Research says social and emotional learning is necessary for youth to develop into successful adult lives. Here is a story written by Katlyn Tautges, a True North member with the Duluth Community School Collaborative at Myers Wilkens Elementary School. Her efforts towards incorporating social and emotional learning lessons with the youth she works with have paid off! This is a story about Katlyn noticing a kid demonstrating social and emotional learning by using the practices taught in her lessons. Keep up the good work, Katlyn! Our youth really need these skills!
We had been covering social emotional learning (SEL) for a while now in class doing different lessons about how the brain works, and how sometimes we don’t think about our actions; we just act. I had been trying to instill in my students the importance of stopping to think, and being mindful when making decisions or saying words that may be hurtful.
There was a situation right before class, while walking up the stairs, where one student was making fun of another by commenting on his hairline, saying he should go home and have his mom fix it. It resulted in tears and I had the student sit in the hall while I got class started.
When I went out to meet him to talk about what had happened on the stairs he told me what had been said, and we talked about how we don’t always know where people are coming from that day and how words can have an effect on people that maybe we hadn’t intended. Something he thought wasn’t a big deal was to another student. He was very receptive to this and I had him rejoin the class.
Later, we had our SEL lesson going over mindfulness and what a mindful action looks like versus an unmindful one. To my surprise, that same student described an unmindful situation that happened a little less than an hour ago: making fun of peoples’ hairline. It was such a full circle learning moment. Not to say this child is now perfect and is always making good decisions, but when we were walking back down the stairs after class and the one student apologized to the other, I couldn’t have been more proud.
–Katlyn Tautges, Duluth Community School Collaborative-Myers Wilkins Elementary School