Education Week - September 11, 2019 - 8

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grew out of what EASEL researchers
were hearing from educators on why
they were holding back from teaching
social-emotional skills.
"Folks wanted to do it, but they
wanted it to be integrated in the instructional work they are already
doing," said Stephanie Jones, the director of EASEL. "We began to think
about the problem of implementation
by brainstorming ways to do SEL in
little bites, in small, routine, structure-based ways that you could imbed
in a school in a way that is harder to do
with a curriculum."
Research has found that strong
social-emotional skills are linked to
better achievement, attendance, and
mental health in students, to name a
few benefits. These attributes are also
valuable for creating positive school
environments and for students' success in the workforce and life.
To make these benef its more
widely available to schools, Jones
and her team set out to find common
elements in existing SEL programs.
For example, every curriculum they
examined had a strategy for teaching students how to calm down when
dealing with big emotions- physiological regulation is the technical
term. Then they built kernels around
those common elements.
Kernels are also designed to be
adaptable. Teachers are encouraged
to tinker with the kernels and mold
them to the needs and interests of
their classrooms. If their students are
really into Star Wars, and a particular
kernel teaches a breathing exercise in
order to help students self-regulate,
a teacher could call it "Darth Vader
breathing," said Jones.
"Everyone in the school has agency
and ownership over the process," she
said. "But at the same time, the core
of the strategy is still grounded in an
evidence base."
To an outsider, kernels may look
like ice-breaker activities with a
series of questions at the end that
get students "thinking about their
thinking," said Christopher Williams. He helped Jones pilot kernels
in a couple of elementary schools
in Sacramento, Calif., while he was
a graduate student. He is now the
mental health services coordinator
for the Sacramento County Office of
Education.
For example, one kernel includes a
game of focus called Zip, Zap, Zop. A
student will clap their hands toward
a peer of their choice and say "zip."
The receiving student will then clap
their hands at another peer and say
"zap," and so on. If a student breaks
the chain by saying zip, zap, or zop out
of order, they're out of the game.
Then come the questions, said
Williams.

"What was the point? Is it important
to focus? And then what strategies did
you use?" he said. "What are other
areas of the school day or your life
where it is important to focus?"
These small exercises are showing
promising results in some schools.

Suspensions Plummet
One of the early schools to pilot kernels was Hagginwood Elementary in
Sacramento, where Gina Pasquini is
the principal. Her students bring a lot
of stress with them to school. They
come from poor families. Many have
a parent in jail. And a sizable percentage are homeless.
Students often acted out in school,
resulting in high rates of discipline.
The school of 380 K-6 students had
120 out-of-school suspensions in 201617. That's when Pasquini launched an
effort to turn those numbers around,
in part by using kernels to teach social-emotional skills.
The transition from recess back
into the classroom was a particularly
fraught time in the school.
"Students would really hang onto
whatever issue they had with another
student, or if they had been reprimanded by one of the [staff on recess
duty], they would just bring that into
the classroom and not be able to move
on from it," said Pasquini.
So teachers began using exercises
after recess that included structured
discussions about what took place
during recess, and if there had been
a problem, how students could solve
it and move on. The goal is to help
them leave behind the drama of the
playground and refocus on their academics.
The school has seen the number of
suspensions drop. In 2017-18, suspensions were halved to 66. Last year, the
school logged only 25. The number of
times students were sent to the principal's office for discipline also declined
significantly.
"The culture here is completely different than it was three years ago,"
Pasquini said. "I have way less teacher
turnover. ... They were completely
burnt out. They want to be teachers,
not just counselors or crowd control."
The ease of implementation was
a big draw for Pasquini. Kernel activities come printed on small cards
that are color-coded for the category
of skill they are aimed at developing. Each activity takes only about
10 minutes-with very little teacher
prep or training required-and can
be done inside and outside of the
classroom.
Kernels, said Jones, can be woven
through the entire school day, embedded in existing curriculum and
executed not just in the classroom,
but in the cafeteria, the playground,
and in the hallways.

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 11, 2019 | www.edweek.org

'Kernels' for Teaching Social-Emotional Skills
Belly Breathing
What is it? A
calming breathing
technique
What is it about? Practicing
emotion/behavior regulation
Target grade: All grades
What it looks like: Teachers
have students breathe deeply
through their noses and notice
their bellies expand, and then
exhale through their mouths and
notice as their bellies collapse.
Teachers then ask students if
they felt a difference before
and after the breaths. They
ask students to think of times
during the day-at school and at
home-to use belly breathing to
calm their emotions.

Magic 8 Ball
What is it? A
discussion strategy
What is it about? Building
problem-solving skills
Target grade: All grades
What it looks like: Teachers ask:
"If a person does X, what might
happen?" Students then "look"
inside their magic 8 balls and
give potential consequences
of the action, as well as the
consequences of their prior
responses. Teachers can follow
up by asking students if they see
the consequences discussed
as positive, negative, or neutral,
and what other situations they
might need to imagine an
outcome.

Dear Abby
What is it? A
discussion that uses
scenarios to explore
character and citizenship
What is it about? Making
responsible, ethical, healthy
choices in difficult situations
Target grade: 5th grade
What it looks like: Using a
dilemma from a Dear Abby
column, teachers ask students to
discuss solutions in small groups
or to role-play what different
dilemmas and their solutions
might look like. Teachers then ask
whether students need additional
information to better understand
the dilemma and how they think
other characters in the scenario
would see the situation.

SOURCE: Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning, Harvard University

Salgu Wissmath for Education Week

Can Small, Easy
Lessons Make SEL
Easier to Teach?

"Sometimes what can happen
with SEL is that it gets relegated to
a special space," said Jones. "Like ...
the school counselor comes in and
teaches it on Friday afternoon, and
that separates the work into one spot.
But SEL is in every setting and interaction. It's part of being human. If
things get separated into one space,
the work is not happening as effectively as it should."

Need for Explicit Teaching
Lawrence Aber, a professor of psychology and public policy at New
York University, describes the first
generation of social-emotional programs as having positive results but
hard for schools to implement because of their complexity. He's optimistic that the kernels method will
bring a purposeful approach to teaching SEL skills into more schools.
Schools, he said, are teaching social-emotional learning, or character
development, whether they intend to
or not.
"It's not whether schools have a
social-emotional curriculum-it's
how explicit it is and how evidenced-

based it is," he said. "If you hit kids or
let them run wild, that's training kids
not to self-regulate."
But, Aber said, even among SEL
advocates, not everyone is sold on the
idea of kernels.
"I think there is a variable reception along the lines of 'leave my programs alone' to 'hallelujah for something bite-sized, evidence-based, and
easier to manage,' " he said.
Joe Aleardi runs a summer academic program for disadvantaged
students in Bridgeport, Conn., and he
has seen kernels work well in that environment. Horizons at Green Academy was the first testing ground for
kernels, and teachers there have been
using them for three summers now.
Because they only have students
for six weeks, Horizons focuses on
a couple of core skills for each grade
such as learning how to focus or express their emotions.
To help them practice focusing,
they play a game called "My Hat Has
Three Corners," in which students
learn a chant and then have to repeat it while replacing certain words
with hand motions. To help students
build a vocabulary for expressing

Second graders at Hagginwood
Elementary School in Sacramento,
Calif., play a game in their classroom
after recess to help them move past
conflicts that may have happened
on the playground.

their feel ings, teachers may choose
to do what's called a "feeling circle,"
where students are encouraged to
explore their emotions in-depth as
teachers prompt them with questions like, "What do feelings feel like
in your body?"
"Some of these SEL skills that we
are teaching don't always get picked
up unless taught explicitly [and] are
going to be the difference in allowing
our kids to be successful contributing members of society as well as
their ability to be able to read and do
math," said Aleardi.
"You can't have one without the
other."
Coverage of social and emotional
learning is supported in part by a grant
from the NoVo Foundation, at
www.novofoundation.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.

http://www.novofoundation.org http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - September 11, 2019

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