Professional Learning for Busy Educators

The types of skills required to care for and advocate for oneself and others — self-regulation, responsibility, empathy, and discipline, among others — are becoming increasingly central to the work of schools and teachers, and increasingly relevant to the lifelong success of students. 

More and more, educators are recognizing that these skills — often called “social and emotional” skills — are inextricably intertwined with the academic skills. Nine out of 10 teachers believe that social emotional skills can and should be taught. But four out of five want more support to address their students’ social emotional development. How do teachers catch up their practices with what they know is possible?

A new report from the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development draws on a large volume of research on social-emotional learning, three new research reports written over the last two years, as well as surveys with parents, students, and teachers — all generating new recommendations for teaching the whole child and for supporting the academic, social, and emotional wellbeing of students. It will take significant system-wide and school-wide changes to make sure every child gets this kind of holistic education; teachers cannot do that work alone.

But with the following considerations and actions, teachers can begin to break the silos that stuff social-emotional learning into a specific unit or class, and instead embed it throughout the day.

Over the past several decades public education has shifted to focus on literacy and math learning, largely due to high stakes tests measuring those two elements of school. But educators have long known that while reading, writing and math are important to academic success, they are far from the only qualities students need to go forth and lead productive lives.

In recent years, the pendulum of education trends have swung back to emphasize the importance of relationships to learning. Schools are using social and emotional learning curricula to help students develop interpersonal skills and learn ways to solve problems peacefully. But there’s still debate around which social and emotional skills are the most important to teach — such as empathy, executive functioning or persistence — and some educators feel unprepared to take on a role that seems more like parenting.