Feature Story: Raising Emotional Acuity, Cultural Responsiveness, & Healthy Behaviors: An Update on Our Custom SEL Program

academics social/ emotional R E A C H a

raising emotional acuity

cultural responsiveness

healthy behaviors

FEATURE STORY:

Raising Emotional Acuity, Cultural Responsiveness, & Healthy Behaviors: An Update on Our Custom SEL Program

By Dr. Sarah Sumwalt, Director of Social & Emotional Learning

At Langley, we are incredibly proud to have a unique, custom-made social and emotional learning (SEL) program that is tailored to the needs of our community. This program, titled REACH – Raising Emotional Acuity, Cultural Responsiveness, & Healthy Behaviors – was unveiled during the 2017-2018 academic year. REACH works in tandem with the academic program and Langley’s core values to foster students’ emotional intelligence, cultural responsiveness, and health and wellness.

The overarching goal of our program is to incorporate foundational knowledge, skills, and strategies to help our students develop emotion awareness and management, a deep understanding of their own and others’ identities, an appreciation of diversity with a focus on equity and inclusion, an ability to respond to social injustice, and a solid foundation in understanding the brain, body, and relationships in order to make healthy decisions.

The Langley School’s SEL program is taught across our school, although the nature of the lessons looks different depending on the developmental needs of our students. In our Primary and Lower School divisions, SEL lessons are taught by our teachers and our counseling team and are woven into morning meeting discussions, curricular lessons, and daily practices. Starting in fifth grade, students participate in an SEL class once per seven-day cycle, allowing us to more deeply cover the topics in our REACH program.

As we have built The Langley School’s curriculum, we have relied heavily on research out of the fields of education, psychology, child development, health, and human development and sexuality in order to ensure that we are including skills and knowledge known to predict future success.

Updates & Current Directions 2017-2018: During the 2017-2018 academic year, we focused on expanding the Emotional Acuity prong. Many of our classrooms started to use RULER, a program developed out of the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence, which focuses on teaching children how to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate emotions. One of the anchor tools that has come from RULER is the Mood Meter, a visual way to plot emotions according to energy level and pleasantness. Teachers in every division have incorporated the Mood Meter into their lessons to help students identify and regulate their emotions, and you will find this colorful visual hanging in every classroom. The skills and techniques from RULER continue to be interwoven with classroom discussions on feeling identification, creating calm and peaceful places in the classroom, mindfulness, and understanding the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

2018-2019: We focused on further developing the Cultural Responsiveness prong during the 2018-2019 academic year. In order to strengthen our community approach to teaching and practicing cultural responsiveness, faculty and staff participated in several professional development opportunities using anti-bias education frameworks. Faculty examined their curriculum according to the anti-bias standards, and both faculty and staff spent time examining their classrooms and office spaces to ensure that the diversity of our community was reflected in the materials, books, and resources displayed. Currently, classrooms across Langley’s Arc of Development are examining themes related to the domains of identity, diversity, justice, and action. In Middle School, students learn about the Big 8 Social Identifiers (ability, age, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status) as well as how stereotypes and bias surrounding these aspects of identity develop. Importantly, students learn how to challenge stereotypes while strengthening their own cultural awareness and sensitivity to difference.

2019-2020: This year, we have continued to focus on how to bolster our practice of Cultural Responsiveness, both inside and outside the classroom. For example, this fall, Middle School students attended a diversity workshop titled “Building Bridges: Stories Told, Stories Heard.” In

December, a group of faculty attended the National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference in Seattle. In early January, faculty and staff gathered to discuss our community vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Langley. And, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., we came together as a whole school community to share a variety of projects, illustrations, and lessons focused on identity, diversity, justice, and action that students completed in honor of Dr. King’s life. We are excited to continue to build, implement, and strengthen our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through the REACH program.

Another priority this year is expanding the Healthy Behaviors prong of the REACH program. The initial focus of this initiative has been with our Middle School students and we are currently developing and implementing lessons in our REACH classes that focus on a variety of topics related to mental and physical health, nutrition and sleep, body image, understanding and managing stress, substance use awareness, puberty, the development of the teenage brain, and human development, including reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth. In the Primary and Lower School, our Physical Education Department weaves in class discussions on a variety of topics related to health and wellness such as understanding how our bodies function during movement (i.e., nervous system, muscles, bones), nutrition, and healthy eating. We will continue to expand on lessons in the health and wellness domain in developmentally appropriate ways across the Arc of Development.

Future Directions We look forward to the continued development and implementation of Langley’s unique and custom-made REACH curriculum. As we look toward the future, below are several of our strategic goals for the program:

1. Continue to develop curricular connections to the REACH prongs of Emotional Acuity, Cultural Responsiveness, and Healthy Behaviors. 2. Implement human development lessons (i.e., puberty, reproduction, pregnancy, and childbirth) in the Middle School. 3. Increase collaboration with the Science and Physical Education Departments to bolster and increase health and wellness lessons on topics such as nutrition, body systems, and the brain. 4. Continue to formalize REACH lessons and provide teachers with strategies to manage spontaneous learning situations as they arise.

Highlights of REACH in Action

Below are just a few examples of the wonderful SEL work that is being done across divisions this year at Langley.

PS

As part of the Cultural Responsiveness prong, our preschool classrooms have explored a variety of cultural traditions and celebrations. Specifically, students have learned about Diwali and Three Kings Day. In addition, as part of our Martin Luther King assembly, students examined the quote, “Love is the key to the problems of the world,” exploring the ideas of love, unity, and identity. Students created a beautiful vision board that included hands painted in multicultural paint which displayed the diversity of our different skin colors.

Junior kindergarten students regularly use several breathing exercises from the "Flow" section of GoNoodle, including “rainbow breaths” and the “swirling reflection.” For “swirling reflection,” teachers also shake up a glitter jar and set it in the center of the room to watch as the class listens to the reflection. Students also listen to the singing bowl or to white noise, sometimes related to current academic themes (i.e., jungle/ bird noises or ocean waves). The teachers shared that their students really look forward to these activities focused on mindfulness. JK

For additional reading or home practice: Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents) by Eline Snel and A Still and Quiet Place for Teens: A Mindfulness Workbook to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions by Amy Saltzman

KKindergartners have been learning a variety of skills related to emotion identification. Students listened to the book, The Way I Feel, by Janan Cain and engaged in a conversation about facial expressions and gestures that accompany emotions such as a frown, smile, or furrowed eyebrows. Then students participated in a game during which they were given an emotion (i.e., sad, mad, scared, happy, surprised) and nonverbally showed the emotion using facial expressions and gestures. Peers then had a chance to guess the emotion, using the “clues” they were given. Students thought about how these “clues” could be helpful in supporting their friends.

Third-graders took part in a unit on mindfulness and the power of positive self-talk. Students read I Am Love: A Book of Compassion by Susan Verde and talked about the importance of self-care as well as the care for others. Students then created a “positive thought garden,” brainstorming thoughts about themselves and positive actions in which they could engage in order to shift their self-talk.

Students have also practiced mindful imagery by visualizing images that bring feelings of happiness, calmness, and peace. Along with deep breathing, mindful imagery has been powerful in helping students get their brains ready for learning.

First-graders have engaged in a variety of REACH lessons focused on friendship skills. They read How to Fill a Bucket and discussed how to show kindness and respect toward others, they practiced “I messages” for independent problem-solving, and they gave each other “compliment greetings” which involved starting the day with a compliment or kind word shared with a randomly selected peer. Students also regularly utilize the Mood Meter to practice identifying feelings and engage in discussions to strategize how to shift emotions when needed. In their SEL class, sixth-graders took part in a unit centered around the cognitive triangle which visually depicts the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Students first learned how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence one another and how changing one can dramatically change the consequences of events. They also examined a variety of unhelpful thinking styles, otherwise known as assumptions or misinterpretations, that often occur following ambiguous situations. Through role playing and video clips, students learned to challenge these thinking styles and generate more realistic (and generally more positive) ones. As one sixth-grader remarked, “When I have a negative thought, not only can I identify it, I can challenge the thought and it usually goes away.” 6

For additional reading: Conquer Negative Thinking for Teens: A Workbook to Break the Nine Thought Habits That Are Holding You Back by Mary Karapetian Alvord and Anne McGrath

Seventh-grade students spent the majority of the first trimester reviewing the Big 8 Social Identifiers: ability, age, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Students learned about the definitions of the terms, societal implications, and current research as well as how the identifiers have been shaped by historical events. Discussions also focused on how we can be culturally sensitive to the different social identifiers in our own community. After choosing a topic related to a specific social identifier, students explored and researched that topic, synthesized knowledge, and presented to their class using short videos, Powerpoint slides, and empirical data that was both quantitative and qualitative. Projects included the gender pay gap in pro women’s sports, the domino effect of socioeconomics on students in the U.S., and race and the criminal justice system. 7

Throughout the first trimester, eighth-grade students engaged in a unit on healthy relationships in which they learned about the qualities and characteristics that can determine whether a relationship is healthy. They discussed the importance of qualities such as open communication, respect, and honesty as well as the critical importance of respecting boundaries and seeking consent. They also reviewed a series of relationship statements (i.e., “I have fun,” “I can be myself,” “I can say no,” “I treat others well when I’m around this person”) and the factors that can determine whether or not these relationship statements hold true. Students thought deeply about the qualities that were most important to them in a potential relationship as well as what factors would be “deal breakers.” The unit culminated in a project where students identified a relationship from a television series or a movie and assessed whether the relationship was healthy or unhealthy. “Over the past several REACH classes, I've learned how to identify toxic relationships,” said one eighth-grader. “We also learned how to deal with these negative relationships. I've used these tactics in my personal life in friendships and at home.” 8 4

Fourth-grade classrooms have explored a variety of REACH topics, both through the curriculum and through explicit lessons. Students learned about different types of self-talk, including selftalk that is positive and motivates and self-talk that is negative and can interfere with learning. Students then practiced reframing or “flipping” negative self-talk to be more positive and more reflective of a growth mindset. To make the practice even more engaging and fun, students wrote their own positive and negative self-talk and used pretend frying pans to “flip” their thoughts. In another REACH lesson, students learned about the significance of sharing gratitude as they kept gratitude journals and talked about how gratitude can contribute to happiness and reduce feelings of distress. These discussions culminated in students working with their grandparents and special friends to create gratitude wreaths.