Every year, teachers craft pedagogical practices and critically examine how we connect with our new kids and their needs. Considering curriculum learning, student's personal growth and well-being, and how can we motivate students intrinsically, not extrinsically? Are we providing students with reflective time to self-manage many expectations from well-being for personal growth, academics and family responsibilities (virtual) simultaneously?
Be Community: Embracing diversity and promoting equity, we are guided by Catholic social teachings to create welcoming places for all.
Be Well: Honouring the dignity of every person, we care for and support the well-being of all.
Be Innovative: We foster innovation to inspire Deep Learning so that all can realize their full potential.
Community building, relationships and well-being are the heart of a community! How do we foster to build trust and relationships in our classroom community and focus on well-being?
The process of building community and relationships always begins in September. As a result of COVID, the students could not socialize together from March until the start of the school year in September. Reentering the school with many precautions while starting the academic year with rows of students masked up to collaborate and develop their skills. I have always focused on building a community of trust and students' self-identity to personalize learning. Upon returning face-to-face in September, it was evident that students were more disconnected. Throughout the process, I had to reflect on meeting students' emotional needs that shaped their learning and metacognition.
Our community was built up by understanding the students' identities and values, focusing on their strengths and learning styles. Learning should not be stressful! Community readiness included interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships to communicate, collaborate, create, critically think, and develop characters to be caring citizens. Being able to deal with all the differences within our community and to become active participants in learning rather than passive consumers. By identifying the feelings and the executive functions during the process, we focused on the assets, not the deficits of metacognition. It was important to identify what they are doing well and how they can connect to their next steps. Through self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness, the students could advance their own personal goals.
Academic loss was not the focus. Putting the students in a passive role of being fixed was not the goal! Getting students to look at their own data, accelerate their own needs, and be proud of their own growth was crucial.
We unpacked what stresses them when they are learning. What makes them joyful? What do they think about grading and assessment? What conditions make students feel joyful and trustful to share what is on their minds? I focused on creating an environment for students to fill their cups of self-confidence, self-management, self-awareness of how they learn. What are they hopeful for? Creating a space where mistakes or failures are not punishments; they are learning opportunities.
Virtually or face to face, how are we allowing students to reflect and think about self-managing their learning?
The students embarked on a journey of transparency, building relationships of trust, and taking action towards their learning. It was not about teaching SEL (Social Emotional Learning); it was about creating an environment where stress can be managed and how it can be relevant to their lives. Additionally, I needed to keep in mind to assure students of their self-direction, and I needed to apply humanity to teaching and students' learning experiences to make them equitable. Science consistently demonstrates how learning is supported by emotional skills. It was crucial to integrate social-emotional learning into everything we do.
Our approach began by co-learning about System 1 and System 2 thinking and sharing evidence of our everyday interactions and decision-making through System 1 and System 2 thinking. I first learned about Systems Thinking through http://www.rotmanithink.ca/about-us.
Using the analogy and visual metaphor of the iceberg, students shared what's going on beneath the surface for a deeper identity than what we see on the surface. The identity of what we see and how they feel. By connecting their feelings, students were able to share and build empathy. Empathy is a two-way street by taking each other's emotions. By sharing, the students connected their emotions to become more vulnerable and strengthen their perspectives and compassion for one another.
We followed through by learning about unconscious biases, perspectives, and how we make assumptions.
The students' identity and values were discovered through the causal models on who they are and their values. They focused on what makes them special, what makes them joyful, on their own identity from culture to history that no one is the same. A way for me to also build relationships and know who they are. Giving them a space to share and identify who they are.
The students shared and reflected about their interests and connected them to their learning, their identity, their current self to their future self-learning about themselves and to others in the class,
By incorporating identity relationships through music and cultural expressions, I adapted the Personal Playlist Project P3 For community building and What's In a Name the WIN project for identity and building community from Noa Daniel. The students developed relationships and connected their identities, but they also referenced their projects throughout the year. With the WIN project, many cultural identity discussions, including Nick Names and mispronunciation of names over the years. The students also took part in the project Belouga on community building.
Biases and perspectives are essential to building our community. That is also an important process to build trust and relationships, especially when reflecting on interpersonal and intrapersonal relations when collaborating, creating, communicating and taking actions. There is so much to share about this process through many thinking tools and applications. Those who followed my journey on Twitter and I shared our experiences will make connections to the process.
Identifying our implicit biases, one of the team-building activities was cross the line. It was a way to comfort each other, helping each other by forming relationships.
The passion is beyond the surface; the students knew they are good people, and they thought good people are never biased. We tried to undo biases and call them out. Empathy and its role in building relationships, trust, and belonging were implemented in our self-action and learning actions. All reflections are in French, a couple reflections on empathy:
The key to understanding our emotions, their causes and self-managing were learning about the brain and the adolescent brain. Learning about Neurons, Myelin and its importance to cognitive performance. How myelin grows the more we do to produce neuron plasticity through many learning experiences together from academics, regulating, reflecting, learning and growing through experiences. It was challenging at first to learn how the brain works, but then students understood through collecting evidence and reflecting. Reflecting on how the brain fires through movement and oxygen to the brain to decrease stress. We learned that everything is connected in networks, and we develop in stages to activate different areas in the brain. Heart rate, fear, breathing, fighter flight and learning, calming using or losing it, emotional identity can affect how they are going to learn that day. From the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system, connections managing stress to concentrate and calming down the limbic system. We unpacked how the brain works by listening to Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about the adolescent brain from Dan Siegal.
As a team, we coregulated and built a safe space for relationships. What is making you feel unsafe? Validating the emotional experiences. Adjustment of the environment was not physical; it was emotional by giving time to calm down in the seats, supporting each other when collaborating. We adapted by learning to coach ourselves through self-regulation and executive skills needed for positive self flexibility. Goal setting, managing stress, managing time, organization and time for planning and self-reflecting, resetting and calming for problem-solving. Executive function is managed by the Prefrontal Cortex of the brain. I first learned about the connections of Executive Functions and the brain for SEL from my colleague Patricia Fiorino.
The students use the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, to make decisions, so students needed to practice executive functioning skills. The purpose is to create neuropathways between their emotions and their actions.
In order to function together from self-advocacy, identifying different perspectives, executive functions became skills for action. In the executive functions, we focused on; how to grow as a student from emotional self-awareness, and how collaboration and learning together can impact the community. They needed to identify their strengths and determine how they work together to achieve their own goals.
For me to think, how do I want the students to grow at the end of the school year? Through SEL, I wanted them to grow as functioning members of the classroom community rather than just academically. Skills to develop: How do I make decisions? What is the best way to prioritize? What are my strengths? What resources do I need and how do I advocate for them? Students should advocate for themselves and develop solutions that cater to their varied needs. As soon as SEL and executive functions were in place, academic growth occurred.
Students began to collect data on their experiences in the classroom explicitly so they could grow in the classroom culture. Students were allowed to take time to wonder about what they want to focus on and work on developing the neuron plasticity of the brain. Reflections allowed the brain to understand where they are and to sometimes share with one another for feedback. The SEL was on everything, not just SEL time; it was through the full learning throughout all disciplines. It was about the ongoing dialogue and reflection of the class. Thinking about what they do well and what their strengths are. I am sharing October examples of The ladder of Inference for collecting data and criteria for the purpose of SEL and executive functions.
The reflections continued throughout the year. I will share a few as they are all in French.
Reflective questions about the collected data.
Mindfulness of breathing and calming played an important role every day. There was value in pausing and taking a break, or pausing individually when necessary. The students were influenced by the ripple effect they had on each other and by my influence on them. As social adolescents, Grade 8 students exhibited reactions to judging the intentions of others or judging the safety, physiology, and biology of other individuals that were impacted on a daily basis both online and in person. As a result of mindfulness, the students reported less stress from interpersonal relationships. For culturally equitable SEL to be achieved, it was crucial to include their lived experiences as part of our school experiences, representing them culturally and affirming them as whole students.
Certainly, there was resistance; it was not always easy, fear of feeling unsafe, with all kinds of conditions and resistance, especially online. As a teacher, I was always wondering what SEL skills to introduce to the lesson and how to interact with them to engage their learning? To allow them to self-manage a learning plan and advocate for their own success. In the space of trust of expression, we also discussed how SEL and emotional awareness can help us discuss many topics. In discussions about the Sustainable Development Goals, several hard and uncomfortable conversations took place involving sexism, racism, violence, homophobia, and transphobia.
Developing a social awareness of interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts on many controversial topics was crucial. The goal was to keep a safe space when discussing uncomfortable topics to promote SEL opportunities during sociopolitical discussions. In discussions, all political events are connected to the curriculum expectations and students' interpersonal relationships, knowledge building, and understanding of themselves and others.
Virtually lots of time was given to self-regulate synchronously and asynchronously of not feeling alone and the trust that I understood their feelings by immediately responding to their written or oral reflections.
By moving online from mid-April to June, the focus was surely on the home environment of critical learning effects and the out-of-class experiences. There are so many responsibilities, it has become everyone's responsibility. Our goal is to humanize; this is everyone's responsibility; mine, the other students online, and the parents. Everyone had a role to play. I had to focus on how to keep their joy and talents.
Maintaining an asset-based learning community with so many responsibilities placed on students. The students amazingly managed babysitting and helping siblings with online learning. Assisting with household responsibilities during synchronous and asynchronous learning sessions. Working with parents and other family members in the same room. Some had the privileges of working quietly and keeping self-motivation with little distractions. The distractions of technology while completing work ranged from phone calls to online chats and games. Using PearDeck daily reflections assisted with maintaining self-management while doing online learning. This transition worked because they co-planned about their needs as a team.
It has been a year of exploration with many posts unpublished due to ongoing discoveries, unlearning, relearning and reframing practices due to various occurrences during our learning processes. It was important to develop the competencies for growth and success through SEL. SEL must be contextualized, integrated with academic learning, and reflecting every time through social management self-awareness and self-management, in order to connect and give feedback to each other. SEL is not a program designated for a certain time!
Yes, it takes time, and we need to embrace it. It is all day, every day, not a prepackaged curriculum. In the framing that we do every day, SEL maximized the impact. Students needed more deconstructed opportunities to develop their own goals, identify their strengths, and determine how they functioned collectively. It was our goal to learn more about how Social Emotional Learning builds just communities of respect, lasting relationships, and critically examines root causes for collaborative solutions that contribute to the personal, community, and social well-being of all participants.
Building community is essential for transformative learning. How are we supporting transformative SEL affirming the assets, the experiences, identity, acquiring knowledge, identifying and managing emotions, maintaining relationships for responsible and caring decisions?
I will end with this Hip Hop theatre of emotions from a student about her year:
