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.”
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