Social & Emotional Learning
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About
What is SEL?
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.
Where can SEL be taught and practiced?
Our framework takes a systemic approach that emphasizes the importance of establishing equitable learning environments and coordinating practices across four key settings: classrooms, schools, homes, and communities.
Five Core Competencies of Social & Emotional Learning
The following descriptions are from the MA Department of Education's webpage on Social & Emotional Learning
Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes the capacity to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.
For example:
- Integrating personal and social identities
- Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets
- Identifying one's emotions
- Demonstrating honesty and integrity
- Linking feelings, values, and thoughts
- Examining prejudices and biases
- Experiencing self-efficacy
- Having a growth mindset
- Developing interests and a sense of purpose
Self-Management
Self-Management: 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 & agency to accomplish personal/collective goals.
For example:
- Managing one's emotions
- Identifying and using stress-management strategies
- Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation
- Setting personal and collective goals
- Using planning and organizational skills
- Showing the courage to take initiative
- Demonstrating personal and collective agency
Social Awareness
Social Awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, & contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.
For example:
- Taking others' perspectives
- Recognizing strengths in others
- Demonstrating empathy and compassion
- Showing concern for the feelings of others
- Understanding and expressing gratitude
- Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones
- Recognizing situational demands and opportunities
- Understanding the influences of organizations/systems on behavior
Relationship Skills
Relationship Skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.
For example:
- Communicating effectively
- Developing positive relationships
- Demonstrating cultural competency
- Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving
- Resolving conflicts constructively
- Resisting negative social pressure
- Showing leadership in groups
- Seeking or offering support and help when needed
- Standing up for the rights of others
Responsible Decision-Making
Responsible Decision-Making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.
For example:
- Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness
- Identifying solutions for personal and social problems
- Learning to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, facts
- Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions
- Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside & outside of school
- Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being
- Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts
Responsive Classroom
What Is Responsive Classroom?
Responsive Classroom is a student-centered, social and emotional learning approach to teaching and discipline. It is comprised of a set of research- and evidence-based practices designed to create safe, joyful, and engaging classroom and school communities for both students and teachers. Schools and teachers that adopt the Responsive Classroom approach focus on (1) creating optimal learning conditions for students to develop the academic, social, and emotional skills needed for success in and out of school, and (2) building positive school and classroom communities where students learn, behave, hope, and set and achieve goals
The Approach to Teaching
There can be no doubt that what teachers believe, know, and can do powerfully in uences student learning. Responsive Classroom works because it addresses this belief-knowledge-action triad. It shifts teachers’ beliefs about children and learning, equips them with new knowledge and skills, and encourages them to transform their teaching by putting their new beliefs and knowledge into action. In the Responsive Classroom approach, instruction is designed with an understanding of the natural learning cycle, which begins with a sense of purpose or goal for learning and leads to the deepest, most meaningful learning.
The Approach to Discipline
Educators using the Responsive Classroom approach take a proactive and nonpunitive approach to discipline through the application of the Responsive Classroom discipline framework. These discipline practices emphasize building intrinsic motivation that leads to the development of self-control and self-regulation, rather than depending on external motivators such as the promise of rewards or the threat of punishment to shape behavior.
Responsive Classroom Strategies
Responsive Classroom creates the conditions for social, emotional, and academic success by using practical strategies in the following four domains.
Positive community
A safe, predictable, joyful, and inclusive environment where all students have a sense of belonging and signi cance. Discipline is taught through a set of strategies aimed at proactively setting students up for success, preserving the dignity of the student and group, and helping students to develop self-discipline. Morning Meeting and Responsive Advisory Meeting: Daily meetings that build community, honor identity, and promote belonging, signi cance, and fun. Teacher language: Speaking in ways that lead each student to envision success, think deeply, set goals, and work hard to achieve them. Positive discipline: Involving students in creating rules, proactively teaching these rules, and responding nonpunitively to restore positive behavior, preserve student dignity, and continue learning.
Effective management
A calm and orderly learning environment that promotes autonomy, responsibility, and high engagement in learning. Routines and expectations: Managing classroom time and space in ways that allow students to focus on learning and building autonomy. Classroom organization: Organizing the classroom space to represent and support the learners it serves.
Engaging academics
Learner-centered lessons that are participatory, appropriately challenging, fun, and relevant, and that promote curiosity, wonder, and interest. Academic Choice: Giving students meaningful choices in their learning. Teaching the language of learning: Intentionally teaching speaking and listening competencies necessary for college and career readiness. Active teaching and student practice: Teaching new skills in a way that includes demonstration and guided practice.
Developmentally responsive teaching
Basing all decisions for teaching and discipline upon research and knowledge of students’ social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Knowing all students: A collection of practices for learning about each student individually, culturally, and developmentally. Building upon strengths: Structuring appropriately challenging lessons to connect learning to and build upon students’ strengths. Parents as partners: Strategies for involving families of diverse cultures and backgrounds.
About Responsive Classroom
Zones of Regulation
The Zones of Regulation is a comprehensive, evidence-based framework that builds emotional and behavioral regulation skills through a lens of inclusion, accessibility, and science.
Grounded in cognitive behavioral theory and designed with real-world application in mind, The Zones gives learners of all ages — and their support networks — a common language and set of tools for understanding and managing emotions.
Language We May Use
| Instead of... | Try... |
|---|---|
| "You need to calm down." | "Let's do a zone check-in." |
| "It's too loud in here." | "The noise in here is making ME feel like I'm in the Yellow Zone, and it's hard for me to think. I need to take a deep breath." |
| "You are getting a warning." |
"Let's check in with our bodies." "It looks like your body has a lot of energy and you are having a hard time focusing. Maybe you are feeling silly. What is a tool that might help?" |
| "Don't worry about that." | "How can I help with this feeling?" |
| "You need to calm down." | "It is ok to be angry/in the Red Zone and we need to have a safe body. Let's find a tool to help." |
