unique?" "Who can we trust?" and "Avenge or forgive?"
Imagine the natural opportunities the teachers at Health Sciences High have to address social-emotional learning (SEL) as students explore content in history, arts, sciences, and other subjects in connection with these questions. Imagine the conversations in art class spurred by the question about being unique, or the history teacher applying the avenge or forgive question to revolutions across time. In addition to learning content, these questions allow students to consider their identities and perspectives while talking about the interplay between emotional response and civic responsibility.
Happiness Is …?
A few years ago, one essential question selected by the students was, "Can you buy your way to happiness?" At the start of the quarter, students were asked for their initial thinking. Nearly every student responded that money would create happiness. Then, they learned about miserable lottery winners, tyrants, inequitable wealth distribution, and a range of related topics tied to content standards. By the end of the quarter, students were regularly talking about the value of their friends, family, and spirituality as sources of happiness. One student wrote, "A person needs enough money to live a reasonable life, but after that money can't make you happy. Faithful friends, a loving family, and a strong relationship with God can make you happy."
Teaching for Friendship
This student's response (and similar ones) reminded us about the value of teaching students how to make friends, keep friends, and repair strained friendships—surely a key social skill. Unfortunately, some students struggle with making or keeping friends. They need our guidance and support because this skill is every bit as important as the academic knowledge we impart. In the video accompanying this column, 1st grade teacher Heather Anderson teaches her students about making friends. She provides them with sentence frames to complete as they get to know more about their peers, thus practicing academic language.
Notice that it's hard to distinguish between the literacy learning and the social-emotional learning Heather's students are doing. We don't agree with those who argue that schools should focus more on the content standards and less on the "soft skills." Our perspective is that every lesson has a hidden curriculum connected to SEL; each time we stand in front of the class, we provide students with learning opportunities—positive and negative—about social and emotional issues. So it makes sense to teach these skills with intention and within the context of academic instruction.
Teaching about friendship is just one element of social-emotional learning. Students also have to learn about impulse control, delayed gratification, stress management, and other common topics addressed in SEL efforts. But skills for friendship are especially crucial. We agree with the Health Sciences High student who wrote, "Friends make your life better. It's hard to imagine that a human being, a social animal, could be happy without friends."
"If You Knew Me …"
Educators can also use a number of tools to help older students learn about others. Besides laying the ground for friendships, knowing someone's "story" makes it harder to be harsh or mean to them.
▪ The Name Story. In partners, students tell the story of their name, answering questions like, Who gave you your name? What does your name mean? Are there any translations for your name or nicknames that you use? What do you like most about your name? Every time we do this, we're impressed at the depth of students' conversations. They learn things about each other and recognize that there are both similarities and valuable differences between people—plus they have fun!▪ If You Knew Me. This is usually done in pairs, sometimes in writing, other times orally. One person starts and completes this sentence frame: "If you knew me, you would know …." Without comment, the other person then completes the same sentence frame. Students take turns providing information about themselves and learning about the other person.
If You Knew Me is useful when students who really don't know each other are having conflicts. For example, two middle school girls in our school were "mad-dogging" each other. Each was trying to stare the other one down and using aggressive body language. We met with them and used the If You Knew Me technique. Their conversation started out fairly superficially with comments about their favorite colors, music style, and teachers they liked. Then one of them said, "If you knew me, you would know my dad's in jail," to which the other responded, "If you knew me, you would know that's my biggest fear. I worry every night that my dad is going to be arrested and thrown in jail." They started crying and hugging. We've never had a problem between the two of them again.
Teacher Impact
In their meta-analysis of studies on 213 SEL programs (involving 270,034 K–12 students), Durlak and colleagues noted that classroom teachers are highly impactful when they implement social-emotional learning. When teachers teach social-emotional skills, students learn them. According to the Durlak study, the effect size on academic achievement of teachers teaching social-emotional skills is .62. But it's important to note that when social-emotional learning was carried out by non-school personnel, the impacts were reduced.
It seems to matter that real teachers, in real classrooms, address the social-emotional learning needs of their students.
