One of the goals of this blog is to help equip you – the reader – with tools that can help you engage students’ social-emotional…
Elkhart SEL
Whether we want to admit it or not, grading is a powerful influencer on emotional wellness. The letter or number on top of an assignment communicates more than performance; to many students, the grade on an assignment communicates value. Standards based grading is a system which allows us to proactively change our grading to promote positive academic and emotional mindsets in students.
There is no “official” SEL curriculum. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be taught. SEL can be worked into any activity or lesson you teach by looking at what skills you want students to develop through their participation.
The book Becoming the Educator They Need (Robert Jackson, ASCD) has fantastic nuggets you will need to continue your success thus far in the school year. Particularly, chapters three and four dig into developing mindsets of culturally responsive educators and challenges readers to apply that mindset to build strong relationships with students and other staff members. These mindsets are critical if we want to identify and address bias in our own lives.
I was able to work with some awesome 7th and 8th graders from North Side to build this Jammin’ SEL resource that is easy to edit and simple to use.