What’s the Sell on SEL?

NYKids is delighted to highlight this guest blog. As this research is not our own, please direct any comments or questions to the author.

By, Michael Burns, Children’s Book Author and Early Learning Principal, Questar III BOCES

If you have followed me at all through my children’s books, presentations or articles you’d know I am a huge proponent of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). But if you aren’t in education you may not know what SEL even stands for and why it is so important. If you are an educator, you may be curious about my book and how it might be used to support SEL with your students. I welcome you to read on….

SEL Defined and Where Do We Sit with Prioritizing SEL in 2024?

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), SEL is:

the process through which children, youth, and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

SEL isn’t anything new; in fact it has been around for a long time, but how it’s being discussed and delivered now is different. Instead of a guidance counselor coming into a classroom once a month or periodically to talk about feelings we now have New York State benchmarks related to SEL from early elementary through twelfth grade.

You may have known SEL as character education or soft skills. No matter the name or acronym what it comes down to is teaching students how to manage their emotions and feelings. If you are my age, you probably were told as a kid to “suck it up” or “it’s just a stomachache.” If I had a SEL toolbox as a kid, I probably wouldn’t have spent so much time in the nurse’s office during Middle School. I wasn’t sick, I was nervous! I can laugh about it now when I talk about that one teacher that scared us to death, or fear of failing my Social Studies test because if I did I would have detention. I actually had a teacher who kept a razor in his desk and if you had one strand of stubble popping from your chin, you had to go and shave it off. The nurse’s office during period 3 looked like a line to get on a ride at Disney World, and we didn’t have Genie Plus lightning lanes to skip those lines back then!  It was real then and it is real now. The difference is we are more aware and educated about mental health.

Learning to Apply SEL

I have been in education for over 20 years. I started as a teacher and now am an early learning principal with Questar III BOCES. I have seen stress with my colleagues, my students, and parents. No matter the audience, if you are self-aware and can talk through it, generally you will get through it. I have found over the years that being a good listener has really helped deescalate many who were having a hard time managing their emotions.

It works, I have proof! As a father of two young girls, my wife and I often talk about our emotions. Our girls can communicate with us that their stomachache is either because they ate too much candy or because they are worried about something. They have a small toolbox, in essence because my wife and I understand it and have been able to work with them on strategies with self-management, social awareness and decision-making. Does this mean they don’t worry or have anxiety? Of course not! It just means they know what these feelings mean and that they can manage them to an extent.

Kids and adults aren’t that different. We as adults just have more life experiences, but some kids have more trauma in their first 5 years than some adults have in a lifetime. As teachers, we need to understand that every student is different and has their own history. This goes the same with parents. I know many parents over the years that have been traumatized from a bad experience at school, and they carry that with them into adulthood. Our responses to trauma shouldn’t just be “as teachers” it should be as bosses, as colleagues, and as human beings. We all need to recognize that on every given day you will encounter someone that is going through a lot, and it could be the person reading this blog.

“Nervous Rex” and SEL

During COVID, I went back to writing and published my first children’s book, “Nervous Rex.” This is about a baby T-Rex that can’t manage his emotions and anxiety. It’s not until he meets a frog named Mort, who offers some tools from his own toolbox that he comes to better understand his emotions.

My motivation to write Nervous Rex came from my daughter. It’s easy to say “I don’t have time” because of this or that, but when your daughter is your motivation, it’s easier. Back in 2020, I was making phone calls as we had a student who tested positive for COVID. This prompted me calling our nurse, getting class rosters, and calling all students who may have been in close contact with the infected student. Good times! Well, my daughter asked me to draw with her that day. I almost said, “I don’t have time.” But, I said, “Sure let’s draw.” She asked me to draw a dinosaur, which I did, and while I was drawing it, she looked anxious. And I asked her, “Are you nervous?” I looked at the dinosaur and it clicked. From there I started writing feverishly. She motivated me and most importantly she was my advisor. From the story, to characters, to art direction, she was with me every step of the way.

That was the best part of it all, writing this book with my daughter’s insight. What’s also great is talking with kids about mental health when I visit schools for author visits. Many already have that toolbox built as early as kindergarten and can talk about strategies they use to manage anxiety. They are using strategies which will help them handle that panic attack before a test or take a step out of the batter’s box, take a deep breath, refocus and get back in the swing of things.

Working with NYKids

Through my experiences I also had the opportunity to work with NYKids back in 2022. At the time I was a Middle School Principal. I learned a lot about myself during that time and also how the pandemic affected everyone. What I loved about working with NYKids was their commitment to research in action and continual improvement in a variety of areas including SEL. Their latest study of Positive and Emergent Positive Outlier Schools in New York State devotes one line of inquiry to the social-emotional needs of students and the ways participating schools have addressed them.

So what’s the sell on SEL? Call it what you want, but at the end of the day it’s helping our kids build life skills that will help them grow, mature and be self-reliant adults. There is still so much to do. Now I am on book number two, which is all about Mort and the tools he learned from some new characters.

Michael Burns is Early Learning Principal at Questar III BOCES. You can learn more about his books at www.michaelwburns.com or purchase them through other booksellers.