Have you ever set guiding principles for yourself and your classroom to incorporate and increase social-emotional learning and skill development? Guiding principles are more of an educational philosophy that encompasses shared beliefs and values that guide an organization (in this case, a classroom) through common circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals or type of work. Guiding principals create a classroom culture where everyone understands what's important.

Most teachers would describe their day as 'too much to do' with 'so much more' sprinkled on top in the modern-day classroom. It feels like an unending balancing act of classroom expectations, learning expectations and behavior expectations for both students and teachers. Teachers often try to shield students from this never-ending amount of expectations, only to carry too much weight themselves, which leads to an unending stress cycle and compassion fatigue. 

The Weight of Lacking Social-Emotional Skills

Often, this weight becomes overwhelming in a classroom when students lack the necessary social-emotional skills to succeed in a school setting. Teachers often feel like they don’t have the necessary time to help students adequately develop the skills they need to help themselves and their classmates. 

Social-emotional skills attainment and degree are sometimes widely variants depending on a child’s past, present or neurological framework. Social-emotional skills are also developmental and need time to be nurtured and refined through a supported practice of trial, error, problem-solving, conflict resolution and resilience building.

Trust me, as a teacher, I get it and have lived it. Today’s classroom doesn’t often allow room to grow a wide skill base socially and emotionally. It is more of a grab-and-go model of presenting and hoping students grab onto the concept because you have to keep going or you'll fall behind. And while school systems often use words like whole-child development, there is typically a hierarchy of expectations for whole-child learning that often segment learning from whole-student wellness.

Tip to Increase Social-Emotional Learning in the Classroom

I suggest setting up guiding principles for teaching and your classroom and allowing these social-emotionally driven principles to direct the trajectory of your day. As educators, we so often look to fit social-emotional learning around the academic standards we are required to teach, or as a 30-minute 'grab-and-go' lesson instead of the main course. This doesn’t leave much room for social-emotional learning. 

When you set guiding principles as your main course, meaning the guiding principle driving your lesson, you will find that it is much easier to implement and integrate SEL into academic standards and make progress in teaching students the skills they need when they need them.

Guiding Principles Are Not Lesson Plans or Extra Things To Do

Think of them as the mode of transportation that gets you to whatever the academic destination is. Think of it as a car ride where you don't know where you were going or how you are supposed to get there. It can be stressful, and that stress can cause a student to create mindset blocks or emotional regulation issues about the destination (the academic content). When you use guiding principles to take you on your journey, students begin to develop comfort in developing and using the social-emotional skill set to help them learn and develop relationships necessary to grow. They should help you streamline and put your journey toward the learning goal on a more steady path, with fewer stops and without running out of fuel. 

If you have never tried setting guiding principles to support SEL in the classroom, give it a try and notice how students begin to feel supported as whole-learning participants. To get you started, I have listed some guiding principles I have used before and shared some that I have seen mentor teachers use.

Guiding Principal Examples to Build Social-Emotional Development

1. Our guiding principle is whole-person health. This means that your mental, physical, cultural and spiritual health are important and respected in this classroom. We practice and develop skill sets to support whole-person health.

2. Our guiding principle is deep understanding. This means going past what we think we know and opening ourselves up to not knowing and understanding. To do this, we must create a space of vulnerability and sharing.

3. Our guiding principle is recognizing and respecting human rights. This includes deepening our understanding surrounding systemic racism, stigma, environmental adversity and social disadvantage.

4. Our guiding principle is building relationships and bonds of reciprocal empathy and respect. We reach these through shared experiences, responsibilities and our willingness to be open. We must create a space where diversity can exist and thrive.

5. Our guiding principle is our awareness that we are contributors to a greater whole. Our strengths lie in our ability to be creative, practice resilience and endurance and grow respectful and sustainable practices for the systems we belong to.

How Can You Get Started?

What would it look like for you as a teacher, if when you went to plan a lesson, you chose one of those guiding principles to be your vehicle of delivery? It helps students feel like they are getting in a safe, reliable mode of transportation. They understand expectations at the social-emotional level and can apply those skills to their learning. Because you will be using a guiding principle consistently, students begin to feel secure in the value of their social-emotional well-being. 

• How would you plan your lesson differently?

• How would you incorporate more SEL skill-building into the lesson to bring those principles to life?

• How would they need to contribute to the car ride so that it is an interactive experience that builds upon those principles?

Knowing the answers to these questions ensures that students have an opportunity to contribute to the principles, creating a sense of shared responsibility, unity and understanding that lessons can build self-concept and understanding needed for the destination.