Wherever in the world you may be teaching, focusing on the social and emotional support you can provide your students can lay a foundation for improved and sustainable academic performance. We listened in on a conversation between two Teach For All teachers—one based in the United States and the other in India—to learn whether there are any approaches that can transcend cultural differences.
Why emotional literacy is important On the surface, four year-old student Sarah* seemed fine. She was a good and able student, but when confronted with situations she could not handle, she would often get frustrated and lash out: crying, screaming or becoming physically violent. Sarah’s outbursts resulted from stress and trauma in her life—a characteristic of many students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Jenny Pennell-Tan (Teach For America ‘07), a pre-Kindergarten teacher in New York City, tells the story of Sarah to illustrate the need for emotionally responsive and therapeutic practices in the classroom. Academic research (such as this CDC report) taught Jenny that toxic stress on the brain negatively affects cognitive flexibility, working memory and impulse control. “If we want to promote academic achievement,” she says, “we also need to address the social and emotional aspect and integrate it into everyday practice.” Jenny began to push and test the efficacy of classroom practices that could nurture and help heal her students. Nivritti Tandon (Teach For India ‘12) similarly used her counselling background to inform the way she structured her second grade classroom. Nivritti wanted to see students master important social skills and develop into independent individuals, so she created a classroom environment in which her students felt comfortable talking about their character development and were not hindered by emotional issues. Both teachers created strategies that addressed the following social and emotional skills in students:
These were the skills that Nivritti and Jenny felt their students most needed in order to experience success in academic settings over the next few years. How to teach emotional literacy Having something concrete to hold on to really helps these concepts stick with students. When discussing how she developed specific strategies in the classroom, Jenny provided the framework of the Teaching Pyramid. “If you can master its foundation,” she says, “there’s often no need to resort to the specialised interventions.” Building a warm and positive teacher-student relationship is the first step. Jenny says it’s necessary for the teacher to wear many hats in the classroom to create that bond: nurturer, instructor and limit-setter. Once trust has been developed, the teacher can focus on classroom layout and instructional approaches. The classroom should be arranged to accommodate social interaction and play. Instruction should explicitly address personal and emotional development. For example, Nivritti designs units around specific character traits such as demonstrating respect. To support this, she brings in objects with which students can interact, asks students to discuss the character trait during morning meetings and relates content back to those character traits so that students internalise them. Social and emotional interventions can take a variety of forms with a single goal: helping students voice their feelings and thus learn how to use them productively. Teachers can facilitate this by asking students reflective questions, promoting complete honesty, and by using strategically selected read-aloud books that model key emotions. The arts are also helpful—students can express their feelings through puppet shows or drawing pictures, for example. To make the most of these strategies, students need a vocabulary to help them put their feelings into words. Teachers should support this vocabulary development, too. Doing the following in the classroom helps promote the development of emotional literacy in students:
Teaching emotional literacy in an environment focused on other success criteria Not everyone believes in the importance of explicitly teaching social and emotional skills. However, you can positively impact your school and your students, regardless of your school’s culture and the ages of your students. Jenny and Nivritti have three key pieces of advice to get you started:
Read more of the conversation between Jenny and Nivritti, and access a whole list of resources they have shared, by clicking here. They share as their parting words, a key takeaway: “There are a lot of strategies out there. Find the ones that are true to who you are as a person, and give yourself time to sort it out.” *article was shared from originally published site, synergies.teachforall.org Comments are closed.
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