Wednesday, February 21, 2018

My Own Ponderings on Social Emotional Learning

I'm going to start this by saying this is not meant to a political post in any way, shape, or form so please don't take it as that or turn it into that.

With the recent tragedies of our country, I am left, like so many others, to ponder the why. And while I know there is no single answer as to the why, we, as educators, are left to wonder what we can do to help in any way at all.

In my own small world, I see children who struggle with so many basic social emotional skills and lack the coping skills to deal with difficulties that present throughout their life.

To be honest, I don't remember who taught me about being a good person, overcoming adversity, persisting, accepting all people, and so much more. I think it was my parents, but I'm sure the school played a role.

Maybe it is time for school's to focus more on creating good human beings than analytical readers. (And, I taught high school English and thrived on analytical annotations for ten years).

Maybe it is time for the school to focus more on helping kids learn to persist through adversity than graph complex equations. (And my dad taught high school math for years.)

So we add social emotional learning standards to the already pumped full curriculum. It won't do anything. We added computer science standards in Indiana and I can tell you most teachers "don't have time" to teach something not tested.

This needs to be a collaborative acceptance that maybe we are focusing on the wrong things. Do kids need to learn reading, writing, math, science, and social studies? Absolutely.

But I think we need to ask ourselves: beyond everything else, what is the one thing we want our children to leave schools with?

And for me, as a parent and a teacher, I want my kid to graduate from high school and be a good person. That's more important to me than his reading level or his test scores or anything else someone can use to rank my child.

So I leave you with this; how do we help our children grow and mature into good people who help and support each other in their times of needs? I'm not talking a canned food drive at Christmas or giving items to those that are less fortunate; I'm talking at our core being the good in the world.

Lofty? Yes. Impossible? I sure hope not.

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