Emotional Safety within SEL
I am currently putting together a research study on emotional safety and am curious to hear your responses to: how might emotional safety relate to SEL? How might it not?
What do you suppose needs to happen first, SEL skills or an emotionally safe environment to do so? Even though I am not an advocate for "what comes first, the chicken or the egg" type of questions, my post stirred this question!
I look forward to any insights or responses. Keep up the great work everyone!
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This is a great question. I
This is a great question. I do think an emotionally safe environment is crucial to effective SEL instruction because it is a model of what types of interactions, norms, rituals, etc. yield socially and emotionally mature people. It's hard to do because we teach and work with humans--with very wide and very real ranges of emotions--and it's unrealistic to expect each student (and/or teacher) to always make the right choices and to interact positively and appropriately all the time. But I do think that a teacher's most important job (from the very first day of school) is to create a space in the classroom that invites the students to be themselves and express themselves honestly and vulnerably.