by Sarah Said

Infusing Social Emotional Learning Into Our Content

In Part 1 of our series on techquity, we set the scene for challenges we face in education post-covid. Here, in Part 2, we explore tangible ways to infuse not just technology,but social emotional learning into lessons. The term for this is “techquity.”

As a mom of two teenagers and a pre-teen, I struggle to get my own children “off” of their devices. My teenage sons were born in the time of the evolution of Apple products and SMARTphones. As toddlers, my children were fascinated with screens. I swore that I wouldn’t let them watch too much TV and play video games… but like many Gen X and Older Millennial Parents, I caved. When you have two kids under the age of three and are trying to study for a grad school final and hold together your full time teaching job, you are going to use the mighty iPad to get your child to stop crying and watch Thomas The Train. Yup that was me. And, we didn’t realize it at the time as parents, but we were slowly conditioning our children to use technology to self-soothe. Covid only magnified this more. And now, our students at times struggle to separate themselves from devices—phones, iPads, tablets, and computers… just to name them all…

Even as adults, we struggle to get off our phones.  I just find myself randomly scrolling.  It took time, and I’ll say it even with advice from professionals to get me off of my phone.  Read more about phone usage/addiction and its impacts here. When we know we are even struggling with this, we cannot get upset with our students when they are hiding a phone in a book or behind a chromebook to scroll through TikTok. What we can do is be solution-driven regarding this issue.

First things first, students need to learn the importance of being present. This comes through SEL-infused activities.  In my classroom, I have a daily structure. First, students use their phones to digitally check in with me on how they are feeling. They get one minute to do that and check their “grams and snaps”. Then, all students complete a “Settle In” activity (which is my version of Bell Work). After finishing the assignment, we do a community breath. Students have to have all devices either put away or in a charger in my room. Students do find the cell phone chargers that I provide pretty enticing. As we do our community breath, there is a meditation prior to moving on to learning targets.

When considering assignments in class, I also support students in learning content, but I put a stronger emphasis on considering social emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom.  For example, when considering academic standards, students have a speaking and listening standard that they need to reach. Depending on the type of standard, for example, participating in a classroom discussion, this can be done in fishbowl discussion or in one on one conversations. During these discussions, tech may be used prior to the discussion to prepare for it (e.g. research or creating a visual aide) but students will need to put away phones during discussion and be held accountable for that. And really, it’s teaching the concept of presence, which I explicitly explain to them.

How can a SEL infused assignment look?  For example, in teaching a speaking and listening standard that emphasizes discussion skills and a writing standard that emphasizes informational writing (11th grade Common Core High School English). Students can write interview questions to learn more about a peer they do not know. After they complete writing questions, the students would pair up and interview each other. Using informational writing skills and the Canva application they can design a magazine cover about one of their peers. Ideas for this, came from The Freedom Writers Diary Teacher Guide. I took the idea from the guide and infused technology into it. Not only did students gain listening and speaking skills, writing skills and technology skills, but we also emphasized the CASEL standard of Relationship Skills.