Connecting Social, Emotional Learning and Academics

S. Indira Narayan

S. Indira Narayan is an educationist with more than 35 years of rich experience in the teaching field. She has held multiple portfolios. She has been associated with St. Ann’s High School, ICSE, ISC, Secunderabad, for over three decades, teaching English language and English literature for classes 10, 11 and 12. The last portfolio she held was as Academic Coordinator, St. Ann's High School, at Kompally Hyderabad, under the same management.

Indira Narayan has conducted numerous workshops for school teachers and continues to do so. She is also interested in writing and blogs regularly on http://vinplaksha.wordpress.com/

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It is an acknowledged fact that the social and emotional environment of a student does play an important role in his academic performance. The home, school, peers and teachers all have a bit to contribute to this.

There was this young boy, a Class 9 student at a co-educational school with which I was associated, who would mostly sport a smile on his face even when the teaching was going on; something that caught my attention. He would ask silly doubts or make some wisecracks that would make the entire class laugh. He seemed to enjoy this reaction. Once in a while, this may seem ok. Sadly, this was a regular feature. I would observe that the other students were not laughing ‘with’ him but were laughing ‘at’ him and his silliness. His performance in his studies was not up to the mark in most subjects, but he was quite good in Mathematics. I used to visit his class once in a while to take motivational, self-improvement or remedial classes. When talking to him, one could assess that he was quite intelligent. So, why?

I soon realized that he was an attention seeker and hence this behavior of making silly comments. When the class laughed, he felt they enjoyed his comments, which in turn made him continue. I would talk to him once in a while and he respected me and was quite receptive. One information I got about him was that his parents did not stay together and that he and his mother were staying with his maternal grandfather, who was taking care of them. The problem between the boy’s parents was quite a serious one; presumably the father was the cause. His mother had a small time job. Not being very financially comfortable, they had their problems. They lived about 22 km away from the school. To reach school on time, he had to catch the public transport by 7 am.

Though there were some schools near their home, the boy’s mother was keen that he study in this well recognized school, known for its good academic and all-around background. You can conclude that returning home must be quite a journey for this lad; it must be very exhausting. The reason for my giving such details is to throw light on how an emotional environment and social status can impact a person, more so as a growing child. With a mother beset with running the home, separated from his father, partly dependent on her father, life could not have been hunky dory. Seeking attention that he could not get at home, the boy sought it outside, primarily at school, where he spent much of his time.

A one-to-one talk with him made me understand part of the reasons for his attention-seeking actions. Like I mentioned earlier, this boy was intelligent, but his behaviour had made many conclude that he was just a silly fellow. Sad and more so because most of his teachers did not go that extra mile to understand him, talk to him, quell some of his anxieties or tap his intelligence. Speaking to him off and on, I made him realize that his friends were laughing at him and not with him and that he should stop making wisecrack comments, advice he tried to honor.

So much for the state of one student. It is not always about the children from broken homes or not very well-to-do homes. I have known many other cases of children, especially young girls who come from upper-middle-class families, who have just gone down the academic slide due to unpleasant occurrences at their homes.

The concept of Social and Emotional learning involves students being trained to:

• Recognize their strong and weak points and be able to address them.

• To learn to manage and control their lives without resorting to attention-seeking tactics.

• To take time to observe and understand their peers and empathize, where required, without making insensitive remarks about the seemingly weak classmates or not allowing negative remarks to upset them.

Blending the social and emotional learning into their daily teaching schedules should not be difficult for teachers as it just involves being a bit more focused in shaping ‘ the tone of the classroom, model kindness, problem solving and help children learn to manage emotions and gain the social skills needed to form healthy relationships.’

Being fortified with these will possibly create less number of students like the boy I mentioned. Teaching is undoubtedly demanding and the ability to detect, help and support cases like those I have mentioned earlier in this article is not only a duty but a challenge.

It is important that the teacher be emotionally strong, stable-minded, understanding, and tolerant of students' ineptitudes to be able to bring an emotional and socially conscious awareness in them. We cannot give what we do not possess. A sound mind and a sound body will create a sound society, right?