What is SEL in simple terms?

Broadly speaking, social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to the process through which individuals learn and apply a set of social, emotional, and related skills, attitudes, behaviors, and values that help direct students. This includes thoughts, feelings, and actions in ways that enable them to succeed in school.

What is SEL in kid terms?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a term for the way children acquire social and emotional skills. It includes things like managing difficult emotions, making responsible decisions, handling stress, setting goals, and building healthy relationships.

How do you explain social emotional learning to students?

The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

What is the understanding of SEL?

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success. People with strong social-emotional skills are better able to cope with everyday challenges and benefit academically, professionally, and socially.

What are the key concepts of SEL?

The following descriptions of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) are from CASEL. They address five broad, interrelated areas of competence and provide examples for each: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Social-Emotional Learning: What Is SEL and Why SEL Matters

What are the core SEL values?

What are the 5 concepts of social emotional learning?

The five SEL competencies (self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and relationship skills), are vital to the teaching and understanding of social and emotional learning at school.

Why are parents against SEL in schools?

Parents express fears that SEL is a slippery slope—or even an indoctrination tool—to teach kids about racial inequality, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

How do you teach SEL effectively?

What is the goal of teaching SEL?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults develop and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make ...

How is SEL taught in schools?

In the classroom, SEL lessons can be explicitly taught through curriculum or integrated into other subjects, including through activities like labeling feelings, goal setting, cultivating empathy, and collaborating with peers.

What is the summary of social-emotional learning?

Social-emotional learning (SEL) emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing emotions, building healthy relationships, and developing social awareness.

How do you implement SEL in the classroom?

What are the negatives of SEL in schools?

It can perpetuate a victim mentality. Some SEL programs focus heavily on identifying and coping with emotions like anxiety, fear, and sadness. While it's important to address these issues, there's a risk that children could become too focused on their negative emotions and begin to see themselves as victims.

What does SEL look like?

SEL consists of five key skills: Self-awareness – recognition of one's own emotions, personal goals, and values. Self-management – regulation of one's own emotions and behaviors. Social awareness – understanding of and compassion for others' backgrounds or cultures.

Is SEL a hidden curriculum?

And, because we can also learn unhealthy social and emotional skills and mindsets—like racism, aggression, and helplessness—from our surroundings, it's especially important for educators to bring awareness and intentionality to the hidden SEL curriculum.

What does SEL in the classroom look like?

SEL-Focused Classrooms

This type of environment creates a strong foundation for students to engage fully and take academic risks. This includes: community-building, belonging and emotional safety, and student-centered discipline.

What are the 3 R's of social emotional learning?

Embedded at the core of positive psychology, and emotional learning, are the three R's of emotional literacy: Regulation, Reconstruction, and Resilience. To regulate emotion, students learn the ability to flip a negative emotion to positive emotion like they flip a baseball card.

How do you assess SEL in the classroom?

SEL assessment can be administered using multiple methods, including questionnaires/surveys, observations, performance assessments, report cards and interviews or focus groups. Questionnaires/surveys can be useful to measure a variety of outcome and process measures.

What is the controversy around SEL?

Critics of social-emotional learning, like Parents Defending Education, a group tracking what it says is “liberal indoctrination,” say the programs focus too much on children's identities. It shouldn't matter what a child's race or gender is, these parent groups say.

Why do SEL programs fail?

So SEL is rushed, shortened, or even skipped. Note to administrators: you cannot put one more thing on a teacher's plate without at the same time taking something off. The less obvious but perhaps most important reason that SEL programs fail is that they conflict with the SEL program the school already has.

Does SEL teach gender identity?

Through self-reflection and social awareness, SEL helps teach skills needed to connect across race, class, culture, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, learning needs and age.

What are the 4 emotions of learning?

This module considers the knowledge emotions, a profoundly important family of emotions associated with learning, exploring, and reflecting. The family of knowledge emotions has four main members: surprise, interest, confusion, and awe.

How do you question emotions?

Question the accuracy of the emotion message:

What harm has actually been done? Have I been through this before – have I seen it come and go? How will I feel about this tomorrow, in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year? Is there another emotion that would fit better in this situation?

What is social awareness in SEL?

Social awareness includes abilities such as: Leaning into others' perspectives with curiosity. Recognizing and acknowledging the inherent strengths in others. Demonstrating empathy and compassion. Showing concern for the feelings of others.