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SEL FORWARD

Social and Emotional Learning Towards Meaningful Social Contribution

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The school or institution plays an important role in the success of this curriculum. It is critical that principals and administrators share the same vision of social and emotional learning and social activism. Without the support of the top-level administrators, it will be difficult for the teachers and students to implement and achieve the learning goals that culminates through a project-based learning (PBL) assessment. Professional development must be provided to faculties on how to implement a negotiated curriculum as well as prepare teachers with classroom management skills in this type of setting. At the same time, principals must trust teachers' decisions and support the activities by providing the required resources.

The classroom will be the primary space for learning. It is inside the classroom that students will begin to develop mindful habits through social interactions with their peers. However, learning will not be limited only within the walls of the classroom. This curriculum will make use of environments and communities outside of the classroom and beyond the school area. The surrounding environment will also be a concrete resource that can be interwoven with curriculum design (Krechevsky, et. al., 2016, p.12).

Learning resources are vital in building knowledge in the students. This curriculum will use culturally relevant materials or diverse literacies that relate to students demographics. Technology will be utilized for research, presentation of materials as well as creation tools for teachers and students. Resource speakers from civic organizations can help give students a realistic point of view on real-world problems and efforts. Lastly, field trips will be used as a source of knowledge for inquiries and investigations through experiential learning.

Contents and Activities will be guided by big ideas established in the overarching model of the curriculum. However, inquiries will be highly dependent on the outcome of classroom discussions. As students gain self-knowledge on their roles as an individual and as a member of their community, students will determine activities that they can engage in meaningfully as they immerse themselves in this curriculum. As the curriculum consists of four stages in an overarching model, it will allow students to go through times of reflection, questions and/or struggles. Any art, social studies or literacy lessons in the curriculum will represent the potential and the ability of meaningful and socially equitable contributions of the students.

In this process, the teachers' role is to pay attention to students’ interests and help expand and facilitate discussions about self-knowledge that will take place within and as a class. As the teacher is also a mentor to the students, the teacher must share the same vision and beliefs of mindfulness and social activism. The teacher will also act as students’ partners in learning and become part of the inquiry process themselves.

All of these roles of the teacher makes the teacher an active participant, who will also utilize the social and emotional skills they will have processed and gained along with the students. As the teacher engages in the development of the negotiated curriculum with his or her students, the teacher will be required to question and analyze his or her teaching philosophy closely so that it aligns with the agency and the equitable impact of the student body, the classroom as well as the school community that this curriculum aims to create.

The students' role is to voice their interest(s) as well as engage in meaningful and respectful discussions with each other by exhibiting the self-awareness that they have gained. Students in this curriculum will be the key movers of inquiries, discussions, and assessments. Their questions, opinions and understandings will shape the takeaways of this curriculum. Like in a democratic classroom, students in this curriculum are encourage to have a voice in matters of consequence and to engage in a process in which they consider another's perspective in order to reach solutions (Krechevsky, et. al., 2016, p.15).

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