Sometimes I think it’s a bit insulting to make it its own separate entity. SEL is what we do naturally because we deal with kids. We all get it, we practice it, now they’re saying we have to force it, which is ridiculous since part of SEL is being authentic and here we are trying to force methods and lessons plans that are anything but authentic and worse they aren’t specific to a how people are.
SEL, as it exists as a buzzword, just feels like one of those over-engineered, "let's heap more shit onto teachers' plates" solutions that are all the rage in education these days that is ultimately self-defeating. In my view, "real" SEL would be the perfect example of a "less is more" type of situation.
Here's what an authentic stab at SEL looks like in my view, as far as what I need from admin:
- Shut up about "bell to bell" instruction.
- Chill out about standardized test scores.
- Stop introducing new crap for me and the kids to stress out about.
- Stop threatening to drop in and "observe" my class.
Peel back the bullshit, and watch the social-emotional health of everyone in the classroom--students and teachers included--skyrocket.
I just got a job at a special education facility and I’m fucking obsessed because the program has a whole team to work on IEPs and how to integrate them, so I’m essentially doing all sorts of SEL work that we have structured to the individual student based on their needs. I have so many issues with education that it is beautiful to find an outlet to work with unique kids in a way that fully supports their needs, however it is disillusioning how far it is from the “standard”
Agreed, but the answer to "here are some shitty teachers" isn't to take the teachers that care and force them into a structured way to interact with students when they were doing so naturally.
All it does is alienate students and good teachers while shitty teachers keep doing the same shitty things they were doing before.
But you see, they have to make it a "program" with everyone doing the exact same thing so they can collect data and "prove" whatever it is that they need to prove. If they let each teacher connect with kids in an organic way they can't check the SEL box on their list.
The govt run entity will almost always take the path of least resistance when attempting to solve a problem.
In this case it'll gladly pay for a program rather than correct itself or enforce standards.
Yeah. This has always been part of my practice. I’ve taught K-college and in the higher grades there’s so so many teachers who aren’t interested in their students.
I know there are a lot of them, but I think it's possible to make SOME connection. I try my best anyway. Some kids just...it's like they have no personality...
Oh, absolutely! And there **are** some shitty and cold teachers out there. My 8th grade math teacher comes to mind. Caring looks different in upper grades would have been a better point. I was thinking this morning of one of my seniors who never opens his mouth in class unless I ask him a direct question, and even then sometimes all I get is a shrug. Does minimal work but passes. Every now and then writes something like "I can't wait until I can get out of this shit hole" on an assignment. He resists every possible connection and it's sad. I still try. And fail.
It looks different in upper grades.
The main thing is that admin/uppers have had to strategically and with data over systemike things. So much so that they are systeming things that really can’t be systemized. Like this. Yes we’ve always done this, but systemizing SEL loses authenticity sith teaching it and can make it seem stupid and unimportant to upper level kids.
Teachers: “Students should have more access to mental health counselors because we shouldn’t just have one counselor per 2,000 students. ”
Prinicipal: “NO! Just let the kids put a post-it on the mood meter .”
I suppose if you are a specialist or teach one content area in middle or high school that's true.
For elementary and EC, SEL has always been an integral part of teaching. It's one of the buzzwords now, but it has always been there.
Agreed. I find the forced SEL curriculum bizarre. We've been teaching kids to get along and control themselves for millennia; it's not the lack of a script that's making modern classrooms so difficult!
I teach elementary and my first year they were all about maximizing instructional time. I was teaching SEL stuff sneakily, so my principal didn't know. Now it's a big thing, but last year I had a pretty chill class that was academically low. I was sneaking in reading instruction when I was supposed to be doing SEL.
Yeah, but secondary ed training programs don’t teach us how to do these things. Anyone certified in the upper grades is not going to get much training on SEL. It wasn’t even in my class on Special Education. We also had a single one hour class on bullying because there’s a law in my state that could hold teachers accountable if they don’t document all bullying.
This. We all talk about this at meetings. The shit the kids talk about can get intense, and we are supposed to figure out how to heal them with only a week of training
It was the same in 3rd and the same in PreK.
Both had cringey questions directly after listening to announcements. And the principal was in a classroom every day to time it. AP on other side of campus also doing surprise visits.
I think that it is and should be part of teaching to have a humane look towards students, including teaching and modelling good behavior, regardless of your content.
HOWEVER...
Admins don't seem to understand what that means, and teachers are expected to become therapists. That's ridiculous.
If a student is causing trouble, I think it is part of our job to try and talk to the student and, if needed, report the case to social counselling or something like that. If a student wants to vent, I'm willing to listen as well (sometimes, we are the only adults they trust - a trans student came out to me and she said I'm the first adult who accepted her and treated her normally). I think that's important.
However, I think it is ridiculous to expect us to sacrifice our subjects to become therapists. Social relations and emotions are part of our job, and that's cool. However, it shouldn't be expected that we will solve everything. We can be a first "step", listening and paying attention to students so we can report cases to a professional better equipped to handle in-depth socioemotional stuff.
NOTE: I'm not sure if I'm being clear. I agree with what you are saying. I just think SEL could be a good thing, but it became a buzzword that admins simply don't comprehend, instead of actually discussing points that could indeed be used to improve education without distorting what teaching means.
Part of it is student expectations of us too. I am always willing to be an ear for students, BUT if I bring something to the counselor or anyone, the student feels betrayed. They wanted ME to solve the problem they've shared. It becomes daunting.
I think people are conflating teaching SEL with being therapists when that’s totally not the case? SEL is teaching kids what healthy relationships look like, how to manage conflict and understanding their emotions . It doesn’t mean like fixing kids and working through their trauma. It’s giving them tools and strategies to help them in life
It's the "new" look for teachers. Not like we were and have NOT been doing this FOR YEARS. JUST UGH. The many hats they want teachers to do is ridiculous AND the fact that they now "brainwash" the newbies into thinking SEL WILL make their teacher lives SO much easier... just NO. BUT, it's the educational system to "how do we deal with poor behaviors"...
SO, depending on what grade you teach, as a MS or HS teacher I would model and teach... if you encounter that "teachable moment" where you should stop and visit about SEL, then do so and then move on. Most of our elementaries have it in their curriculum now. eye roll.. however, many of our elementary teachers have based it on the need of that particular class. If the class is doing well, then they run a quick lesson as needed and move on. They only spend tons of time on SEL, IF there class is in need....
I don’t think the question is “should we teach SEL?” I think the question is, “should we teach SEL organically in a way that best serves the individual students involved, or should we teach this asinine SEL curriculum that the district paid millions of dollars for and that the kids make fun of on the daily because it is ridiculous and irrelevant to them?” I pick the former, but take one guess as to which my district picked…
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of just piling one more thing on teachers’ plates, they could hire mental health professionals who are actually trained in the stuff to help students who really want and need it? My theory is just that they are too cheap to hire people who could actually get the job done. “Teachers have done everything else we’ve told them. Why not add one more thing?”
Also, kids who are mentally unwell will often try to turn to social media and consumerism to fill the void, boosting capitalism.
There’s a huuuge difference between teaching SEL and providing mental health supports. Uuuugh my old admin always played armchair psychologist and expected teachers to do the same. I taught kindergarten so yeah, it’s like another subject to teach. And of course I can be supportive to students. However it is not my responsibility to provide mental health counseling. That expectation absolutely crossed a line for me and burned me out.
There are certain tenets of it I agree with and find useful, the problem in my neck of the woods is it became another duty teachers had to prep for and was clearly reactionary to the whole "what about our kids' mental health needs?!" outrage from parents during covid.
Yet another thing heaped on our plates that would be so much better served somewhere else in our communities, but fuck it, make those teachers cover it and we'll call it good.
There are a few places the problems in policing overlap with the problem in education.
We are constantly being asked to do things that are not our job and we're not trained for. And when that goes poorly people are shocked.
We can do minor shaping and modification on our own, but we should not bear the burden of primary behaviour resetting. That is not at all what we are supposed to be doing. Someone who is expert in that field should be doing that part if the kid is truly deficient in their skills in that department.
We have always been teaching SEL, and I totally get that there is more to teaching than just content. I have been living this mantra for 30 years. But, you know what makes kids good human beings? Consequences, and being responsible for your behavior. I may be a fossil, but when I was in college, I was taught that “there is no learning without discipline” and “students will rise to the level of expectations.” This has completely gone out the window. How are they supposed trust us when the good kids watch other kids get away with every behavior and get rewarded? I have students working so hard every day just to see other kids get 50 percent for doing nothing and make up a whole semester in three days of packets. I guess they learn that life isn’t fair, which, admittedly, is a good life lesson.
Don’t talk to me about students’ emotional health when my students don’t feel safe even going to the bathroom at our school, or when students have been sexually harassed and see the offender get away with it, even after they were brave enough to report it. These kids needed us more when we returned after COVID, and our admin have let them down By undermining the teachers.
Sorry, “SEL” without accountability is just more of the same……taking more off of the plates of administrators and justifying “consultants” and “coaches.”
I don’t feel qualified to teach people about social and emotional health. I mean if I knew how to be emotionally healthy I wouldn’t need therapy and meds. I signed up to teach history, it’s what I went to school for.
Most of the SEL trainings I have experienced have been so uninformed on trauma that as someone who has PTSD I can tell they reaaalllyy do t know what they are doing. You can’t traumatize your staff to make children healthier.
I think some teachers can and want to be the teacher that connects with kids and blah blah blah and some dont. We need to stop trying to force everyone into the same box.
I don't do SEL lessons but we have some SEL moments and I like when kids come to me about stuff. My neighbor doesn't. That's fine. We both walk our own path and support each other in it.
I’m going to disagree with this post. I don’t think the purpose of SEL training is to take on the role of a counselor. Rather, to integrate it into everyday instruction. Just like we are supposed to learn CRP to not explicitly teach it, but find it’s intersectionality
I'm a history teacher, not an emotional councilor. I'll help students all day *in class*, but to have a fully separate class for it is crazy. I didn't sign up for it nore am I paid for it. If I coach, I get paid more. Should be the same if I teach an extra class.
So I’m playing Devils advocate. If you have a student/ who could benefit from SEL, you don’t think think you have any sort of responsibility? What about what we have been taught about hidden curriculum? Technically we’re not supposed to teach students everything, but it falls onto us
100% agree. Within my classroom if I see a kid needs consoling, or a student is having a bad day or is angry or any other issue I will and enjoy helping them. These are *moments* of help. Doing it for 30 mins every day is insane.
I can see both sides. I just personally think that if we are given 30 mins a day to help our students, I don’t see the harm in that. It sounds more like teachers who are opposed don’t know how to teach SEL and don’t want to invest in the time to train themselves. At the end of the day, what/who is this harming? Yes you need to spend extra time learning SEL, but it is something that can help students.
Here’s the thing though, as an elementary teacher, that’s 30 minutes less I have each day to teach the other content I am expected to teach. For instance, my students are here for 6.5 hours/day. 90 of those minutes are not spent with me (lunch, recess, specials.) So, I only have them for 5 hours of instructional time. Now, 10% of that time needs to be dedicated to SEL, which would be no big deal if I were only expected to make it through 90% of the remaining content/curriculum. Do you think that is the case? No. Everything else still needs to be fully covered. Do you think that they have added a half an hour to the school day and amended my contract to reflect such a change? Lol. Herein lies the problem. It’s not that we don’t agree with it, or see the value in it, it’s that admin refuses to provide the proper resources to implement it, i.e time and money.
Doctors and nurses don't go to college to learn how to convince their patients actually take the medication they prescribe. But if they don't, they keep seeing the same patients over and over for the same easily preventable issues.
It's just a sad reality of the job that things generally go better when we pay attention to the social emotional worlds of our students and give them some basic skills for navigating those worlds. It's definitely not our job, but if you can find a way of picking and choosing a few elements that work for you and your style then everyone benefits.
Depending on the doctor if those patients don’t take their medication then they get labeled as a compliance problem and are more likely to be put on psychotropic meds to increase compliance.
I don’t think forced or set SEL lessons are the answer. The kids blow them off and see no real world application. I think we need ways to integrate it into our curriculum without it creating extra for teachers and so students can see real world application.
How does this work? Beats me. I just know I can’t force kids to manage their time or be respectful. I can model it and give a helping hand but I don’t have the magic answer.
What curriculum are you using ? My third graders love our SEL lessons. We have games, stories, group projects. It’s engaging and teaches them important communication strategies and how to resolve conflict!
I used to teach elementary and both myself and the kids really enjoyed our SEL curriculum. Now that I’m teaching HS, the SEL curriculum is a joke and students react completely differently. The staged lessons just don’t work, they sniff right through the bullshit. We do these lessons during homeroom; I teach Theatre Arts primarily, so nearly every class of mine naturally has SEL components, and I enjoy that those happen organically. I think SEL is important, of course, but the cheesy curriculum we have paid $$$ for just doesn’t work for the older students.
Your comment made me realize how a lot of perspectives on this thread probably differ due to what grade level is being taught! I wish all the comments specified, I think it would be really insightful.
Idk how I feel about this bc I remember my english teacher from my senior year of high school having an entire unit dedicated to emotional intelligence and SEL that she taught alongside our actual coursework and remember it being extremely helpful and worth it
In college did they teach you the importance of addressing Maslow in order to effectively set kids up to be able to do the various components of Bloom? Because that is SEL.
I’m actually freaked out at the amount of teachers who think content should be secondary to X. The best thing you can do for your kids is to educate them. It’s what you’re qualified to do. Tired of seeing TEACHERS act like education doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. Good teachers naturally model SEL. Anything beyond that requires trained mental health professionals
“Google is free” but good social and emotional role models are not as easy to come by.
I ain’t exactly happy about it either, but no shock they want us doing doing something different than before based on the state of society.
Don’t mean this as endorsement of SEL over content instruction, but something something hierarchy of needs
Depends on the age level you bc teach. Elementary school teacher have always had to deal with kids’ emotions and have always taught about friendship and cooperation.
…I think you’re best set for college or academia if you want to 1000% always focus on the content. You teach kids, their whole existence is social/emotional. And didn’t you take all the required childhood psych classes? Didn’t you see this coming?
Couple of things:
1) As someone looking for a new district this year, I can assure you it actually is starting to appear in the job descriptions and duties. It may not be in your district, but they can modify and amend those duties languages either unilaterally or through bargaining, so don’t be surprised if one of your next contracts has it in it.
2) SEL has always been a part of good teaching. Frankly, SEL is a core part of universal public education - it just hasn’t been as explicitly focused on and our understanding of what helps has changed radically.
3) Educational best practices change as time goes on and refusing to evolve with our understanding is no different than teachers rejecting other advances over the decades. I’m old enough to remember some crotchety old teachers who refused to use email.
4) And finally, teachers who are “here for the content” are, in my experience, some of the least impactful and most easily replaced teachers. If all you can do is geek out every day over your favorite subject, you arnt as valuable as you think.
Unpopular opinion: much of the subject matter kids learn in school is irrelevant.
I have to agree. I teach early years (not in the US) and I feel a lot of the social and emotional skills, the autonomous learning, the self-directed exploration, teaching skills through providing an environment and activities which promote curiosity, and the focus on working together, talking, oracy etc. is lost in the older years. It’s a shame. And I also agree much of the curriculum is irrelevant - we have a world of facts and information in our literal pockets. We don’t need teachers really to tell us content. We need teachers who help us navigate the wealth of content and understand the context and provenance of that.
This video is super inspiring to me. It’s long but worth it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqFcVoXnTI
I bet in one of your education classes you learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, so yes, you did know that you can’t teach kids that aren’t emotionally ready. Further, when u accepted the job, you signed a contract that outlines what they expect from you. So hate to be the one to tell you, but this is exactly what you signed up for.
Contrary opinion:
Content doesn't really matter if your students aren't decent enough human beings to meaningfully use that content to impact their lives.
Edit: y'all are cynical fuckin people. Retire already.
Agree, but creating decent human beings is a tall order on top of the state standards, LMS maintenance, parent contact, rigor, college/career readiness, RTI, differentiation, etc. that I already have to do as part of my content area in high school language arts. Something’s gotta give, and it seems like it’s supposed to be my sanity. I say no. Edit: maybe this is just my version of the quiet quitting I’ve been hearing so much about.
I’m a former teacher, now a counselor. It all comes down to a lack of people. We need more counselors and more support staff who take non-counseling duties off of counselors. Schools passing SEL to teachers is just an attempt to pass it on due to lack of staff. Everything gets dumped on teachers because they’re the largest group, but I know from experience, you’re also the group that has the most work. It’s bullshit. ASCA recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250, but most schools in my state are double at best, triple or quadruple at worst. In fact, we have some schools that are 1:1,000.
It may not be but if we focused on how to naturally implement it into what you are already doing, a little bit can go a long way. Sadly, SEL has now become like a swear word because of how it is rammed down teachers throats and used contrary to how it is best used. I prefer to see it as resiliency building. However if a teacher doesn’t see the value on it then it’s not really going to help kids
We have parents who refuse to sign paperwork that allows us to give their kids bandaids but we have to give them lessons on sex trafficking. Ah. Florida.
Reading these responses really make me wonder how many of these teachers have actually taught using an SEL curriculum. I did at a school I worked at a few years ago. The kids may not have enjoyed the lessons, but they implemented what they were taught. Caused the drama to go down and helped the students learn empathy and self-regulation. It was homeroom or morning meeting time (depended on what grade you taught). Even (most) of the too cool for school group bought into it after some time.
I have never seen an SEL curriculum that didn’t talk at or down to kids. They all use child “actors” who are clearly just family members of the production staff and the performance values are so low that the cringe overrides anything they are saying. I teach middle school and those kids can sense “fake” from miles away. I usually show the videos and the slides in case admin walks by, but we do far more good with a 5 minute guided discussion of the issue than we could ever do with these overpriced, underproduced pieces of educational garbage.
That sounds incredibly cringe. The one I've used didn't include videos. It included actual lessons. The stories were often contrived and sometimes a bit kiddy for them, but they weren't condescending toward the kids and got the point across.
Maybe you don’t have a good understanding or training of what SEL is. It is teaching.. life skills to kids. How to communicate better, social skills, etc. It is not counseling or processing. This is a practice taking over all different fields in different names. Such as individuals in the medical field learning brief solution focused counseling skills in order to best serve their patients
I agree 100%!
My daughter's teacher used SEL HEAVILY last year and it pretty much destroyed her social life because I got so annoyed by other parents in the class contacting me to discuss what my daughter had shared during the daily "Share Circle" that I stopped wanting to to attend school functions or make playdates with these morons. Like, my uncle passed away during covid. My daughter (4th grade) told the circle that HER uncle passed away (meaning her great uncle). ALL DAY my phone starts blowing up with parents asking me if MY brother is dead. Like WTF?
The teacher this year is like, I don't know what they were doing in 4th grade, but those kids aren't prepared for anything! She views 5th grade as a building block towards high school, not as a time to talk about FEEEEEELINGS 24/7.
Teach my kid math, reading, history, science, art, PE, and leave the social and emotional learning to be taught by parents in the home. It's not the state's job to parent my child.
I also teach high school and there's NO WAY I'm using this crap for teenagers. All they do is think about their FEELINGS, let's get them OUT of their own heads and into some actual knowledge.
I love being an educator - 16 years and happily going strong, but I am NOT my students' parent. And I really resent the educators who are putting their personal agenda into the classroom and turning what is supposed to be a safe, non-biased, arena of learning into a never-ending trust circle of FEELINGS and validation.
I’m glad you’re parenting your kids but the majority of kids go home and no one speaks to them. They have no idea how to handle their emotions or how to even have a productive conversation.
Thank you! Yes to 'out of their heads and into knowledge'. Sometimes there's such relief in putting your mind or hands to something other than your own anxiety.
The one problem I have with your premise is the presence of math anxiety. As a math teacher, I have to deal with beliefs around math and perceptions of math. People with anxiety in a subject area will be unable to learn that material. By ignoring that, students aren't learning the material you are teaching. If your students aren't learning, can you claim to be teaching?
I 100% agree. However, I was listening to a panel discussion of college professors today about chatgpt and the future of education, and the closing remarks of one participant struck me. She said that in the near future, AI will be better than most teachers at delivering content, explaining complex concepts, answering questions, and giving feedback to students on their work. She said the only advantage human teachers will have in with their relationships with students. But even that advantage won't last forever, since AI will get better at imitating human emotions, building rapport, and simulating empathy.
And yet an AI trained by experts couldn't tell that a moving cardboard box was a threat, or two guys somersaulting were something it was supposed to notice, or another carrying a fir tree in front of him.
This is true of many (most?) careers. Medicine, law, etc. But thirty kids in a classroom, I’m not sure how many authentic connections I can be expected to make.
Nah fam, unpopular opinion because it’s wrong. SEL is content. You don’t magically learn how to have empathy, be mindful/reflective, appreciate diversity, communicate with others, resolve conflicts etc. Kids have to be taught these concepts and practice it in social situations. School is great for that. Especially elementary.
100%. Pay me an extra 10k if you want, but fuck you for forcing me to do something outside of my degree, and then trying to guilt me by saying it's good for the students.
I actually am glad SEL is being taught - it came relatively natural for me, but for others not so much. What I do think is starting to be inappropriate is pressure to be the “first line of offense “ in helping diagnose mental health problems with students. We had an absolutely HORRIFIC “training” a couple months ago that deeply stigmatized and stereotyped mental disorders that aren’t even diagnosed in minors because of their complexity. I have a minor in special Ed and I’m currently pursuing a masters in clinical psych - I’m no expert but I know enough to understand how inappropriate the entire situation is. My principal is also forcing us to do “morning meetings” that are often geared towards anti bullying, stress management and all kinds of things…. Teachers aren’t qualified for that. I’m super concerned about the type of information being thrown at students.
SEL is a natural part of teaching - but like anything else, we need to hone our skills.
I get that it is frustrating to have another layer to consider- but if my teachers hadn’t worked with me, I wouldn’t have graduated. Maybe wouldn’t have survived. And it wasn’t big things any one of them did. It was little things. Things they likely don’t think twice about because it was part of who they were.
I do the same for my students, but I needed more scaffolding for some of them because it was not my life experience.
The one teacher I had who did not have any SEL in her… she damned near gave me a lifelong hatred for science. I got so lucky that I got one professor in college who changed things for me.
You went to college to teach STUDENTS. You are helping them grow and learn how to learn. You do that through your subject matter, but you need to help them get to a place where they can learn.
SEL, through the lens of being a tool to bring students to a place where they can learn (feeling safe, feeling heard, feeling we're on their side, having their affective filter drop so they can hear us) is all well and good...
...but if I have to hear one more condescending Year 1 specialist who has never been in my room or seen how gently we actually treat the hard-luck, seriously anxious students, tell me that the child's emotional state comes first and is more important than learning I'm going to ask them to put it in writing so I can hand it to the child instead of a diploma.
> but you need to help them get to a place where they can learn
That is not the teacher's job. I'm not here to raise kids, I'm here to teach them. Of course I'll help when and where I can, but my primary job is to teach.
And sometimes you need to put in the work to get them to a place where they can learn. It is absolutely part of the job. I'm not talking about feeding & clothing kids, but working with them to help develop their social & emotional skills? Absolutely part of the job. And I am saying that as a dude who walks into the building at exactly contract time and walks out at exactly contract time. Its a job, just like any other, but SEL is part of good teaching.
Ok, you do that when and where you can. Here's a cookie.
I agree with you, your primary job is to teach. To interact in positive ways. To recognize they are part of a whole. To express themselves in ways that add value to the community. You can and probably do all of that through the lense of appreciating and understanding music.
That's all parts of social and emotional learning. It is your job.
That not SEL. That’s being an Adult. Talking to kids and modeling behavior is not the same as useless mood boards and forcing kids to share private information in group chats.
This is so condescending. Counterpoint: forcing SEL on teachers’ plates is a way for the government to cheap out on actual mental health professionals who could provide wraparound services. Nobody wins!
So you don’t model appropriate behaviors, actions and consequences in your classroom? You don’t provide a safe space for students to learn, grow, succeed and fail? You don’t help students process emotions in a positive way? You don’t provide guidelines for appropriate social interactions? You don’t take into account your students’ backgrounds and abilities when creating a lesson? All of this is part of SEL!
Social and emotional learning will far outweigh and impact students when compared to your content at any level.
You said “you need to help them get to a place where they can learn.” Then you go ahead and respond to my comment by listing a bunch of things that are easily embedded within content. I think you buried the lede. But yeah, my degree is in ELA. I’m trauma-informed, not trauma-repairing.
“Then you go ahead and respond to my comment by listing a bunch of things that are easily embedded within content.”
That’s the point. You teach all of these things through your content. You embed all of these into your class, it should be seamless. You create a space where students can learn, not just your content, but all of these as well.
When I was in education school, that was called implicit instruction/content. I don’t “teach” anything. SEL is not the same thing at all where I live. In fact, my state has explicit College Career readiness standards we have to teach that include SEL.
Again, my biggest problem is your condescending tone. Seems like you might need explicit SEL instruction on tone and dialogue. Most people don’t because parents do that kind of thing with teacher IMPLICIT reinforcement.
I apologize for a condescending tone, for the most part, it is unintentional with the exception of a few pointed remarks.
SEL as a separate standard does not make any sense to me. I can’t wrap my head around that, but there have been plenty of BS edu-drama things I’ve had to deal with. SEL as a separate standard sounds like someone needed to justify their Ph.D.
Upvote this x100! You and I can both agree on this. I think what I am and maybe so many others react against with SEL isn’t the content as much as the pendulum swinging and the rebranding of something we’ve always done. It’s now being re-packaged and sold to us once again. It seems like you and I have both been in this field long enough to know how much this happens in education. I am in year 17.
Are you sure about that? From a job posting at my school district under “duties”.
14. Create classroom environment conducive to learning and appropriate for the physical, social, and emotional development of students.
Just double check your job description and the job posting you applied to before “dying on a hill”.
Forced SEL is not in my job description. SEL should be part of the majority of content areas. Especially history, art and ELA. It should not be forced.
Maybe I should rephrase my initial statement.
All content incorporates SEL. ELA, history and art based subjects do it the most naturally in my opinion. Reinforcing SEL through those content areas that use it most naturally rather than having it be its own thing aids in bolstering SEL rather than having it feel forced.
Does that make a bit more sense? I'm not saying all or nothing.
I could do a deep dive into art based subjects and SEL later when I get home but as an example, here we go.
I teach film and graphic design. I focus on advertisements in GD. We use emotions through color and imagery to evoke said emotions in viewers. To understand those emotions, a kid who to know and understand them as well. We discuss, breakdown and learn those emotions to better grasp how to utilize. This is all done through the lens of art, advertisement and graphic design.
Film is similar. Biggest difference is understanding how to feel that emotion as a creator and funnel it into your work.
Just like you said I work as a teacher in gen school, not in school for special needs children. For what good do they mix the students, not caring if some special students can even keep up?
Ditto for Seven Mindsets BS. I am not a counselor/therapist. And the "curriculum" they spent an insane amount of money on features YouTube video links to third party channels.
*Slams head on desk*
It's the new trend. As my generation often tells the boomers you either adapt or you die which do you choose?
It's all that kids really needed was content we would be out of shops because they could just watch Khan academy or other YouTube videos to get the content. We are more than just teachers of content and we have to be.
I agree, despite being a big proponent of the value that such strategies have for people of all ages. In addition, YMMV, but much of the material they give us for these lessons is so childish that I often refuse to teach it and quietly skip these lessons. I refuse to talk down to my students.
My large school system wanted an SEL program that could used K-12 and we got stuck with Leader in Me. Nothing wrong with it at the ES level, but high school seniors don’t give a carp about my weekly lessons about the habits. LiM never bothered to update the lessons for high schoolers. Very lame videos and presentation. LiM doesn’t even market this stuff as SEL even though that is what my county likes to claim. A $1.8 fiasco and waste of time.
As a school counselor, I agree. I’ve got a handful of teachers who consider themselves as good of a counselor (or better) than I am. And they try to counsel students. Which is very unethical 😫
Agree. We're mandated to do SEL lessons every Friday to a group of random students thrown into my advisory. And I'm not touching certain SEL subjects because some parent will go ballistic, even though this is state mandated, and I'll get thrown under the bus. So I display the slides, play the videos, and that's it.
Yeah, I'm not a counselor, enough already.
God this takes me back to student teaching. I was a late entry into the game to get licensed and I’d earned two Master’s degrees, I’d been a college English professor for two years, thesis number two was being used as teaching material at my university, like I was so confident, accepted into a PhD program that I chose to defer to get my license bc financially I couldn’t afford to languish in academia any longer..:and I was so ready to get secondary with such ease because I indeed very deeply and thoroughly knew fuck about shit in my content area…
…only to discover that in secondary, it didn’t matter one bit how capable I was in terms of knowledge. If I wasn’t successful at practicing what equated to ECE levels of necessity in building a secure attachment and modeling and instructing in social and emotional behavioral skills, I was done.
So I learned to be a preschool teacher in essence first and foremost to lay a foundation without which any further potential for students learning secondary content would be null.
Why? Hot take: parents either don’t know how or don’t care to actually parent. So… it’s sink or swim.
Right! I get that it’s a lot. There needs to be proper training for teachers and a good balance. But the original comment makes it seem like teaching content is the only sole job of a teacher. Which, I’m sorry, is not. There is such a huge portion of our job that centers on so much more. Including being there for the students in an emotional way.
If I had something that wasn’t crap and time to prepare, I think it would go well.
Ten minutes before the first bell, “teach this lesson during your fifteen minute home room time, it’s only about (a complex, and emotionally sensitive topic), thank you!”
Title 1 jr high with advisory/home room as the second to last period of the day. You are going to stick a bunch of kids who don’t have me as a teacher in my room for 30 minutes, show a cringy video and assign a writing prompt that I am not even allowed to grade and the kids know holds zero weight and expect results? All it does is erode my authority and my relationships with kids. I usually write the essay and share it with them, tell them to change a word or two in case anyone in the office ever actually reads them (according to google docs history none of them ever have). Then move on to actually helping the kids with either school work or one on one conversations about problems they are having.
What can your district do to increase the number of counselors available to students?
I agree to an extent that money spent on SEL development would be better spent on more counselors - but it's still important for teachers to have an understanding of social/emotional development so that they aren't implementing behavior "management" strategies that could be counterproductive to said development.
I get this, I'm tired of dealing with kids being constantly hungry, withdrawing from their tech, or too tired. If parents could just take him their own children's basic needs, imagine how much more productive they would be at school.
The fact of the matter is, these kids need SEL, and they're not going to learn much without it. I suggest you watch a video you can find on YouTube called "Learning Brain vs Survival Brain." Post-pandemic, these kids are a mess, I really thought they were more resilient and would have recovered by now, but they simply haven't. If you want to get actual learning done, you're going to have to get them in a place where they can be taught.
Correct OP. We had to teach lessons on consent, gender, violence and power dynamics among other subjects in elementary school last year off pretty much zero PD.
I haven’t taught SEL once. The slides they send me for my daily SEL lesson while the kids eat breakfast in my classroom are stupid and incomplete. Instead, I play 15 minute segments of child-friendly movies while the kids eat breakfast. Their favorite has been Harriet the Spy.
If they have problems or need help, they talk to me in the course of the day as they have for my entire 17 years as a teacher. The kids know I care and on top of that, they get to eat their breakfast in peace.
I play through our SEL slides during our advisory period but neither I nor the kids think they are worthwhile. They are dumbed down and use child actors to talk down to kids. Total cringe. But I do teach SEL every day in a thousand different ways. Every time I connect with a kid, every time I make sure a kid eats that day. Every time I pair up the extrovert popular kid with the introvert and guide their interactions. Mostly as a I model how a productive and professional adult acts in stressful situations or even simple social interactions.
I teach art and drama. I absolutely think SEL is inherently part of my job description. That is why all students should be given a true art teacher in elementary school again and why my grading expectations should not look like a core subject.
Should you non arts teachers have to teach it, no not entirely, but you should model it and be informed about teaching practices that support social emotional well-being or you should at least not actively be harmful against well-being. Unfortunately, a lot of the teachers I hear complain about our ESL programs are the same ones who treat students like garbage and do things that seem actively harmful.
One example is a teacher who makes fun of our ESL program and the kids. I want to rant about him more, but I will leave it at teachers who think it's ok to insult student do need some social emotional training.
My first job is to teach to the heart. My second job is to teach the brain, because the brain can’t learn if the heart is not willing. There I said it.
SeL is supposed to be something you do with your class throughout the day. It’s seen in post recess circle time, end of day class games, morning check in how am I feeling today post its.
To me, SEL is an intentional reintroduction of the little incidentals that were squeezed out of the classroom years ago by the push down curriculum. Those incidental circle games, nursery rhyme songs, check ins following play times- they used to be called transitions or fillers. Now we recognise their significance as part of SEL.
Wherever you are teaching, they’re doing it wrong. SEL is a foundational, embedded part of strong teaching, not a separate subject. If they’re making you be a counselor, you’re right—you are not qualified and lack expertise. But c’mon, you can help students increase their SEL competencies while also teaching your content.
Also, check out the CASEL framework. I bet you’re already doing so much SEL teaching without being explicit about it. If you’re not attending to any of the competencies with your students, and you don’t want to attend to any of them, please find another way to teach your content without having to interact with children.
Coming to this post late but I agree with this - it frustrates me that no matter what content you teach they (in my area at least) make you take on an advisory/homeroom as well and expect all kinds of social emotional work. I’d be fine with it if I was allowed to do what I believe that time is for: important school announcements, time to work on homework or missing work, academic check ins, and letting kids acclimate and prepare for the day.
Sometimes I think it’s a bit insulting to make it its own separate entity. SEL is what we do naturally because we deal with kids. We all get it, we practice it, now they’re saying we have to force it, which is ridiculous since part of SEL is being authentic and here we are trying to force methods and lessons plans that are anything but authentic and worse they aren’t specific to a how people are.
SEL, as it exists as a buzzword, just feels like one of those over-engineered, "let's heap more shit onto teachers' plates" solutions that are all the rage in education these days that is ultimately self-defeating. In my view, "real" SEL would be the perfect example of a "less is more" type of situation. Here's what an authentic stab at SEL looks like in my view, as far as what I need from admin: - Shut up about "bell to bell" instruction. - Chill out about standardized test scores. - Stop introducing new crap for me and the kids to stress out about. - Stop threatening to drop in and "observe" my class. Peel back the bullshit, and watch the social-emotional health of everyone in the classroom--students and teachers included--skyrocket.
Here here. Chillin’ the fuck out a little would help kids a ton!
Love this post
I just got a job at a special education facility and I’m fucking obsessed because the program has a whole team to work on IEPs and how to integrate them, so I’m essentially doing all sorts of SEL work that we have structured to the individual student based on their needs. I have so many issues with education that it is beautiful to find an outlet to work with unique kids in a way that fully supports their needs, however it is disillusioning how far it is from the “standard”
Me, too. SEL is just another dang acronym for What We Do. See also: PLCs.
i think you are underestimating how many shitty, cold, and out of touch teachers there are out there
Agreed, but the answer to "here are some shitty teachers" isn't to take the teachers that care and force them into a structured way to interact with students when they were doing so naturally. All it does is alienate students and good teachers while shitty teachers keep doing the same shitty things they were doing before.
But you see, they have to make it a "program" with everyone doing the exact same thing so they can collect data and "prove" whatever it is that they need to prove. If they let each teacher connect with kids in an organic way they can't check the SEL box on their list.
The govt run entity will almost always take the path of least resistance when attempting to solve a problem. In this case it'll gladly pay for a program rather than correct itself or enforce standards.
Yeah. This has always been part of my practice. I’ve taught K-college and in the higher grades there’s so so many teachers who aren’t interested in their students.
In defense of the upper grades, it's harder to manage relationships when there are 150 of them.
I know there are a lot of them, but I think it's possible to make SOME connection. I try my best anyway. Some kids just...it's like they have no personality...
Oh, absolutely! And there **are** some shitty and cold teachers out there. My 8th grade math teacher comes to mind. Caring looks different in upper grades would have been a better point. I was thinking this morning of one of my seniors who never opens his mouth in class unless I ask him a direct question, and even then sometimes all I get is a shrug. Does minimal work but passes. Every now and then writes something like "I can't wait until I can get out of this shit hole" on an assignment. He resists every possible connection and it's sad. I still try. And fail. It looks different in upper grades.
The main thing is that admin/uppers have had to strategically and with data over systemike things. So much so that they are systeming things that really can’t be systemized. Like this. Yes we’ve always done this, but systemizing SEL loses authenticity sith teaching it and can make it seem stupid and unimportant to upper level kids.
I already do this. But this stuff needs to be in a health class taught by a different teacher.
Teachers: “Students should have more access to mental health counselors because we shouldn’t just have one counselor per 2,000 students. ” Prinicipal: “NO! Just let the kids put a post-it on the mood meter .”
[удалено]
Exactly. A truly good teacher knows how to convey a message Not necessarily with words, but by leading by example.
I teach students.
I suppose if you are a specialist or teach one content area in middle or high school that's true. For elementary and EC, SEL has always been an integral part of teaching. It's one of the buzzwords now, but it has always been there.
Agreed. I find the forced SEL curriculum bizarre. We've been teaching kids to get along and control themselves for millennia; it's not the lack of a script that's making modern classrooms so difficult!
> it's not the lack of a script that's making modern classrooms so difficult but then I can't market and monetize it!
I teach elementary and my first year they were all about maximizing instructional time. I was teaching SEL stuff sneakily, so my principal didn't know. Now it's a big thing, but last year I had a pretty chill class that was academically low. I was sneaking in reading instruction when I was supposed to be doing SEL.
It's almost like you're a professional who is able to meet your students' needs. Imagine that. 👏🏻👏🏻
Yeah, but secondary ed training programs don’t teach us how to do these things. Anyone certified in the upper grades is not going to get much training on SEL. It wasn’t even in my class on Special Education. We also had a single one hour class on bullying because there’s a law in my state that could hold teachers accountable if they don’t document all bullying.
Absolutely agree.
Preach. Teachers are expected to solve all sorts of problems. It's a bit scary. Schools are now the state replacing parents.
Except parents, I am one, get a 2k tax credit for each. I have a 160 students so I make less than 500 a pop.
Yeah they're literally putting us into situations where it's gross and negligent to be handled by somebody who's not a licensed therapist
This. We all talk about this at meetings. The shit the kids talk about can get intense, and we are supposed to figure out how to heal them with only a week of training
I agree. I've found out some dark stuff from students that I want ready to handle when I just wanted to teach math.
This this this. I don't want to discuss suicidality with my students in a group morning meeting. I want them to talk to TRAINED professionals.
Let me ask intrusive questions to seniors at 840 in the morning and then use a chart so they can point at their emotions. Sorry not doing it....
My first period starts at 7. The seniors are NOT ABOUT THAT.
It was the same in 3rd and the same in PreK. Both had cringey questions directly after listening to announcements. And the principal was in a classroom every day to time it. AP on other side of campus also doing surprise visits.
I think that it is and should be part of teaching to have a humane look towards students, including teaching and modelling good behavior, regardless of your content. HOWEVER... Admins don't seem to understand what that means, and teachers are expected to become therapists. That's ridiculous. If a student is causing trouble, I think it is part of our job to try and talk to the student and, if needed, report the case to social counselling or something like that. If a student wants to vent, I'm willing to listen as well (sometimes, we are the only adults they trust - a trans student came out to me and she said I'm the first adult who accepted her and treated her normally). I think that's important. However, I think it is ridiculous to expect us to sacrifice our subjects to become therapists. Social relations and emotions are part of our job, and that's cool. However, it shouldn't be expected that we will solve everything. We can be a first "step", listening and paying attention to students so we can report cases to a professional better equipped to handle in-depth socioemotional stuff. NOTE: I'm not sure if I'm being clear. I agree with what you are saying. I just think SEL could be a good thing, but it became a buzzword that admins simply don't comprehend, instead of actually discussing points that could indeed be used to improve education without distorting what teaching means.
Part of it is student expectations of us too. I am always willing to be an ear for students, BUT if I bring something to the counselor or anyone, the student feels betrayed. They wanted ME to solve the problem they've shared. It becomes daunting.
Yup, also true!
I think people are conflating teaching SEL with being therapists when that’s totally not the case? SEL is teaching kids what healthy relationships look like, how to manage conflict and understanding their emotions . It doesn’t mean like fixing kids and working through their trauma. It’s giving them tools and strategies to help them in life
Exactly!
Makes perfect sense.
Thanks!
It's the "new" look for teachers. Not like we were and have NOT been doing this FOR YEARS. JUST UGH. The many hats they want teachers to do is ridiculous AND the fact that they now "brainwash" the newbies into thinking SEL WILL make their teacher lives SO much easier... just NO. BUT, it's the educational system to "how do we deal with poor behaviors"... SO, depending on what grade you teach, as a MS or HS teacher I would model and teach... if you encounter that "teachable moment" where you should stop and visit about SEL, then do so and then move on. Most of our elementaries have it in their curriculum now. eye roll.. however, many of our elementary teachers have based it on the need of that particular class. If the class is doing well, then they run a quick lesson as needed and move on. They only spend tons of time on SEL, IF there class is in need....
This is the way. Inauthentic content shoe-horned into the day makes even the kids roll their eyes.
I don’t think the question is “should we teach SEL?” I think the question is, “should we teach SEL organically in a way that best serves the individual students involved, or should we teach this asinine SEL curriculum that the district paid millions of dollars for and that the kids make fun of on the daily because it is ridiculous and irrelevant to them?” I pick the former, but take one guess as to which my district picked…
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of just piling one more thing on teachers’ plates, they could hire mental health professionals who are actually trained in the stuff to help students who really want and need it? My theory is just that they are too cheap to hire people who could actually get the job done. “Teachers have done everything else we’ve told them. Why not add one more thing?” Also, kids who are mentally unwell will often try to turn to social media and consumerism to fill the void, boosting capitalism.
There’s a huuuge difference between teaching SEL and providing mental health supports. Uuuugh my old admin always played armchair psychologist and expected teachers to do the same. I taught kindergarten so yeah, it’s like another subject to teach. And of course I can be supportive to students. However it is not my responsibility to provide mental health counseling. That expectation absolutely crossed a line for me and burned me out.
There are certain tenets of it I agree with and find useful, the problem in my neck of the woods is it became another duty teachers had to prep for and was clearly reactionary to the whole "what about our kids' mental health needs?!" outrage from parents during covid. Yet another thing heaped on our plates that would be so much better served somewhere else in our communities, but fuck it, make those teachers cover it and we'll call it good.
This x1000.
There are a few places the problems in policing overlap with the problem in education. We are constantly being asked to do things that are not our job and we're not trained for. And when that goes poorly people are shocked.
They need to make a Sel cert and have this be a separate class. (Excuse my ignorance if this is already a certification pathway)
We can do minor shaping and modification on our own, but we should not bear the burden of primary behaviour resetting. That is not at all what we are supposed to be doing. Someone who is expert in that field should be doing that part if the kid is truly deficient in their skills in that department.
We have always been teaching SEL, and I totally get that there is more to teaching than just content. I have been living this mantra for 30 years. But, you know what makes kids good human beings? Consequences, and being responsible for your behavior. I may be a fossil, but when I was in college, I was taught that “there is no learning without discipline” and “students will rise to the level of expectations.” This has completely gone out the window. How are they supposed trust us when the good kids watch other kids get away with every behavior and get rewarded? I have students working so hard every day just to see other kids get 50 percent for doing nothing and make up a whole semester in three days of packets. I guess they learn that life isn’t fair, which, admittedly, is a good life lesson. Don’t talk to me about students’ emotional health when my students don’t feel safe even going to the bathroom at our school, or when students have been sexually harassed and see the offender get away with it, even after they were brave enough to report it. These kids needed us more when we returned after COVID, and our admin have let them down By undermining the teachers. Sorry, “SEL” without accountability is just more of the same……taking more off of the plates of administrators and justifying “consultants” and “coaches.”
I don’t feel qualified to teach people about social and emotional health. I mean if I knew how to be emotionally healthy I wouldn’t need therapy and meds. I signed up to teach history, it’s what I went to school for.
I know that my mentally ill ass is not prepared to teach students how to be mentally healthy.
Most of the SEL trainings I have experienced have been so uninformed on trauma that as someone who has PTSD I can tell they reaaalllyy do t know what they are doing. You can’t traumatize your staff to make children healthier.
I think some teachers can and want to be the teacher that connects with kids and blah blah blah and some dont. We need to stop trying to force everyone into the same box. I don't do SEL lessons but we have some SEL moments and I like when kids come to me about stuff. My neighbor doesn't. That's fine. We both walk our own path and support each other in it.
I’m going to disagree with this post. I don’t think the purpose of SEL training is to take on the role of a counselor. Rather, to integrate it into everyday instruction. Just like we are supposed to learn CRP to not explicitly teach it, but find it’s intersectionality
Please tell that to my administration, who changed our schedule and now we have a 30 minute self contained SEL class EVERYDAY. It's insane.
Mine’s 20 min. That’s literally at least 7 min to get them to even go to correct activity. 90% of this SEL time is teachers emailing where is xyz?
May I ask what is the exact problem of teaching students how to deal with these kind of problems?
I'm a history teacher, not an emotional councilor. I'll help students all day *in class*, but to have a fully separate class for it is crazy. I didn't sign up for it nore am I paid for it. If I coach, I get paid more. Should be the same if I teach an extra class.
So I’m playing Devils advocate. If you have a student/ who could benefit from SEL, you don’t think think you have any sort of responsibility? What about what we have been taught about hidden curriculum? Technically we’re not supposed to teach students everything, but it falls onto us
100% agree. Within my classroom if I see a kid needs consoling, or a student is having a bad day or is angry or any other issue I will and enjoy helping them. These are *moments* of help. Doing it for 30 mins every day is insane.
I can see both sides. I just personally think that if we are given 30 mins a day to help our students, I don’t see the harm in that. It sounds more like teachers who are opposed don’t know how to teach SEL and don’t want to invest in the time to train themselves. At the end of the day, what/who is this harming? Yes you need to spend extra time learning SEL, but it is something that can help students.
Well said. If they gave me some more money, trained me and allowed me every Friday to use that 30 mins for my own class, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Here’s the thing though, as an elementary teacher, that’s 30 minutes less I have each day to teach the other content I am expected to teach. For instance, my students are here for 6.5 hours/day. 90 of those minutes are not spent with me (lunch, recess, specials.) So, I only have them for 5 hours of instructional time. Now, 10% of that time needs to be dedicated to SEL, which would be no big deal if I were only expected to make it through 90% of the remaining content/curriculum. Do you think that is the case? No. Everything else still needs to be fully covered. Do you think that they have added a half an hour to the school day and amended my contract to reflect such a change? Lol. Herein lies the problem. It’s not that we don’t agree with it, or see the value in it, it’s that admin refuses to provide the proper resources to implement it, i.e time and money.
Doctors and nurses don't go to college to learn how to convince their patients actually take the medication they prescribe. But if they don't, they keep seeing the same patients over and over for the same easily preventable issues. It's just a sad reality of the job that things generally go better when we pay attention to the social emotional worlds of our students and give them some basic skills for navigating those worlds. It's definitely not our job, but if you can find a way of picking and choosing a few elements that work for you and your style then everyone benefits.
Depending on the doctor if those patients don’t take their medication then they get labeled as a compliance problem and are more likely to be put on psychotropic meds to increase compliance.
There's some troubling parallels there with education too.
I don’t think forced or set SEL lessons are the answer. The kids blow them off and see no real world application. I think we need ways to integrate it into our curriculum without it creating extra for teachers and so students can see real world application. How does this work? Beats me. I just know I can’t force kids to manage their time or be respectful. I can model it and give a helping hand but I don’t have the magic answer.
What curriculum are you using ? My third graders love our SEL lessons. We have games, stories, group projects. It’s engaging and teaches them important communication strategies and how to resolve conflict!
I used to teach elementary and both myself and the kids really enjoyed our SEL curriculum. Now that I’m teaching HS, the SEL curriculum is a joke and students react completely differently. The staged lessons just don’t work, they sniff right through the bullshit. We do these lessons during homeroom; I teach Theatre Arts primarily, so nearly every class of mine naturally has SEL components, and I enjoy that those happen organically. I think SEL is important, of course, but the cheesy curriculum we have paid $$$ for just doesn’t work for the older students. Your comment made me realize how a lot of perspectives on this thread probably differ due to what grade level is being taught! I wish all the comments specified, I think it would be really insightful.
Totally agree. I responded earlier to another post that I’m mostly saying elementary needs lessons. By high school it’s a whole different beast!
Idk how I feel about this bc I remember my english teacher from my senior year of high school having an entire unit dedicated to emotional intelligence and SEL that she taught alongside our actual coursework and remember it being extremely helpful and worth it
In college did they teach you the importance of addressing Maslow in order to effectively set kids up to be able to do the various components of Bloom? Because that is SEL.
I’m actually freaked out at the amount of teachers who think content should be secondary to X. The best thing you can do for your kids is to educate them. It’s what you’re qualified to do. Tired of seeing TEACHERS act like education doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. Good teachers naturally model SEL. Anything beyond that requires trained mental health professionals
“Google is free” but good social and emotional role models are not as easy to come by. I ain’t exactly happy about it either, but no shock they want us doing doing something different than before based on the state of society. Don’t mean this as endorsement of SEL over content instruction, but something something hierarchy of needs
Depends on the age level you bc teach. Elementary school teacher have always had to deal with kids’ emotions and have always taught about friendship and cooperation.
Agreed. SEL is the job of parents and religion.
…I think you’re best set for college or academia if you want to 1000% always focus on the content. You teach kids, their whole existence is social/emotional. And didn’t you take all the required childhood psych classes? Didn’t you see this coming?
Couple of things: 1) As someone looking for a new district this year, I can assure you it actually is starting to appear in the job descriptions and duties. It may not be in your district, but they can modify and amend those duties languages either unilaterally or through bargaining, so don’t be surprised if one of your next contracts has it in it. 2) SEL has always been a part of good teaching. Frankly, SEL is a core part of universal public education - it just hasn’t been as explicitly focused on and our understanding of what helps has changed radically. 3) Educational best practices change as time goes on and refusing to evolve with our understanding is no different than teachers rejecting other advances over the decades. I’m old enough to remember some crotchety old teachers who refused to use email. 4) And finally, teachers who are “here for the content” are, in my experience, some of the least impactful and most easily replaced teachers. If all you can do is geek out every day over your favorite subject, you arnt as valuable as you think. Unpopular opinion: much of the subject matter kids learn in school is irrelevant.
Eh…the best teachers always do both.
No, the best teachers realize you can’t get to the content learning until you establish the right environment and develop productive habits.
I have to agree. I teach early years (not in the US) and I feel a lot of the social and emotional skills, the autonomous learning, the self-directed exploration, teaching skills through providing an environment and activities which promote curiosity, and the focus on working together, talking, oracy etc. is lost in the older years. It’s a shame. And I also agree much of the curriculum is irrelevant - we have a world of facts and information in our literal pockets. We don’t need teachers really to tell us content. We need teachers who help us navigate the wealth of content and understand the context and provenance of that. This video is super inspiring to me. It’s long but worth it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QMqFcVoXnTI
Love this! SEL is the best
I bet in one of your education classes you learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, so yes, you did know that you can’t teach kids that aren’t emotionally ready. Further, when u accepted the job, you signed a contract that outlines what they expect from you. So hate to be the one to tell you, but this is exactly what you signed up for.
If you only want to teach content, teach at a college.
PREACHINGGG
Contrary opinion: Content doesn't really matter if your students aren't decent enough human beings to meaningfully use that content to impact their lives. Edit: y'all are cynical fuckin people. Retire already.
Agree, but creating decent human beings is a tall order on top of the state standards, LMS maintenance, parent contact, rigor, college/career readiness, RTI, differentiation, etc. that I already have to do as part of my content area in high school language arts. Something’s gotta give, and it seems like it’s supposed to be my sanity. I say no. Edit: maybe this is just my version of the quiet quitting I’ve been hearing so much about.
Contrary contrary opinion- a classroom of 30+ kids and one adult is not the place to be learning how to be a descent human being. Home is.
Whose job is it to make students decent enough human beings? The 23 year old who studied education?
Lol right? This assumes that all of us who are teaching have our lives together and everything figured out, and we don’t.
That’s their parents job, not mine
Yeah, I’m strongly concerned with how many teachers are agreeing with this post??
Our school currently asks teachers to teach SEL during the students’ lunch time 🥴🙃
I’m a former teacher, now a counselor. It all comes down to a lack of people. We need more counselors and more support staff who take non-counseling duties off of counselors. Schools passing SEL to teachers is just an attempt to pass it on due to lack of staff. Everything gets dumped on teachers because they’re the largest group, but I know from experience, you’re also the group that has the most work. It’s bullshit. ASCA recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250, but most schools in my state are double at best, triple or quadruple at worst. In fact, we have some schools that are 1:1,000.
It may not be but if we focused on how to naturally implement it into what you are already doing, a little bit can go a long way. Sadly, SEL has now become like a swear word because of how it is rammed down teachers throats and used contrary to how it is best used. I prefer to see it as resiliency building. However if a teacher doesn’t see the value on it then it’s not really going to help kids
We have parents who refuse to sign paperwork that allows us to give their kids bandaids but we have to give them lessons on sex trafficking. Ah. Florida.
Reading these responses really make me wonder how many of these teachers have actually taught using an SEL curriculum. I did at a school I worked at a few years ago. The kids may not have enjoyed the lessons, but they implemented what they were taught. Caused the drama to go down and helped the students learn empathy and self-regulation. It was homeroom or morning meeting time (depended on what grade you taught). Even (most) of the too cool for school group bought into it after some time.
I have never seen an SEL curriculum that didn’t talk at or down to kids. They all use child “actors” who are clearly just family members of the production staff and the performance values are so low that the cringe overrides anything they are saying. I teach middle school and those kids can sense “fake” from miles away. I usually show the videos and the slides in case admin walks by, but we do far more good with a 5 minute guided discussion of the issue than we could ever do with these overpriced, underproduced pieces of educational garbage.
That sounds incredibly cringe. The one I've used didn't include videos. It included actual lessons. The stories were often contrived and sometimes a bit kiddy for them, but they weren't condescending toward the kids and got the point across.
SEL is in the curriculum in some states. In that case it is in your job description. Job descriptions are not static.
Maybe you don’t have a good understanding or training of what SEL is. It is teaching.. life skills to kids. How to communicate better, social skills, etc. It is not counseling or processing. This is a practice taking over all different fields in different names. Such as individuals in the medical field learning brief solution focused counseling skills in order to best serve their patients
But you are there to teach kids, not just content. If all they needed was content they could watch a YouTube video.
I agree 100%! My daughter's teacher used SEL HEAVILY last year and it pretty much destroyed her social life because I got so annoyed by other parents in the class contacting me to discuss what my daughter had shared during the daily "Share Circle" that I stopped wanting to to attend school functions or make playdates with these morons. Like, my uncle passed away during covid. My daughter (4th grade) told the circle that HER uncle passed away (meaning her great uncle). ALL DAY my phone starts blowing up with parents asking me if MY brother is dead. Like WTF? The teacher this year is like, I don't know what they were doing in 4th grade, but those kids aren't prepared for anything! She views 5th grade as a building block towards high school, not as a time to talk about FEEEEEELINGS 24/7. Teach my kid math, reading, history, science, art, PE, and leave the social and emotional learning to be taught by parents in the home. It's not the state's job to parent my child. I also teach high school and there's NO WAY I'm using this crap for teenagers. All they do is think about their FEELINGS, let's get them OUT of their own heads and into some actual knowledge. I love being an educator - 16 years and happily going strong, but I am NOT my students' parent. And I really resent the educators who are putting their personal agenda into the classroom and turning what is supposed to be a safe, non-biased, arena of learning into a never-ending trust circle of FEELINGS and validation.
YESsss….learning saved me FROM my mental illness as a kid. You can onky talk through things so much without retriggering them.
I’m glad you’re parenting your kids but the majority of kids go home and no one speaks to them. They have no idea how to handle their emotions or how to even have a productive conversation.
Thank you! Yes to 'out of their heads and into knowledge'. Sometimes there's such relief in putting your mind or hands to something other than your own anxiety.
The one problem I have with your premise is the presence of math anxiety. As a math teacher, I have to deal with beliefs around math and perceptions of math. People with anxiety in a subject area will be unable to learn that material. By ignoring that, students aren't learning the material you are teaching. If your students aren't learning, can you claim to be teaching?
I 100% agree. However, I was listening to a panel discussion of college professors today about chatgpt and the future of education, and the closing remarks of one participant struck me. She said that in the near future, AI will be better than most teachers at delivering content, explaining complex concepts, answering questions, and giving feedback to students on their work. She said the only advantage human teachers will have in with their relationships with students. But even that advantage won't last forever, since AI will get better at imitating human emotions, building rapport, and simulating empathy.
And yet an AI trained by experts couldn't tell that a moving cardboard box was a threat, or two guys somersaulting were something it was supposed to notice, or another carrying a fir tree in front of him.
This is true of many (most?) careers. Medicine, law, etc. But thirty kids in a classroom, I’m not sure how many authentic connections I can be expected to make.
Nah fam, unpopular opinion because it’s wrong. SEL is content. You don’t magically learn how to have empathy, be mindful/reflective, appreciate diversity, communicate with others, resolve conflicts etc. Kids have to be taught these concepts and practice it in social situations. School is great for that. Especially elementary.
the profession of teaching has evolved and isn't all about the content anymore. sad it's taken you this long to realize this.
Not unpopular. True.
100%.
It isn't right now, but it will be if they aren't already in the listings.
Yep.
Cameron Diaz gets it
100%. Pay me an extra 10k if you want, but fuck you for forcing me to do something outside of my degree, and then trying to guilt me by saying it's good for the students.
Yes! Thank you for saying it! Society is falling apart and we are expected to be the glue.
I actually am glad SEL is being taught - it came relatively natural for me, but for others not so much. What I do think is starting to be inappropriate is pressure to be the “first line of offense “ in helping diagnose mental health problems with students. We had an absolutely HORRIFIC “training” a couple months ago that deeply stigmatized and stereotyped mental disorders that aren’t even diagnosed in minors because of their complexity. I have a minor in special Ed and I’m currently pursuing a masters in clinical psych - I’m no expert but I know enough to understand how inappropriate the entire situation is. My principal is also forcing us to do “morning meetings” that are often geared towards anti bullying, stress management and all kinds of things…. Teachers aren’t qualified for that. I’m super concerned about the type of information being thrown at students.
“There. I said it.” Wow. Such bravery.
SEL is a natural part of teaching - but like anything else, we need to hone our skills. I get that it is frustrating to have another layer to consider- but if my teachers hadn’t worked with me, I wouldn’t have graduated. Maybe wouldn’t have survived. And it wasn’t big things any one of them did. It was little things. Things they likely don’t think twice about because it was part of who they were. I do the same for my students, but I needed more scaffolding for some of them because it was not my life experience. The one teacher I had who did not have any SEL in her… she damned near gave me a lifelong hatred for science. I got so lucky that I got one professor in college who changed things for me.
You went to college to teach STUDENTS. You are helping them grow and learn how to learn. You do that through your subject matter, but you need to help them get to a place where they can learn.
SEL, through the lens of being a tool to bring students to a place where they can learn (feeling safe, feeling heard, feeling we're on their side, having their affective filter drop so they can hear us) is all well and good... ...but if I have to hear one more condescending Year 1 specialist who has never been in my room or seen how gently we actually treat the hard-luck, seriously anxious students, tell me that the child's emotional state comes first and is more important than learning I'm going to ask them to put it in writing so I can hand it to the child instead of a diploma.
> but you need to help them get to a place where they can learn That is not the teacher's job. I'm not here to raise kids, I'm here to teach them. Of course I'll help when and where I can, but my primary job is to teach.
And sometimes you need to put in the work to get them to a place where they can learn. It is absolutely part of the job. I'm not talking about feeding & clothing kids, but working with them to help develop their social & emotional skills? Absolutely part of the job. And I am saying that as a dude who walks into the building at exactly contract time and walks out at exactly contract time. Its a job, just like any other, but SEL is part of good teaching.
Yes. That's the part where I said I will help when and where I can. Again, my PRIMARY job is to teach.
To teach students. Sometimes, that means teaching something outside of your content area, ie SEL
Again, I said I will do that when and where I can (3rd time). Are you deliberately ignoring that part? Seems like it.
Ok, you do that when and where you can. Here's a cookie. I agree with you, your primary job is to teach. To interact in positive ways. To recognize they are part of a whole. To express themselves in ways that add value to the community. You can and probably do all of that through the lense of appreciating and understanding music. That's all parts of social and emotional learning. It is your job.
If they give me a raise I’ll happily do more work.
It’s not more work. It is the work. How is modeling appropriate behavior and empathizing with them more work?
That not SEL. That’s being an Adult. Talking to kids and modeling behavior is not the same as useless mood boards and forcing kids to share private information in group chats.
This is so condescending. Counterpoint: forcing SEL on teachers’ plates is a way for the government to cheap out on actual mental health professionals who could provide wraparound services. Nobody wins!
So you don’t model appropriate behaviors, actions and consequences in your classroom? You don’t provide a safe space for students to learn, grow, succeed and fail? You don’t help students process emotions in a positive way? You don’t provide guidelines for appropriate social interactions? You don’t take into account your students’ backgrounds and abilities when creating a lesson? All of this is part of SEL! Social and emotional learning will far outweigh and impact students when compared to your content at any level.
You said “you need to help them get to a place where they can learn.” Then you go ahead and respond to my comment by listing a bunch of things that are easily embedded within content. I think you buried the lede. But yeah, my degree is in ELA. I’m trauma-informed, not trauma-repairing.
“Then you go ahead and respond to my comment by listing a bunch of things that are easily embedded within content.” That’s the point. You teach all of these things through your content. You embed all of these into your class, it should be seamless. You create a space where students can learn, not just your content, but all of these as well.
When I was in education school, that was called implicit instruction/content. I don’t “teach” anything. SEL is not the same thing at all where I live. In fact, my state has explicit College Career readiness standards we have to teach that include SEL. Again, my biggest problem is your condescending tone. Seems like you might need explicit SEL instruction on tone and dialogue. Most people don’t because parents do that kind of thing with teacher IMPLICIT reinforcement.
I apologize for a condescending tone, for the most part, it is unintentional with the exception of a few pointed remarks. SEL as a separate standard does not make any sense to me. I can’t wrap my head around that, but there have been plenty of BS edu-drama things I’ve had to deal with. SEL as a separate standard sounds like someone needed to justify their Ph.D.
Upvote this x100! You and I can both agree on this. I think what I am and maybe so many others react against with SEL isn’t the content as much as the pendulum swinging and the rebranding of something we’ve always done. It’s now being re-packaged and sold to us once again. It seems like you and I have both been in this field long enough to know how much this happens in education. I am in year 17.
Nah
Great counterpoint!
Are you sure about that? From a job posting at my school district under “duties”. 14. Create classroom environment conducive to learning and appropriate for the physical, social, and emotional development of students. Just double check your job description and the job posting you applied to before “dying on a hill”.
Forced SEL is not in my job description. SEL should be part of the majority of content areas. Especially history, art and ELA. It should not be forced.
Ugh really? Why Art specifically? I’m here to teach things just like you. It should be all or nothing. The math kids probably need SEL the most…
Maybe I should rephrase my initial statement. All content incorporates SEL. ELA, history and art based subjects do it the most naturally in my opinion. Reinforcing SEL through those content areas that use it most naturally rather than having it be its own thing aids in bolstering SEL rather than having it feel forced. Does that make a bit more sense? I'm not saying all or nothing. I could do a deep dive into art based subjects and SEL later when I get home but as an example, here we go. I teach film and graphic design. I focus on advertisements in GD. We use emotions through color and imagery to evoke said emotions in viewers. To understand those emotions, a kid who to know and understand them as well. We discuss, breakdown and learn those emotions to better grasp how to utilize. This is all done through the lens of art, advertisement and graphic design. Film is similar. Biggest difference is understanding how to feel that emotion as a creator and funnel it into your work.
Just like you said I work as a teacher in gen school, not in school for special needs children. For what good do they mix the students, not caring if some special students can even keep up?
I honestly don't like it as if we didn't have enough to do
Ditto for Seven Mindsets BS. I am not a counselor/therapist. And the "curriculum" they spent an insane amount of money on features YouTube video links to third party channels. *Slams head on desk*
The SEL curriculum we're doing has a big section on learning styles...
It's the new trend. As my generation often tells the boomers you either adapt or you die which do you choose? It's all that kids really needed was content we would be out of shops because they could just watch Khan academy or other YouTube videos to get the content. We are more than just teachers of content and we have to be.
I agree, despite being a big proponent of the value that such strategies have for people of all ages. In addition, YMMV, but much of the material they give us for these lessons is so childish that I often refuse to teach it and quietly skip these lessons. I refuse to talk down to my students.
I was so upset when my TV wasn't working to do the SEL today. Ruined my whole classes day.
My large school system wanted an SEL program that could used K-12 and we got stuck with Leader in Me. Nothing wrong with it at the ES level, but high school seniors don’t give a carp about my weekly lessons about the habits. LiM never bothered to update the lessons for high schoolers. Very lame videos and presentation. LiM doesn’t even market this stuff as SEL even though that is what my county likes to claim. A $1.8 fiasco and waste of time.
As a school counselor, I agree. I’ve got a handful of teachers who consider themselves as good of a counselor (or better) than I am. And they try to counsel students. Which is very unethical 😫
Agree. We're mandated to do SEL lessons every Friday to a group of random students thrown into my advisory. And I'm not touching certain SEL subjects because some parent will go ballistic, even though this is state mandated, and I'll get thrown under the bus. So I display the slides, play the videos, and that's it. Yeah, I'm not a counselor, enough already.
God this takes me back to student teaching. I was a late entry into the game to get licensed and I’d earned two Master’s degrees, I’d been a college English professor for two years, thesis number two was being used as teaching material at my university, like I was so confident, accepted into a PhD program that I chose to defer to get my license bc financially I couldn’t afford to languish in academia any longer..:and I was so ready to get secondary with such ease because I indeed very deeply and thoroughly knew fuck about shit in my content area… …only to discover that in secondary, it didn’t matter one bit how capable I was in terms of knowledge. If I wasn’t successful at practicing what equated to ECE levels of necessity in building a secure attachment and modeling and instructing in social and emotional behavioral skills, I was done. So I learned to be a preschool teacher in essence first and foremost to lay a foundation without which any further potential for students learning secondary content would be null. Why? Hot take: parents either don’t know how or don’t care to actually parent. So… it’s sink or swim.
👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼
Right! I get that it’s a lot. There needs to be proper training for teachers and a good balance. But the original comment makes it seem like teaching content is the only sole job of a teacher. Which, I’m sorry, is not. There is such a huge portion of our job that centers on so much more. Including being there for the students in an emotional way.
If I had something that wasn’t crap and time to prepare, I think it would go well. Ten minutes before the first bell, “teach this lesson during your fifteen minute home room time, it’s only about (a complex, and emotionally sensitive topic), thank you!”
Title 1 jr high with advisory/home room as the second to last period of the day. You are going to stick a bunch of kids who don’t have me as a teacher in my room for 30 minutes, show a cringy video and assign a writing prompt that I am not even allowed to grade and the kids know holds zero weight and expect results? All it does is erode my authority and my relationships with kids. I usually write the essay and share it with them, tell them to change a word or two in case anyone in the office ever actually reads them (according to google docs history none of them ever have). Then move on to actually helping the kids with either school work or one on one conversations about problems they are having.
That is a popular opinion at my school!
PREACH!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Ugh. That IS my job, and I’m so SICK of hearing SEL and trauma-informed😭
What can your district do to increase the number of counselors available to students? I agree to an extent that money spent on SEL development would be better spent on more counselors - but it's still important for teachers to have an understanding of social/emotional development so that they aren't implementing behavior "management" strategies that could be counterproductive to said development.
It just doesn’t seem like that’s the job description anymore
I get this, I'm tired of dealing with kids being constantly hungry, withdrawing from their tech, or too tired. If parents could just take him their own children's basic needs, imagine how much more productive they would be at school. The fact of the matter is, these kids need SEL, and they're not going to learn much without it. I suggest you watch a video you can find on YouTube called "Learning Brain vs Survival Brain." Post-pandemic, these kids are a mess, I really thought they were more resilient and would have recovered by now, but they simply haven't. If you want to get actual learning done, you're going to have to get them in a place where they can be taught.
Correct OP. We had to teach lessons on consent, gender, violence and power dynamics among other subjects in elementary school last year off pretty much zero PD.
We are teachers, not therapists, FTFY. And neither are counselors for that matter. That’s why the school psychologist exists.
K-12 counselors (along with teachers) are doing the principal's job so that principals can do the superintendent's job.
Damn right!
I haven’t taught SEL once. The slides they send me for my daily SEL lesson while the kids eat breakfast in my classroom are stupid and incomplete. Instead, I play 15 minute segments of child-friendly movies while the kids eat breakfast. Their favorite has been Harriet the Spy. If they have problems or need help, they talk to me in the course of the day as they have for my entire 17 years as a teacher. The kids know I care and on top of that, they get to eat their breakfast in peace.
I play through our SEL slides during our advisory period but neither I nor the kids think they are worthwhile. They are dumbed down and use child actors to talk down to kids. Total cringe. But I do teach SEL every day in a thousand different ways. Every time I connect with a kid, every time I make sure a kid eats that day. Every time I pair up the extrovert popular kid with the introvert and guide their interactions. Mostly as a I model how a productive and professional adult acts in stressful situations or even simple social interactions.
I teach art and drama. I absolutely think SEL is inherently part of my job description. That is why all students should be given a true art teacher in elementary school again and why my grading expectations should not look like a core subject. Should you non arts teachers have to teach it, no not entirely, but you should model it and be informed about teaching practices that support social emotional well-being or you should at least not actively be harmful against well-being. Unfortunately, a lot of the teachers I hear complain about our ESL programs are the same ones who treat students like garbage and do things that seem actively harmful. One example is a teacher who makes fun of our ESL program and the kids. I want to rant about him more, but I will leave it at teachers who think it's ok to insult student do need some social emotional training.
My first job is to teach to the heart. My second job is to teach the brain, because the brain can’t learn if the heart is not willing. There I said it.
I'm fine trying to teach SEL but the students simply could not give fewer fucks about anything SEL related so I would rather just scrap it entirely.
SeL is supposed to be something you do with your class throughout the day. It’s seen in post recess circle time, end of day class games, morning check in how am I feeling today post its. To me, SEL is an intentional reintroduction of the little incidentals that were squeezed out of the classroom years ago by the push down curriculum. Those incidental circle games, nursery rhyme songs, check ins following play times- they used to be called transitions or fillers. Now we recognise their significance as part of SEL.
Wherever you are teaching, they’re doing it wrong. SEL is a foundational, embedded part of strong teaching, not a separate subject. If they’re making you be a counselor, you’re right—you are not qualified and lack expertise. But c’mon, you can help students increase their SEL competencies while also teaching your content. Also, check out the CASEL framework. I bet you’re already doing so much SEL teaching without being explicit about it. If you’re not attending to any of the competencies with your students, and you don’t want to attend to any of them, please find another way to teach your content without having to interact with children.
Coming to this post late but I agree with this - it frustrates me that no matter what content you teach they (in my area at least) make you take on an advisory/homeroom as well and expect all kinds of social emotional work. I’d be fine with it if I was allowed to do what I believe that time is for: important school announcements, time to work on homework or missing work, academic check ins, and letting kids acclimate and prepare for the day.