Kia ora and welcome back to my blog,
If it is the first time you have popped along to check this out it is great to have you here.
What comes to mind when you think about
social - emotional learning?
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
It is incredible when people come together in groups and give each other the space to share, guided by clear questioning and response. The knowledge and depth of experience that is shared is often rich and usually agreed on. Usually none of this is academic. It may have some relation to the knowledge of the world, shared tacit knowledge but mainly these conversations are highly affected by our emotions. In sharing, these are social. They are brought to the fore by the deepest human need: connection.
When trying to unpack social emotional intelligence it is ridiculously broad. I believe that it is the science of understanding what it is to be human.
How do we feel? Why are we feeling this way? How does this effect how we connect to others? Can I change the way others respond to me by how I act and speak to them?
Social and Emotional intelligence relates to cognitive, physiological and behavioural areas of self.
Some ideas that have been shared by colleagues suggest:
- being able to read the cues, emotions and communication of others both verbal and non-verbal.
- knowing one's self identity that doesn't change and identity that is affected by others.
- Awareness of mindsets and the ability to be open to others
- Ability to present one self in a way that others can relate to
- Managing our internal dialogue
- compassion vs judgement
- equilibrium: the hauora model - a balance of spiritual, identity etc.
This highlights 'social and emotional learning' as an umbrella term.
What I find interesting is that with most investigation and research someone has come up with the idea before. Similar to ideas I am investigating currently are 'Talk Moves' and ideas related to social and emotional intelligence in 'CASEL' (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) which categorises SEL competencies.
What we strive to instil as educators in our children is pro-social behaviour - understanding others and affecting the behaviours of others in peer to peer relationships. In other words, my behaviours related to others affects how others relate to me.
Learning pro-social behaviours is not necessarily linear. Life isn't either. We learn things in many ways and contexts. We develop facets of ourselves as they are brought to our attention. If we had a linear scale of development of behaviour many people would not be capable of leading adult lives.
Both pro-social behaviour and personal awareness develops from or within a 'space' of competency or confidence in ones ability to accomplish something. Children need to be given the competency to say, negotiate, talk and listen. This builds their self- awareness and self- management or faith and depth in themselves.
Everything is integrated.
We are educating children to be humans not just academics.
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