Belonging: The Heart of Social and Emotional Learning
By Meena Srinivasan, Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership
Explore Part 1 of our series, “Voices in Social Studies” where educators and thought leaders share the latest in social studies teaching and learning.
Belonging is often characterized as an emotional need we all have to feel seen and connected. While this is true, as educators it’s important to expand and contextualize our understanding of what belonging truly means, especially as our nation faces a deep sense of polarization. True belonging calls upon us to cultivate an expansive, compassionate quality where we enlarge our circles of concern and interrogate all the ways in which we consciously and unconsciously engage in acts of othering. Othering includes any action where we mentally classify someone as “not one of us.” In doing so, we dismiss another’s humanity, worth, and dignity.
In a climate of polarization, john a. powell, advises that there are two paths we can take: The path of breaking where we have a small notion of “we” and focus only on “what we know and who we know.” The other path is bridging, where we challenge ourselves to connect, cultivate empathy, understand other perspectives and seek common ground. In bridging, we create a much larger sense of “WE.” Bridging is hard work and the skills and competencies cultivated in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) are the “how” of bridging.
What is Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)?
SEL refers to the essential skills and competencies we all need for life success. These include self-awareness, goal setting, self-regulation, empathy, social awareness, relationship skills, and problem-solving.
This excerpt from the Aspen Institute’s definition takes into account the importance of context when engaging in SEL. It positions SEL as more than just a set of skills and competencies developed irrespective of culture and community — or as something only for young people. One of the most important aspects of this definition is the emphasis on addressing adult skills and beliefs. SEL is not about fixing students but rather about seeing the whole picture of who we are, especially our strengths and assets.
“These skills and competencies develop in a complex system of contexts, interactions, and relationships and it is not just about the skills that students and adults possess and deploy; it is also about the features of the educational setting itself, including culture and climate” (Aspen Institute, 2018).
Explore the new 6–12 U.S. and World History programs:
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Transformative SEL and Equity
One aspect of SEL that until recently has been underemphasized is the importance of equity. The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the nation’s leading organization for advancing the field of SEL through research, policy and practice, put forward their evolved definition of SEL (with example indicators) in 2020:
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.
SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.
— (CASEL, 2020)
This encourages us to notice when SEL is reduced to an “intervention to address the perceived deficits of students of color or students living in poverty while ignoring the impact of inequities in our systems” and instead to utilize SEL as a force for developing “student agency to lead positive change in their own communities” (Chatmon & Osta, 2018).
CASEL has developed equity elaborations to their framework of interdependent SEL competencies that explore how SEL can truly be culturally responsive and deepen our understanding of racial stress, systemic oppression, and implicit bias.
We know from research that belonging plays an important role in students’ school life (Korpershoek, Canrinus, Fokkens-Bruinsma, and deBoer, 2018) but fostering belonging through a transformative SEL lens means that we all strengthen our SEL competencies to better connect across race, class, gender, learning needs, disability and age. Most importantly, within this process of creating belonging we also need to “eliminate or reduce the negative effects of harmful and oppressive structures. Equity-based strategies and decolonizing efforts are intrinsic to the work of belonging and prioritizing the right to belong is vital in order to have a thriving and politically engaged populace” (Sonali Sangeeta Balajee).
You Can’t Talk About Belonging If You Don’t Talk About Power
As educators on the path of enacting a greater sense of belonging we must first examine our own power and privilege. This requires deeply looking at our identity and its many facets and the multitude of ways we are reinforcing oppressive structures. It involves unpacking how systemic racism affects different populations in different ways and employing a targeted universal approach that is inclusive of everyone’s needs but pays particular attention to the situation of the marginalized groups (john a. powell).
Our beliefs drive our teaching and our capacity to co-construct a community of belonging in our classrooms and schools. In “Toward Transformative Social and Emotional Learning: Using an Equity Lens” key questions are offered that support us in “reexamining our perspectives on the intersections between our sense of self and how society may view us and those around us” (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, Borowski, 2018). This is a very important step because “reexamining perspectives can lead to action” (2018) when we deeply reflect on questions like: What do I believe about this student/my students?
Curiosity & Interconnection
Engaging in our own deep inner work helps us to continue strengthening our capacity both for bridging and for teaching how to bridge by holding a stance of curiosity at all times — curiosity is the antidote to judgement. When we continuously grow our curiosity muscle, we are more inclined to understand someone else’s point of view and experiences and interrogate our own limiting beliefs. As we strengthen our SEL competencies (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making) we are better able to teach and engage in mutual understanding and compassionate dialogue. We can then move from our head to our hearts and feel our shared suffering because we are interconnected.
As we engage in the thoughtful, urgent, transformative work necessary for everyone to survive and thrive, social and emotional learning serves as both a foundation and a springboard to action. True belonging must be intentionally cultivated and systemically safeguarded. We have the tools to support and sustain this work; whether we attain it is in our collective hands.
Explore the new 6–12 U.S. and World History programs:
🌏 Inspire students to experience history through multiple lenses and inquiry as they learn to practice civil discourse on their way to becoming future-ready citizens.
Works Cited
Aspen Institute. (2018, May). Pursuing social and emotional development through a racial equity lens: A call to action (Issue brief). Retrieved from https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2018/05/Aspen-Institute_Framing-Doc_Call-to-Action.pdf
Balajee, S. S. (2018, October 12). An Evolutionary Roadmap for Belonging and Co-Liberation. Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://www.otheringandbelonging.org/evolutionary-roadmap-belonging-co-liberation/
Bridging — Towards A Society Built on Belonging: Animated Video + Curriculum. (2018, November 14). Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bridging-towards-society-built-belonging-animated-video-curriculum
Canrinus, E., Korpershoek, H., Fokkens-Bruinsma, M., & DeBoer, H. (2019). The relationships between school belonging and students’ motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education: A meta-analytic review. Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02671522.2019.1615116
Chatmon, L. R., & Osta, K. (2018, August 20). 5 steps for liberating public education from its deep racial bias. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/08/22/5-steps-for-liberating-public-education-from.html
Equity Connections to SEL Competencies. (n.d.). Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://drc.casel.org/sel-as-a-lever-for-equity/equity-connections-to-sel-competencies/
Jagers, R., Rivas-Drakes, D., & Borowski, T. (2018, November). Toward Transformative Social and Emotional Learning: Using an Equity Lens. Retrieved December 19, 2019, from https://measuringsel.casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Framework_EquitySummary-.pdf
Targeted Universalism: Animated Video + Curriculum. (2017, February 08). Retrieved January 19, 2021, from https://belonging.berkeley.edu/tu-video-curriculum
Meena Srinivasan, MA, National Board Certified Teacher in Social Studies, is a South Asian-American edupreneur with deep expertise in the fields of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Mindfulness in Education. She is the Founding Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL), an empowering, racially and culturally diverse, compassion-centered, innovative program for educational leaders who are called to integrate mindfulness-based, social, emotional, academic and ethical learning into schools and school systems. Prior to this role she spent five and a half years working in partnership with the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to implement SEL system-wide in the Oakland Unified School District. Meena has taught and led in a variety of school settings (public, private, urban, international) and holds a Clear Administrative Services Credential in the state of California. She is the creator of the SEL Every Day online courses, author of Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom and SEL Every Day: Integrating SEL with Instruction in Secondary Classrooms which was chosen as one of 2019’s Favorite Books for Educators by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Meena’s article, “Social and Emotional Learning Starts with Adults” was one of ASCD’s 10 Best Express Articles of 2018 and she was featured in the Dec 2020/Jan 2021 issue of Educational Leadership Magazine on “Mindful School Leadership.”
