Social-Emotional Learning during COVID: Lessons from Lake George Elementary School

by Aaron Leo

The last year has seen a range of new evidence which points to the severe effects of the pandemic on youths’ mental health and social-emotional wellbeing.

A report from the Center for Disease Control, for example, states that in 2021, more than a third (37%) of high school students experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44% reported they “persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year”. The combination of social, economic, political, and emotional stressors of the pandemic created a “perfect storm” that exacerbated the already-existing youth mental health crisis. While the full extent of the pandemic’s impacts on young people is still not fully realized, social-emotional learning has emerged as one potential way to help mitigate its negative effects.

NYKids recent study Discovering Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Education Workforce was designed to better understand educators’ experiences during the pandemic and the ways that educators adapted and innovated to meet the changing needs of their students. Social-emotional learning and students’ mental health were included as two important facets of our study.

In this blog, we discuss the ways that educators from Lake George Elementary School, one of the participating schools in our study, addressed students’ mental health and supported social-emotional learning.

Lessons from Lake George Elementary School

 (The text below is an excerpt from the case study which can be found here)

• Prioritizing Students’ Social and Emotional Well-Being

School and district leaders at Lake George ES prioritized the social and emotional well-being of students during the pandemic. While recognizing the deep impacts that the pandemic and shift to remote instruction had on their students, leaders understood the need to ensure students were first safe and secure before they attended to any potential academic gaps. The principal explained the collaborative process that was taken to ensure that the social-emotional well-being and mental health of students were put first:

I think [it] was understanding that this is serious, and this is not normal. We as a collective backed up and said the most important thing for us, and I think everybody was in total agreement, is the social-emotional health of us and our children. And even though we were still assessing kids, we backed off academically, but we still put our finger on the pulse so that we understood where they were.

Even in the 2021-22 school year with all students back in-person, respondents continued to view social-emotional learning and student mental health as a major concern. “I also see that [student mental health] is the highest priority even now when we get to where we’ve pretty much put the assessments back into play,” explained one teacher.

• Re-engaging Social Skills and Using Tiered Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Strategies

Educators and support staff members spoke of the changes in behavior, including self-management and relational skills, that were evident in their students as they returned to school. One teacher recounted the ways they sought to overcome challenges in their fifth-grade class as students returned to school and teachers slowly sought to reestablish a sense of normalcy:

But they kind of just forgot how to work in a group. You know, that was really hard. I think by the end of the year, we figured out, let’s go outside more, and put them in groups where we could take off masks, and, you know, come a little bit closer. And that helped.

At the school level, the principal also explained the renewed focus on students who were most in need of social-emotional support based on an RTI (response to intervention) model. A support staff member explained how a spreadsheet was created by educators and leaders at the school in order to track students “that were at risk and were demonstrating behaviors during COVID.”

A range of programs and initiatives in the school were mentioned as important supports for students during the shutdown and as students returned to school. For instance, the school participates in SEL programs such as “The Leader in Me” as well as the “Covey 7 Habits,” which emphasizes important SEL skills. The building also has a full-time social worker, fulltime school psychologist, and part-time counselor to support students’ mental health, and these services continued virtually when school was held completely remotely. Additionally, students participated in an afterschool Mindfulness Club as well as a monthly event called the “Georgies” that celebrated character traits of particular students.

• Maintaining Traditions and Connections During Remote Instruction

When discussing the importance of social-emotional learning and the mental health and wellbeing of their students, educators and support staff expressed the need to keep students socially connected with one another – and to the school – during the shutdown. To this end, educators at Lake George ES endeavored to continue any activities and programs either socially distant or online.

Others described the need to keep kids engaged and socially connected during remote instruction. During the second year of the pandemic when classes were given in a hybrid format, teachers strove to ensure that students at home were not disconnected from classroom activities and social interaction. As an example of this approach, a district leader described a teacher who attached an iPad to a music stand during class in order to keep remote students connected and engaged.

In a focus group, one teacher emotionally recounted the important role that the school plays in the lives of many young people:

You think kids don’t appreciate the structure? They really need that structure… And saying goodbye to those kids at the end of the year, holy cow. It was like a tear fest and kids were just sobbing, and I was sobbing.

Click this link to read the entire case study  on the NYKids website.

As always, we thank you for your interest in NYKids and invite you to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.