Weaving SEL into curriculum doesn’t have to be hard

As an educator and curriculum content material creator, I’m at all times searching for to develop classes that provide college students alternatives to specific advanced feelings and share private experiences. Inspiring self-expression and constructing a protected communal area start with authentically exploring social-emotional studying (SEL) content material.

Students are at all times navigating developmentally acceptable psychological well being and emotional-regulation development, however in the present day’s college students are additionally dealing with the results of the pandemic. We can’t deprioritize SEL in our college areas, and the good information is that we’re seeing important funding and assist for SEL. District spending on SEL on SEL programming grew about 45% between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 tutorial years, from $530 million to $765 million. When directors and academics have been requested in a survey to rank their prime priorities earlier than and throughout the pandemic, improving students’ mental health and promoting students’ social-emotional competence rose to the #1 and a pair of priorities.

Currently, the grander concern for many educators within the classroom is the overwhelming “how.” Despite having a better price range and public assist for SEL, many academics are unprepared to incorporate SEL into their instruction. Barriers embody inadequate planning time, lack of parental consent, or lack of comprehensive SEL training for educators. 

In my private expertise, collaborating with 4th- and Fifth-graders, I discover that my college students wrestle with expressing vulnerability or exploring emotional complexities. The emotions that come up from genuine SEL dialogue can be triggering if not polarizing when abilities have not been scaffolded, as a result of we have not given college students sufficient alternatives to course of the content material in ways in which really feel genuine and significant to them. My answer: creating comics. 

Comics construct college students’ tutorial vanity.

Using comics as a instrument to combine SEL into the content material of the classroom opens the door for self-exploration with a artistic benefit. Creating comics encourages college students to interact in higher-order pondering reminiscent of evaluating content material and synthesizing concepts with instruments that assist course of their pondering. Comics may be an pleasurable method for educators to scaffold these difficult SEL ideas.