The 5 Pillars of Social Emotional Learning [episode 4]

I hope today’s episode finds you well. I hope you’re staying healthy taking care of yourself and staying hydrated. I’m actually sitting here with my stainless steel tumbler ice cold. One of our members in our Wife Teacher Mommy Club Facebook group mentioned that she was surprised that I kept her drink ice cold all day long. And it really does. This is why I cannot go a day without having one on me. I feel like water being ice cold makes it actually tastes better. I mean, they say water doesn’t have a taste. But I feel like it really does when you use a tumbler. So that reminded me that I wanted to remind you that our podcast launch giveaway winner will get one of these amazing stainless steel tumblers in the mail along with the year of the club. So we send these tumblers to every member who joins us for a year up front. It’s kind of like a thank you for being a loyal member. It’s adorable with our Wife Teacher Mommy logo on it. And since our winner is getting a year of the club, but they’ll get the tumbler too along with all the resources in our shop worth over $4,000, our new teacher geared life coaching program, which you may even be able to earn PD credits for, and so many other perks. So if you missed in my previous episodes, we are giving away an entire year of Wife Teacher Mommy Club to a listener who leaves a review on Apple podcasts. So to enter, be sure to email us a screenshot of your review since we can’t really tell just from your username, who you are or how to contact you. So make sure to email us the screenshot at hello@wifeteachermommy.com or DM on Instagram @wifeteachermommy with a screenshot of your review. So we can make sure that you get counted. And if you don’t use Apple podcasts, you can just write your review directly in an email or DM and we’ll get you entered that way. We don’t want to disqualify people who don’t use Apple products. So that’s totally fine. Make sure you get your entry submitted though by April 1, that is the deadline for the giveaway. And I don’t know that we’ll be doing this prize again. It’s such a huge prize. We’re just so excited about this podcast. It’s kind of a huge deal. But I don’t know that we’ll be doing anything this big other than the event soon. So make sure to get your entry in. Okay, so now that you’ve had your final reminder about the giveaway, I will not be mentioning again so do not forget.

Let’s get to today’s episode. So today I’m going to teach you about the five pillars of social emotional learning and ideas on how you can teach them to your students or to your own children. So first, what is social emotional learning? Well, social emotional learning, often abbreviated as SEL helps our students understand and deal with their emotions positive and negative. And it’s really important to make time for social emotional learning. It is just as important if not more important than any core subject, because think about it. For students to truly be successful and have a great life, what’s even more important is knowing how to communicate with others, handle situations as they come up, setting goals, etc. We have all probably known someone in the workplace who had all the book smarts for the job, but maybe not the social skills required. Or sometimes that someone is us no shame here. That’s what life coaching is for. I’m super excited that we’ve added the coaching in the club at no extra cost for our members and I will link to that in the show notes. But really, we want to help our students not get to that place in the first place.

Social emotional learning can be divided into five pillars. These five pillars or core competencies are one self awareness. So this is where students are focused in really to recognize emotions, and how these emotions affect their view of themselves and others. Number two self management by understanding emotions and how they affect themselves and others, students can make their own goals to work towards. Number three making responsible decisions. Students can use past experiences and what they know about emotional responses to make responsible decisions affecting themselves and others. Relationship skills using emotional awareness of themselves and others as well as empathy for other people situations, students can build relationships with others, based on open communication. And number five social awareness, the ability to gain empathy and to understand ideas and emotions from another person’s perspective, especially those of another culture or background.

So again, the five pillars are self awareness, self management, making responsible decisions, relationship skills, and social awareness. So now let’s dive a little bit into each one, I’m going to tell you an idea for upper grades and lower grades as well as a read aloud. So you can know how to teach each pillar in your classroom or homeschool if you are a parent.

So number one is self awareness. We’re really wanting to help kids understand their emotions, thoughts, feelings, values, and how all those affect your behavior and results in their lives. Now, when you think about it, that’s really a lot. It’s something that they’ll continue practicing their whole lives just like we do, but we can help our students start to become self aware. So for a lower grade activity, one great thing to do is to have them brainstorm and identify four reasons why it’s important to be honest. And for upper grades, we can have them do an activity where they get to share with a partner, all the personal attributes that make them unique. And I think this could also work well for lower grades too. And then a read aloud that my team and I really liked for this topic is called I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont.

Okay, now let’s dive into self management. And this is really kind of the next step to the self awareness. So kids are able to take that awareness and then put it into action to manage themselves. So this can help them create goals to work towards and manage the emotions and feelings they’re feeling on a day to day basis. And really managing our emotions and feelings is something that many of us as adults are currently working on. But the value of teaching our kids this now, so they can get started using those skills is really unmeasurable. So for lower grades, you can have them brainstorm emotions, and then identify appropriate behaviors and actions for when they feel that way. So when they’re feeling angry at their sibling, is it appropriate to hit them? Right, even though that may be something they want to do, it’s not. So that is a great example of that. And for upper grades activity that we love is kind of tied into the goal setting part. And it’s not only to get them accountable, but to give them a direction and a thing to work towards. So we’ve created a fun engaging goal setting activity, where students will identify their goal, create a list of things they can do to reach it, and then set deadlines for themselves all in a text thread worksheet that they can relate to. So that is a super fun activity, you could obviously do that activity on your own without buying the product as well. And then a book we really like for self management is called Whistle For Willie, and it’s by Ezra Jack Keats. And it’s about a little boy who wants to be able to whistle for his dog, which is super, super sweet.

Okay, next is responsible decision making. And I don’t know if you knew this, but the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. Isn’t that so crazy? And while some of these are like super simple decisions, like how should I do my hair? Or what should I eat for breakfast, we make a lot of really important decisions too. And we can help kids learn how to make responsible decisions. And a book that I absolutely love for this. It’s actually a series of books. It’s called What Would Danny Do. They have three of these so far, I believe I have all three of them. And it’s so fun, because it’s kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, there are different parts that you get to, and then the kids get to pick like which thing they should do. And then you get to see what happens when they make that decision. And then you can go back and see what would happen if they made a different decision. And the really interesting thing is sometimes the whole day, it takes a different turn depending on what decision they made. So it’s really interesting and shows how our decisions really impact our lives. And then there’s another version that they have called What Would Darla Do, which I ended up buying for my daughter because she really wanted one that featured a girl. So those are the four books that they have so far. And those they’re fabulous. And then for some activities you can do. So for lower grades, you could have them read a scenario and then evaluate the results of that choice. And we have some of these in our resources. And then for upper grades, you could have them create a flipbook about internet safety and responsible choices they should make on the internet. And I feel like this is like so important right now. Because you know, kids can run into all kinds of things on the internet. So that is a great example you could use for learning about decision making.

Okay, next is relationship skills. You’ve probably heard the quote, it’s not what you know, but who you know. But really, in life, it’s so true. And we want our students to be able to build great meaningful relationships in their lives, you know, just for the pure benefit of building those great relationships. And then we also want them to be able to have the ability to work as a team and be a team player. So one thing that kids could do for lower grades is they can identify three things that they can do in order to be a good leader for others, and the upper grades, you could have them kind of take that a step further and have them complete a writing project about how they feel when they are in a leadership role. So I think both of those are super fun ideas. A great book about this topic is called Enemy Pie. So that would be a great one to introduce relationship skills to your students or your children.

Okay, and last, but certainly not least, is social awareness. I think for kids understanding things from perspectives other than their own is so important. Because even in our own classrooms, and in our own communities, there are people with different backgrounds, different cultures, etc. And even people who just have different thoughts and viewpoints and live completely different lives, it’s good for our kids to be aware of that, and know what to do when they see or meet someone who thinks or does or just has a different background than they do. Honestly, I think this understanding would really help solve a lot of problems we see today. So teaching our students this can really help the rising generation. So a great lower grade activity for this is to have kids draw a picture of one of their friends, and then identify five strengths that their friend has. And then for upper grades, you could have students learn all about embracing others and respecting differences by looking at those and others more specifically. So just kind of diving in a little bit deeper. And a great read aloud to introduce this topic is Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller, and they really hope I said her name, right, sorry, Pat, if I did not. But this is an awesome book for teaching about social awareness, and just being kind to others, which is a message we all need.

Now, if you want to make teaching all of the social emotional learning and implementing all these ideas easier, I’ve got just the thing for you. All of these ideas came from an amazing resource called the 36 weeks of social emotional learning. And this has a daily activity every day for the entire school year. So it’s so much more than you’ve even heard in this podcast today. You’ll spend six weeks going through each of the social emotional learning pillars, and then you’ll have another six weeks to review all of them together. It includes printable and digital options, and versions for pre K through sixth grade with age appropriate activities.

Okay, so to recap, the five pillars of social emotional learning are one is self awareness, two self management, three making responsible decisions, four relationship skills and five social awareness. And truly, I believe that social emotional learning is so important because we want our students to be able to live their best lives. And in order to do that, they don’t need to just know math or reading. They need to know how to do all of these things, how to manage their emotions, how to set goals, how to have good relationships with others, and become a team player, and how to respect those who are different than them. So many of these things.

And if you want a little help teaching social emotional learning where all the planning is done for you for the entire year, you can grab our 36 weeks of social emotional learning. I’ve linked to that in the show notes. You could also join us in the club where you’ll get access to all of the resources including this one. Plus you’ll get a ticket to our event, Educate and Rejuvenate and I’ll fill you in on a little secret. My friend Kiersten from Kiersten’s Kaboodle, she will be speaking all about social emotional learning, at Educate and Rejuvenate. I’m super excited to hear from her. She is a total expert on the topic. If you go to her website, which I’ll also link in the show notes, she has great blog posts that you can review if you’re really wanting to learn even more about social emotional learning. And I will link to our blog post on social emotional learning as well. So be sure to check out the show notes for all the links from today. And hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. See you next week.