GREENWOOD Dist.–A nationwide discussion is underway in the education field about Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) regarding its benefits, placement, and whether it belongs in schools.
The largest district in the state of Oklahoma, Tulsa Public Schools, described how not only does it belong in school and is well integrated into its curriculum, but it is also the foundation of learning.
Starting in kindergarten, students learn to manage their emotions and gain skills in identifying and responding thoughtfully to each feeling. This year marks Stephanie Andrew’s 26th year at Tulsa Public Schools where she now serves as Executive Director of Student and Family Support Services. In her first year, she was a kindergarten teacher.
“I’m sure you’ve seen those posters that say, ‘everything you ever needed to know you’ve learned kindergarten; how to share, how to wait in line, how to have patience, how to not use mean words,’ right,” Andrews said. “That is emotional intelligence.”
Giving grace to young people
TPS Superintendent Dr. Ebony Johnson was once in Andrews’ position. She helped train educators on emotional intelligence through programming and encourages educators in the district to embrace emotional intelligence, especially in the field of youth development.
“I think it’s so important that we give grace to our young people as they are still trying to figure out how to navigate what they’re going through,” Dr. Ebony Johnson told the Black Wall St. Times.
“And so I think it’s so important that as adults, we understand that they’re at that stage, and we also give them the tools to know how to have strong emotional intelligence. Making sure that they know that we’re going to help them through their various stages and that this is a stage in which it can be a make or break for them when we’re talking about youth.”
Emotional Intelligence Defined
The Oxford Languages definition of emotional intelligence is “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” Workplaces define them as soft skills.
“There’s like 80 feeling words, and most of us only use four,” Andrews said.
“And what we know in companies that hire people is that they consider people that have soft skills are people that actually use more than four. It’s our responsibility to support our students and be able to recognize their feelings and be able to name them and label them so that they can decide what they want to do with it.”
Impact on Youth Development
Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in shaping youth development within academic settings, influencing their ability to engage in learning, build positive relationships, and handle challenges effectively.
“You have to do both the academics and you take care of everything the child brings you in the classroom because you can’t get to the academics unless you take care of the needs of the student,” Dr. Johnson said.
Say a student is struggling with a course in school. TPS educators are instilled with the proper training to build their emotions of perseverance, responsibility, and decision-making to help them succeed.
“I think it’s the difference between the student being able to get a job, stay in college, know how to interact with others, know how to work well with others, know how to conduct themselves in various settings and know how to actually have interpersonal skills and then be able to pulse check and know where they are on a mental and emotional level,” Dr. Johnson said.
Challenges
Andrews says her biggest challenge when training educators on emotional intelligence is when they feel like they’re doing extra work when it’s naturally built into their system,
“Sometimes a teacher might say, ‘Oh, I don’t have time to teach emotional intelligence.’ I’m like, you’re teaching it every day, and you just don’t even recognize it when you’re asking students to forgive each other, or you’re helping them work through a conflict,” Andrews says. “So I would say it’s just like being able to recognize that we do this naturally all the time, and then making decisions on how we can keep doing that.”
Tools and Programs for Social, Emotional Learning
TPS has many different programs implemented into their training. Many of them come from a book called the TPS Essential Practices Playbook. The material teaches educators to utilize charts or a mood meter to help the students clearly identify how they are feeling.
It also has what they call “3 Key Signature SEL Practices.” They include a warm welcome, engaging practices, and an optimistic closure.
“What we call an optimistic closure at the end of any class discussion is to bring back in mind what was taught in the class that day, and what our expectations of you are the next day,” Andrews said.
Each class has a classroom charter, which is where students have agreed on how they want to feel in their classroom. The next step is deciding what rules or procedures to put in place to feel that way, and what are the consequences if they don’t violate the charter.
“To me, that’s foundational, because if you’ve decided as a class, this is what we’re all going to do, this is how we want to feel, we all agreed on it, then that sort of takes the whole you’re picking on me out of the strategy. No, this is what we said we wanted. These were our rules,” Andrews says.
Conflict resolution
Then there are restorative conversations which are outlined in the playbook. This could be a conversation between a teacher and a student, a student to student, or a teacher and an adult. Essentially, it involves a mediator that can come in with no bias and help move the conversation along.
TPS Superintendent Dr. Johnson implemented a similar tool, called a conflict-resolution card, when she was a principal. It’s now being implemented more broadly in Tulsa Public Schools.
“A conflict-resolution card is literally a physical card that the students can go to any adult in the building and ask to have that card so that they can check out of a situation and go get some help,” Dr. Johnson says.
“This is an example of students still learning how to really build that emotional intelligence muscle and using that card as a way to then go and actually process before they actually have made a poor decision.”
Seeing the Change Personally
As Tulsa Public Schools leads the way in making emotional intelligence a core part of education, students are gaining skills that extend far beyond the classroom. By prioritizing Social, Emotional Learning from the earliest grades, TPS is helping young people build resilience, empathy, and self-awareness, preparing them for success in all areas of life.
“I’m born bred and raised in Tulsa, I went to Tulsa public schools, and I can just recall having educators that just made sure that I was okay as a whole person, and just checked in on me, and then also made sure that I learned,” Dr. Johnson says.
“I feel like that’s been a major influence on me as a superintendent. I think it’s critically important that we make sure that the student knows how much we care about them, while we’re also getting them to all their academic job and getting them all their academic needs met.”
As Dr. Ebony Johnson and her team continue to champion Social, Emotional Learning, they represent an example of how schools can nurture both the minds and hearts of students, fostering a generation that can lead with understanding and compassion.
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