Celebrating International #SELDay
March 10th is International SEL Day!
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is an educational concept that helps children gain skills in important areas beyond math, reading, and other core school subjects. SEL helps kids identify their feelings, understand and communicate with others, build strong relationships, and make good, empathetic decisions.
And given the overwhelming support and demand for social and emotional learning, there’s no better time to celebrate the development of these important skills.
SEL has always been a focus of our work because we believe that these are critical skills for young children to learn- and they need supportive adults in their lives to help teach them how to engage in healthy social dynamics and cope with emotions in constructive ways.
There are many simple ways to sprinkle social-emotional learning into everyday situations with young children. In fact, you are probably already doing this without knowing it!
Today is also a day to take time and give our thanks to early childhood professionals- preschool teachers/assistant teachers, social workers, therapists, and everyone who is involved in helping children grow their social-emotional learning- both inside and outside of the classroom setting.
Here are four ways to promote SEL in your everyday interactions:
Greeting Children Every Morning
We can incorporate SEL into just about every greeting because greetings are an opportunity to increase connection and attachment! Saying hello, smiling, and asking simple questions such as, “How are you feeling this morning?” or “Are you excited to start your day?” are simple ways to connect and talk about feelings in a natural way.
Reading Books to Children
As you read stories together, talk about how the characters are feeling, even if the author doesn’t mention them! Or, you can ask how the child might feel if they were the character. Additionally, you can point out the facial expressions or body language of the illustrated characters and connect them to a feeling. Such as, “Tommy is frowning and his shoulders are drooping… he looks sad.”
Resolving Conflicts Between Children
Conflicts are opportunities to learn about our feelings and how to cope in healthy ways. Acknowledging feelings while helping children learn what to do with those feelings is an important part of helping children learn how to resolve problems. In the most challenging conflicts, it’s best to wait until the child is calmer to talk about what they are feeling, but we can always incorporate SEL into conflict resolution with children!
Asking Children to Wait
Children (and adults!) are often asked to wait… to wait their turn, wait for an activity to start, wait in a line, wait for a meal, or wait for a family member to pick them up. Waiting certainly brings up lots of emotions for adults- so we can be sure children are feeling some of those same emotions! We can incorporate SEL into most waiting moments by naming the feeling (“It’s frustrating to have to wait so long for lunch to be ready when you’re so hungry”) and helping children learn to cope with delayed gratification (“Can you play for a few more minutes while you wait? Or, “come help me get lunch ready by putting the plates on the table and getting yourself a glass of water”).
By celebrating this day, and thinking about ways to incorporate social-emotional learning into your everyday interactions with young children, together we are supporting the three goals of International SEL Day:
To increase awareness of social-emotional learning and its importance in schools and communities.
To ensure that we create cohesive language around social and emotional learning.
To honor the experiences of those who have dedicated themselves to empowering young people through social and emotional skills.