Strengthening Student SEL in English Class

 This week's article summary is How English Class Improves Social-Emotional Skills.

I feel very lucky to have attended a high school with an English department that emphasized class discussion and a syllabus of world literature. From ninth grade through graduation, I read short stories and novels from all around the world. I didn't necessarily know it at the time, but this exposure to non-Western literature expanded my world view and piqued my interest in and open-mindedness about different cultures. The literature I read and discussed helped me see beyond my homogenous, suburban life.

As an elementary school, Trinity provides ample opportunities in reading selections for our students to learn about others and to see themselves, i.e., windows and mirrors.

The article below directly connects the books students read with development of their social-emotional skills. In particular,  it's easier to use a book's plot, theme, character choices as a springboard to explore difficult, sensitive topics. As a student, I was much more willing to discuss how a book's character acted than sharing my personal feelings; those discussions in English class helped clarify the type of person I wanted to become.

As I'm sure most of us agree, student social-emotional development is optimized when integrated into all we do at school, including the books our students read and discuss--the more varied the better!

Joe

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Asking students to dissect the motivations of a character in a book is doing more than teaching them about plot and characterization. This exercise also helps students learn to see different perspectives, empathize, and examine another person’s emotions—as well as their own.

In short, experts and educators say, the English/language arts class can be a powerful forum for developing students’ social-emotional skills at all ages.

Stories connect social-emotional skills that can be abstract in isolation to realistic situations that students can compare their own experiences with, said David Adams, a social-emotional-learning expert.

“In education, we talk about mirrors and windows,” said Adams. “A mirror being, ‘how do I see myself in this context?’ And a window being, ‘what can I learn about somebody else?’ 

English/language arts classes can also provide a lower-stakes entry point into discussions on tough emotional and moral challenges, such as the death of a loved one or what to do if a friend is using drugs, without requiring students or teachers to reference their personal lives in class.

Students can hone social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-reflection, problem-solving, critical thinking, and conflict resolution through reading, analyzing, and discussing literature in ELA classes, experts say. Getting inside a character’s or the author’s head to discern their intent, for example, teaches perspective-taking.

“Why do you think this person is doing that?” Adams said. “It’s a very important skill, whether you’re reading a newspaper article, or having a conversation with your wife or your colleague..

Literature can help support healthy identity formation, Adams said, as students parse out what they care about, what their passions are, and who they want to be.

One strategy is to do less lecturing and allow for plenty of discussion, said Schwartz. Students can’t exercise social-emotional skills if they are passively listening to their teacher and not actively engaging with peers and ideas.

Literature can provide plenty of meaningful material for discussing social and emotional themes that doesn’t require teachers or students to share personal information, said Schwartz.

Literature also supplies discussion topics that can really stretch students’ social-emotional understanding, she said. Students’ social-emotional learning is stunted if SEL sticks to basic emotions or only happy topics, Schwartz added.

In literature, Schwartz said, “You see people making bad choices and dealing with consequences. You see people in really tricky circumstances. There’s so much to learn by getting a glimpse into someone’s life through literature, and even if the educator’s not asking students to make personal connections, that’s something that happens.”

Exactly how teachers should infuse SEL into their English classes will look different depending upon the age of their students.

Early elementary teachers, for instance, can incorporate social-emotional learning into read-alouds. In the early grades, teachers should focus on the feelings characters have, if students have experienced those emotions themselves, and how characters navigate conflict, said Adams.

In upper elementary, Katrina Sacurom, who teaches reading and writing to 5th grade students in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, makes sure to incorporate the character trait, such as honesty or self-control, that her school is emphasizing that month into her lessons. She also focuses on character—and by extension, student—relationships. Building and maintaining relationships are key social-emotional skills.

As students get older and are developmentally ready for more complex themes and character motivations, ELA class can help them make sense of their own conflicting feelings and sometimes tumultuous inner lives, said Schwartz.

There aren’t many SEL curricula developed with the specific needs of high schoolers in mind. And traditionally schools have invested less in SEL in the secondary level than in primary grades, even though experts say older students also need opportunities to develop their social-emotional skills.

“These skills that we’re talking about, by high school, are much better received through literature or project-based learning,” Schwartz said. “Something that’s asking the students to show up in their wholeness because they already have a lot of life experience. They have a lot to learn, too, but many of them have experienced things that perhaps not all of their teachers have.”

The History and Continued Importance of Black History Month

This week's article summary, The 100-Year History of Black History Month, is an interview with Harvard professor Jarvis R. Givens about his new book, I'll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month.

While many of us have grown up observing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, and recently Juneteenth, the origins of these observances are often overlooked. The article informs us that while Black History Month was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the U.S. Bicentennial, its roots trace back to 1926.

I have always felt conflicted about dedicated heritage months. Dedicating a single month to groups whose voices and accomplishments were historically minimized—much like the afterthought sections on women in 1990s history textbooks I used in my classes—felt like a insufficient fix for a year-round necessity, analogous to food pantry donations only during the holidays when the need is year round.

But this article shifted my position. Black History Month (held in February to honor the birth months of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) serves today as reminder to resist becoming complacent. In the current polarized climate where even the Super Bowl halftime entertainment is controversial, it's critical for educators to guide students to be open-minded, to view the world through multiple perspectives, and to be inquisitive about others, especially those different from them. Without these important skills, our students will be more susceptible to the influence and manipulation of others. (As a native New Yorker, I consider my skepticism an asset in today's world.)

In an ideal world, the contributions and historic struggles and tribulations of all people would be integrated every day in our curriculum. While much progress has been made in my lifetime, we still have a long way to go. Until then, observances like Women's History Month, Native American Heritage Month, Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, and Pride Month remain overt reminders to make space for those whose history has long been invisible.

Joe

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What do people get wrong about Black History Month?

Black History Month grew from the bottom up, from grassroots organizing and centuries of intellectual and political struggle. We only have this commemorative holiday because African American scholars and community members organized to create holidays like Crispus Attucks Day on March 5, beginning in the 1850s, and Douglass Day on Feb. 14, beginning in 1897. Negro History Week grew out of that tradition, and it was later expanded to Black History Month in 1976 during the United States’ bicentennial.

How has the way we think about and celebrate Black History Month changed these past 100 years

Early on, Negro History Week and Black History Month were mostly internal to African American communities. It formed and grew within an expansive segregated world of Black schools, colleges, churches, and institutions across the United States. However, with desegregation, Black History Month eventually became an instrument used to encourage racial tolerance for those in the United States who didn’t know much about Black people and Black cultures. 

Things are a bit different now. We live in a society where, for the most part, Black History Month or Negro History Week has always existed. And therefore, the urgency around the work of preserving and teaching Black history hasn’t been as present in more recent decades, at least not the way it was with the early Black history movement, when people had intimate knowledge and memories of Black history being absent in textbooks and school curriculum in this country.

I think the further we moved away from the period when people had to fight to create and celebrate Black history, the more comfortable our communities became with the idea that knowledge about Black history would always be readily available. But those of us who teach Black studies and African American history have always been aware of the precarious state of Black history’s inclusion in mainstream curricula and public memory. This moment is reminding all of us that this work continues to be both urgent and under attack.

How has Negro History Week/Black History Month, as an institution, survived and remained popular for the last 100 years?

First, it survived because Black communities created it and continued to value it through the segregated era, and in doing so, made it an integral part of Black culture and community calendars on an annual basis. It became institutionalized within Black organizations and, therefore, a central part of African American heritage. All of this occurred, again, before it was nationally recognized by the U.S. government. 

However, the staying power of Black History Month is also connected to major advancements in the field of African American history and Black studies in the post-civil rights era. The first wave of scholars of African American and African diaspora history were part of a transformation in higher education during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Because of the impressive work of that generation of scholars, building on seeds planted generations before, there continued to be new waves of knowledge and content about the Black past, pushing us all to think about the world we inherited in more critical ways and to dream about the worlds we hoped to build with more mature, historically informed imaginations.

Another reason it has persisted is because political leaders saw value in holding up Black History Month as a demonstration of America’s inclusion of Black people as integral parts of U.S. society, though they often did so without recognizing past harms, instead using inspiring elements of Black history that could support narratives of American exceptionalism. This is obviously a very complicated part of the legacy, but it’s important to recognize, nonetheless.

What is one takeaway you would like readers to gain from reading the book?

I want people to remember that the struggle to preserve, study, and teach Black history is always about more than the facts, names, and dates of the past. It is about recognizing and disrupting the way power dynamics in our society shape historical memory and it’s also about studying the way historical memory shapes how we define ourselves as a people and the dreams we imagine for the worlds of the future. I hope readers will see, by looking at the African American intellectual tradition that informed the creation of Black History Month, that this ongoing fight to value the lives of Black folks in the past is part and parcel of an enduring war to value Black lives in the present and future.

 

The Math Wars Continue

This week’s article summary is Debates Over Math Teaching Are Heating Up.

In literacy, the debate is between Whole Language and the Science of Reading.

In math, it's about explicit instruction versus student inquiry.

As referenced in a previous article summary about top educational research studies from 2025, student inquiry in isolation does not advance student learning; similarly, explicit teacher instruction too often leads to disengaged students.

Like most debates in education, the best option in math is a balance of explicit teacher instruction and student inquiry/discovery/problem-solving--what is called Guided Inquiry.

As a teacher, I have always felt the need to have a multitude of teaching strategies in my quiver. If I found myself using too much of teacher-centered pedagogy (an easy trap for any teacher to fall into), I’d shift to more student-centered methods. While kids need structure, routine, and consistency in the classroom, they also need variety and novelty.

Visiting classrooms as a Head of School, I particularly enjoy math time: our students are learning the skills/concepts/procedures of numeracy, while also being given ample time to offer their observations when being introduced to new topics, to problem-solve with classmates, and to find multiple ways to solve and demonstrate their understanding.

Just like a recent Summary on SEL, Trinity continues to find the balance of best practices to the benefit of our students!

Joe

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Last December, several members of a national organization for math education leaders came together to issue a warning. A growing movement in the field was calling on schools to adopt an “impoverished” approach to math teaching that would strip students of their autonomy and relegate them to “mimicking their teacher.” This movement misapplying educational research, they said.

Debate over best practices in math education is far from new; it's been debated for over 100 years.

The stakes are particularly high now, as national math scores have continued to decline. 

One side of the debate comes from the Science of Math website, which promotes explicit instruction, a method in which teachers explain and model new concepts and procedures step-by-step and then ask students to practice them. It’s a myth, they say, that inquiry-based approaches boost outcomes for all kids. Explicit instruction lays a crucial foundation, especially for students who struggle, and can equip students with the skills they need to tackle more complex problem-solving.

The other side contends that while explicit instruction has some value in math teaching, it should be minimized. Instead, the predominant approach should be “guided inquiry, in which teachers provide structure and support in well-designed inquiry-oriented activities.” This side believes that explicit instruction is a “pedagogy of poverty,” arguing that it is more commonly used in schools in low-income areas, systematically denying these children opportunities for discussion and collaborative problem-solving.

Which side is right?

As usual, let’s find the middle ground through 'guided inquiry’ which should include moments of explicit instruction. Good explicit instruction should then incorporate time for meaning-making and student reflection.

But debates continue over how to prioritize and sequence these two types of teaching, and over the conceptual underpinnings of each approach: Are there foundational processes, like adding multi-digit numbers, teachers must explain directly before students can move on to more complex problem-solving? Or does doing so inherently short-circuit the development of problem-solving skills?

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that good math instruction includes some explicit instruction and some more student-led problem-solving.

“There needs to be a balance of both,” Ashley Davis, a 4th grade math teacher, said of explicit instruction and inquiry. “I don’t think one is right and one is wrong. When both are used properly, they’re both super effective—regardless of the students.”

Over the past 30 years, leading organizations in the field have promoted a more inquiry-forward approach to math. Popular curricula tend to emphasize problem-solving and discussion of mathematical ideas. Davis thinks these are good goals. She wants her students to be able to use math flexibly in their everyday lives.

There are times when she introduces a new concept through discovery, Davis said, like when she started a lesson about equivalent fractions. She gave students pieces of paper and asked them to fold them in half, and then in half again and again, and asked them what they noticed. Her students figured out that 1/2 was equivalent to 2/4, which was equivalent to 4/8.

“There are other instances where I can think of, where you have to explicitly teach something, so they can then use inquiry later on,” she said—how to use an area model for multiplication of multi-digit whole numbers, for instance.

Still, there’s often little guidance about how to negotiate and sequence these two priorities to lead to the best outcomes.

Some work has tried to fill that gap. Last year, for example, a group of researchers in cognitive psychology and special education published research-based recommendations to get students fluent with math facts, integrating both explicit instruction and what they describe as “cognitive reflection.” 

Getting this balance right is hard, and there’s not always a roadmap, said Star, the Harvard professor: “We as a field could be better at guiding teachers toward what that mix looks like.”