SEL: Understanding Your Emotions
How is PIQE responding to this need?
As children returned to in-person instruction, their social-emotional needs have continued to impact their learning. We listened to the struggles that families and educators were facing and highlighted the Social-Emotional Learning component in our Family Engagement curriculum to discuss the importance of SEL not only in school but at home and for the students’ well-being.
It is important to help our children develop the ability to know and identify the wide range of emotions they are experiencing. They need to know that their feelings are okay, and that it is the behavior that they need to learn to manage.
Our SEL program is the second most offered program at PIQE. Last year, over 1600 families completed our 9-week course. Our program was designed for families with students in grades K-12. It is an introduction to the importance of Social Emotional Learning and its impact on academic success.
If we want our students to be ready to continue successfully on their academic path towards the university, it is imperative that we pay attention to their social-emotional health.
The 5 Core SEL Competencies
The 5 core competencies focus on abilities vital to the Social-Emotional Learning. They were designed to accurately identify the skills required to succeed in multiple areas of life.
- Self-Awareness: The ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. The ability to accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.” Recognizing how your thoughts and feelings impact your behavior can encourage you to make positive changes in your life and take the perspective that will provide new insight into your own decisions, interests, and actions.
- Self-Management: The ability to successfully regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations — effectively managing stress, controlling impulses, and motivating oneself. The ability to set and work toward personal and academic goals. A person feels good about themselves when they learn to manage resources like time, energy, money, possessions, and talents. They feel like they have more control over what happens to them in school and life.
- Social Awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The ability to understand social and ethical norms for behavior and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports. Positive interactions are based on competencies that are promoted by SEL, like empathy, respect, kindness, listening actively, cooperation and fairness.
- Relationship Skills: The ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with others. The ability to communicate clearly, listen well, cooperate with others, understand appropriate and inappropriate social behaviors, resist social pressure, negotiate conflict constructively and seek and offer help when needed. Relationship skills are important at school with peers and teachers, and in professional areas with colleagues and bosses. If you have the ability to make positive relationships with those you learn and work with, you are contributing to a more positive school or work environment.
- Responsible Decision-Making: The ability to make constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions based on ethical standards, safety concerns and social norms. It requires you to consider the consequences of different potential actions, understand your strengths and limitations, and to know when to ask for more help when needed in making certain important decisions.