Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System (Series)
Number Six — Lack of social/emotional learning
This article follows on from an article I published last week, titled “Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System: Number Five — Stifling of teacher’s creativity and growth”, where I discussed the fifth of twelve indictments, here is the sixth.
An important part of being a functioning adult in society is understanding and working through social situations and your own emotions. However, there is little to no focus on mental/emotional and social health in schools. We don’t have courses integrated into our curriculum for it, and our teachers and counselors don’t have the time to focus on it the way kids deserve.
Why it’s important —
When someone is going through something and doesn’t know how to reach out or ask for help, they will act out. Often, the kids we label as trouble are really just displaying a need. If we put more attention on developing their communication and tools to deal with their problems and emotions, we would have significantly fewer issues teaching our kids.
It’s common for kids, and adults for that matter, to have no understanding of what they are feeling or how to deal with it because no one teaches us this stuff. Many of us have a past riddled with broken relationships (of friends, family, and significant others) all due to the pure fact that we were unable to communicate our feelings and problems and it ended in fire. We hold it in, or we get sick of the other person not understanding our needs — whether we said them out loud or not — and then we explode and say things we can’t take back. Or we withdraw within ourselves and cut people off. It isn’t healthy for anyone and we all deserve better for ourselves and from each other.
Social Workers and Counselors Roles —
It’s common for teachers and counselors to absorb the tasks of a social worker because most schools simply don’t have one and I will admit that I didn’t even realize we needed them until I was out of school. To this day when I mention school social workers to people, they ask me what they do and how that’s different from school counselors. This is a major disconnect between ourselves and the community. Our schools remain completely separate from the world around us. Social workers are a big part of bringing us together.
We need school counselors and social workers in our schools to help because they have different roles in our children’s lives. School counselors have an academic focus, they are closer to teachers and often have more of a teaching role in classrooms, such as social and emotional learning (SEL) at the elementary level and then career and future-focused in middle and high school. Whereas social workers are the bridge between the community and the school. The social worker connects families to outside resources, they focus on attendance and projects that help connect students with others, and identify and address barriers to education and growth at a broader level. They are the link and we need them.
Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) —
At the end of the day, our schools are a part of a system and we need all the parts to help our kids thrive successfully. What our schools need is a tiered system to work with children on their mental/emotional and social skills just like we have for any other academic subject. The first tier would be a daily curriculum that teaches social and mental/emotional learning. Just like every other subject, it would be taught by a classroom teacher and they would cover things like how to be a good listener, how to manage conflict, basic level social emotions, etc. And just like every other subject, the complexity would go up with the grades.
This next piece is focused on repetition and practicing skills. Instead of just having a section on the basics with no follow-through or accountability, a full class would allow students to dedicate themselves to learning about these subjects and practicing their techniques. Perfect examples of this would be how to set boundaries, validate their needs, or how to be assertive and when. As a course, we can reiterate these things in the classroom and actually help our students grow as social/emotional creatures.
The next step of the tiered system would be for kids who just aren’t getting it, they are struggling with the material and they need more help. This would be the time that social workers and school counselors would step in to assist. They don’t take over, but rather run alongside the teachers to help develop social and emotional learning for all students in the school and therefore help promote overall wellness. This could be similar to when students were sent to reading teachers to help give them more time and skills to understand the subject in their own way. Insert whatever subject you would like in that sentence and it applies. We all need help with something and we need a system that will help us give extra attention in the areas we need it, social/emotional health included.
Where we need help —
We need our teachers, school counselors, and social workers all coming together to help our students better understand their emotions and how to deal with them. But we also need help from the districts, the parents/guardians, and the community in order to help us make this curriculum a reality in schools all over the country.
More schools need social workers and we need to push that. We need to push for this curriculum too. The need is there, we just have to bring attention to it and fight for the additional because I promise you, it is worth it.
