Social emotional learning is the process of managing emotions, setting and achieving goals, and the ability to develop relationships with others. Through this, people learn how to handle their emotions and respond to the emotions of others. Conscious discipline is a type of discipline that eliminates the punishment/reward aspect of it. With conscious discipline comes encouragement, assertiveness, empathy, and choices.
How can it be used in the classroom?
There are many ways that you can incorporate social emotional learning into the classroom. For example, you can have a "Calm Down Corner" that students can go to reduce their stress or calm their emotions. This can be a designated spot in the classroom that has a very peaceful setting. Give the students a time limit so they don't spend the whole class time in the corner. Also, you can incorporate daily check ins with your students to give them the chance to talk about their day and their feelings. One way to incorporate conscious discipline is by using conflict resolution sentence starters. Practice with your students on how to respectfully resolve a problem with another student. Give them sentence stems to help them start off their conversation. For the teacher, be encouraging to your students and help them understand responsible decision making.
How does this impact student learning?
There are so many positive benefits to social emotional learning and conscious discipline. First, they allow students to be aware of their emotions and how to handle them. They help students to empathize with others and their feelings. They teach students how to accept the consequences of poor decisions and how to turn negatives into positives. This helps students set goals for themselves and achieve those goals. Not only does it allow them to develop a good sense of themselves, but it allows them to have more positive and intentional relationships with others.
What is the cost?
Helping students understand themselves and others is priceless. This may take time for students to get use to, but overall the benefits will be numerous. Yes, there may be days where the students don't want to talk about their feelings or the conscious discipline just isn't cutting it. However, don't stop using it just because of one bad day. You may also have to take the time to get used to it yourself. It is very different than how we were taught in school, but there is a reason that it is being implemented in schools now.
Bonus Info:
Here are some apps ans strategies that you can check out if you are interested in incorporating social emotional learning and conscious discipline into your classroom!
- Calming Bottle Activities
- SuperBetter
- Smiling Mind
- Peekapak
Final Thoughts:
One new and exciting strategy I learned from this was the "Time Machine" method for conscious discipline. This strategy gives six steps for students to follow if their is a conflict in the classroom. It walks students through the process and also incorporates social and emotional learning. The students have to roll back time, wish each other well, agree to solve the problem, breathe and relax, then use respectful conflict resolution sentence starters to solve the problem. I would love to use this in my classroom to help students practice conflict resolution in a fun way. Instead of making a negative situation more negative, this method quickly turns it into a positive. The students get to share how they are feeling and practice empathizing with the other students. I think this would really impact students and help them to solve problems on their own later on in life.
Check out this video to see how an elementary school has incorporated social emotional learning into their curriculum!
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