Social-Emotional Learning, Awareness, and Strategies for Teachers: Collaborative Approaches

Chapter Objectives

• 1.

  Identify strategies that can support social-emotional learning within a school setting.

• 2.

  Define strategies and supports for each of the social-emotional competencies.

Introduction

As other chapters in this book have discussed, teacher attrition is a dire problem that impacts both schools and students. Teaching is considered to be one of the most stressful occupations, because it involves daily work based on social interactions where the teacher must make great effort to regulate not only his or her own emotions, but also those of students, parents, and colleagues (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002) and attend to the specific and individualized academic and/or behavioral needs of students. Factors outside of the school setting, such as in the teachers’ personal lives, can also play a tremendous role in the social-emotional well-being of teachers. For those entering the field, and veteran teachers alike, fulfilling the demands in personal and professional settings can be a daunting task and can lead to burnout and teacher attrition (Klug, 2020). As education systems across the country are experiencing dramatic teacher shortages and turnover, it is important to identify such internal and external factors that can contribute to the increased demands of being a teacher (e.g., stress. mental health, & trauma) and become cognizant of social-emotional aspects and strategies that accompany each facet and provide increased support to teachers.

Throughout the duration of a teacher preparation program, pre-service teachers (PSTs) take classes to learn about the pedagogy of teaching related to specific content areas, how to create lesson plans, investigate aspects of classroom and behavior management, and relate the role of assessment and data collection to planning. While many preparation programs across the United States embed aspects of social-emotional learning (SEL) into their coursework, many do not specifically and/or explicitly address the five core SEL dimensions (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2017).

Explicit social-emotional learning is necessary for novice teachers to develop strong dispositional characteristics for resilience, particularly with the extenuating variables that teachers face in both personal and school classroom contexts. Studies have found that adults who can recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate their emotions are less likely to report burnout (Brackett et al., 2010; CASEL, 2021), have higher levels of relational trust with their peers at work (Bryk & Schneider, 2003) and more effectively teach and model social-emotional competence to their students (Palomera et al., 2008). Providing training to new teachers about SEL has shown increased effectiveness in heightening emotional competency, but also in predicting a well-adjusted transition from the role of PSTs to that of an in-service teacher (Byron, 2001). However, “...research is needed that examines how promoting teachers’ SEL in pre-service teacher education leads to improvements in not only teacher well-being (e.g. stress, happiness) but also in other health-related dimensions, such as stress leaves, healthcare use, medication, etc.” (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2017, p. 14). If pre-service teachers have longitudinal opportunities to learn about, identify, and develop strategies that will contribute to their own as well as their students' social and emotional skills, values, perspectives, and identities, they will have greater capability to maintain dispositional habits as they begin their teaching careers.