A Simple Blue Shirt Taught Us Care
Introduction
Lessons associated with developing young people are often more layered and nuanced than they appear on the surface. Consider that young people have new emotions and experiences coming upon them at an extremely fast pace. The problem starts when their mental skills cannot keep with the information that they have to process. Unfortunately, they are still learning communication; they are not good at it yet. This challenge has little to do with generations, boomers, millennials, or any other pop psychology groups. The problem is the assumption that maturity projects on youth more, because they act bolder. Compounding the problem is the youth’s assumptions of a mature worldview when they honestly have no idea what they do not know. Then, a simple task like retrieving a blue shirt from the closet becomes a teachable moment, completely equipped with an assortment of emotions! Too many choices, insecurity, confusion, condescension, picking-on-me all erupts at once to freeze the child!
Eagerness: Then Emotions Kick In
Communication breaks down because the practice requires properly equipping a speaker, a filter, and a listener. While this step in communication is normal, the problem arises when too many step engage at once. Most youth are clueless in figuring how these steps create communication. Are we not all using the same words from the same language? That answer is complex. Assuming that all participants are speaking the same language ignores how communication really works. The adult sends the young person to get the blue shirt, who then brings it back to the adult. In reality, the young person eagerly enters the closet and is immediately overwhelmed with a selection that stretches the rainbow; and that only represents the blue section. Navy blue, light blue, checkered blue, striped blue, turquoise, sky blue, and aqua marine with ruffles, are now all plausible options.
Now, the youngster needs help! More importantly, their ego needs help. The young man feels inferior because he cannot begin to figure which stupid blue shirt he is supposed to bring. Then, he curses as best he can that the male ego is entirely too fragile and stupid! In reality, nether the problem, or the young man is stupid. He just has yet to obtain enough information. Nevertheless, he is now ashamed of his incompetence. These emotions now trigger his questioning his own intelligence, manhood, usefulness, and maturity. From a social emotional learning perspective, he wants to hurt anyone close to him so that he can impose his deflated masculine ego somewhere. At best, his next thought at this point is that violence will not solve the problem; unless he believes that he can get away with it.
Frustration: Absence of Clarity?
Meanwhile as the frustration expands, the young man is still seeking the path of least resistance regarding accurately picking a blue shirt. Frustration and self-harm are the next emotional options. Now the self-proclaimed imbecile is redirecting attention to violent outcomes, which almost sounds logical. The next emotion that surfaces is self-pity. Then, absolute incompetence prepares for its close-up. So, the young man now believes that his inability to discern a blue shirt will most likely direct him to wearing a padded helmet so that this inferior, developmentally disabled, special head case, will be identified as a loser for every peer that he will ever see in public.
Most likely, Dad apologizes for the vague direction. He wishes verbally that the child would have checked for understanding, which would have included a skill that Dad normally does not use. A statement like, “I am going to an outside evening affair that requires a collared shirt, but no tie. Also, since I will wear a navy sport coat, nearly every blue that you will find in my close will match well with whatever you put together.”, would have made everyone’s day better. The weak instructions created the angst. If done right, then Dad would have reminded the young man that he has his trust to go along with good taste. These affirmations at the beginning, are gold to the young man. Still, Dad could have shared his praise earlier. Also, the young man could have asked for clarification. The right question happened to be the question that was never asked! From a Social Emotional Learning perspective, the young man would now realize that asking for clarification shows strength in decision-making. Getting more information helps with better resolutions. The young man now benefits with the confidence to ask follow-up questions. Dad feels more accomplished in raising a young man!
Conclusion – Maturity: Important Goals
Ultimately, confidence, understanding, and offering alternatives are tools that need to remain available in the young man’s tool box. Most importantly, having the self-confidence to ask for clarity is an important step to maturity. The adults are not bad for providing poor direction. They most likely ignore their own shortcoming. But, the young man who uses his authority to engage in clear conversation to achieve his goals helps a lot. Additionally, if one authority figure dismisses your suggestion or request, then find another one, is next level responsibility. From a social emotional learning perspective, the objective is to communicate clearly and accomplish the task with an understanding of exactly what the outcome should be at the end. Maturity is achieved and displayed when communication helps positive outcomes. And, that benefit includes holding all parties accountable for clear communication. And, when the adult, as authority figure, barks back about the misunderstanding, calmly ask for clarification. Ultimately, all parties want positive outcomes. Maturity clearly means that all people involved regardless of age and social status can help meet the needs of everyone. People can care. If that requires asking one more question, then that permission has just been granted!
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Member, Touchstone Youth Resource Service
New Years’ Attitudes and Choices
With 2023 approaching many people experience emotional spikes. Anxiety is a common occurrence with the upcoming New Year. Also, disappointment is a popular emotion. On the other hand jubilation is an active emotion at this time of year! Then, people who coldly analyze the reality of New Years celebrations may experience annoyance as a result of the hustle and bustle surrounding another year passing. What emotion prevails?
A reason that Social Emotional Learning remains at the forefront of mental health is the fact that additional uncertainty often causes people to scramble for answers. New Years’ celebrations definitely provide emotional uncertainty. Truly, some events are clearly predictable. The auntie that has a problem with alcoholism will most likely slur her good wishes for the New Year, and kiss entirely too many family members. Why does she not manage this problem? Most likely, the pain that she is masking is more important than the comfort of her family members. Ironically, her embarrassing behavior barely raises an eye brow.
But, what about people who genuinely seek to share good tidings with family and friends? How are their social-emotional needs managed? They do not necessarily scramble for good answers; just answers. Any other day of the year, people who choose to connect with family and friends can either distance themselves from substance abusers (alcohol counts) or embrace them while helping to curtail their substance abuse. After all, alcohol is a substance.
Ultimately, with the New Year traditions are hard to break. Yet, in today’s environment irrational behavior and substance abuse of all types need to be managed responsibly for the safety of all partygoers. Just because one person is under the influence in their car, walkers, drivers and poor souls leaning on light polls are still in danger. So, let’s keep it to the fundamentals. Minimize use to vehicles. Yes, bicycles constitute vehicles, especially on New Year’s Eve. Hosts need to be responsible regarding what is consumed in their households. Being unaware is not sufficient in a sober court of law. Strongly offer intoxicated guests a blanket and a piece of floor once all the furniture has been taken as bed-substitutes.
Finally, the best way to ensure a safe and responsible New Year’s celebration is for each individual to arrive to their celebration destination with a simple plan. The plan needs to be simple because reason becomes very inconsistent and unpredictable as the evening continues. Next, from a Social Emotional Learning perspective, a few techniques will tip the scales in favor of safety for everyone. Alcohol and other intoxicants change people’s ability to rationally process events. Upon facing people who have reverted to substances to cope, a winning tactic is quietly walking away. Realize that walking to a safe location where an Uber can be summoned falls in this category. Another tactic falls in the category of “No means no”. Hosts can prepare ahead of time and lock up intoxicants when the guest become too unruly. When the responsible monitor is not sure if the guests has gone too far, that guest has mostly left “too far” 20 or 30 minutes ago!
Finally, as schools taught many decades ago, the policeman is my friend. Depending on your neighborhood, this rule may be a one-night-only privilege. Regardless, the police have facilities specifically designed to help them re-evaluate celebratory choices from the night. Ultimately, the goal of bringing in the New Year is to celebrate another year passing. Responsibility and good choices, even when they are unpopular, win in the end for the majority by observing these guidelines.
The myths we accept are fun, but they are not law. They are not fate. They are not prophetic. They are not even real! What does influence your future is your individual desire to change your personal trajectory toward the future that you wish. Technically, there is nothing special about a personal pivot on the first day of the year. As you dictate your positive future, you can pivot at any time of the day; any time of the year. Perhaps, today is a good time to pivot.
By approaching the New Year with a Social Emotional Learning perspective, partiers, and innocent bystanders, have an improved opportunity to enjoy celebrating a Happy New Year, as opposed to not celebrating a new year at all. Wisely attaching to a trusted friend, or create an accountability partner remain good tactics. Choose wisely.
In true Social Emotional Learning fashion, do not let others bully anyone into poor choices. “They made me do it.” does not undo the harm that can be done by overly imbibing. Additionally, do not dictate your moral stance or preach to someone who is being abusive. Bullies in the presence of toxicants typically exchange their common sense for a buzz by that point. Listen politely and diffuse tension. If the aggressor is talking, they are not physically making bad choices. However, if intoxicants are involved, temper may escalate the matter. Of course, you love him, or you love her. But, at this point the battle is with their representative that is presently making bad choices. De-escalate tension, provide water, or coffee, and give sobriety a chance to catch up. Have a Safe, Happy New Year!
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Chair of Touchstone Youth Resource Service
Gotta Feed That Fella With A Long-handled Spoon
While visiting my extremely earthy motherly figure, she shared, “Sometimes you gotta feed that fella with a long-handled spoon!” Her old school wisdom always hits with excessive, raw force, and this saying was no different! In this case, feeding someone with a long-handled spoon translates to communicating in such a way that listeners absolutely understand the raw, unpleasant truth of the message! In other words, when talking to this individual establish and maintain proper physical and social-emotional distance. Prepare to offer the truth in manageable servings. Establishing a safe distance means more than just physically. No matter how kind a speaker’s heart may be, brutal honesty still means that comfortable social and physical distance must be observed.
Whether interactions are social, emotional, or physical, individuals have the capacity and inclination to be edgy. Sometimes, mere presence promotes tension, aggression, and angry outcomes! Regardless of the best intentions, aggressively feeding into their insanity escalates aggravation, edginess, and social disfunction. Unfortunately, starving that individual physically, or socially, only creates more tension and then, escalated problems. Effective communication skills like, listening intently and encouraging heartfelt sharing, must be deployed by all parties. Without that concession, the community cannot safely embrace this individual as a legitimate contributor. Aggrieved individuals must be recalibrated back into the boundaries of the overall society. In other words, calm down like everyone else; no bullies are allowed!!
Social Emotional Learning – Communication
Conflict often reaches the public’s attention as a physical problem. Actually, most physical problems begin as Social Emotional Learning problems. Conflict is fundamentally a byproduct of misunderstanding. Problems surface when an individual or group fails to achieve clarity on a particular position. Someone became too absorbed with their own perspective, leading to the likely detriment of others. Both physical and social emotional distance are significant drivers in these communication breakdowns. Neither side particularly cares about the other side, nor has a desire to cooperate when the community crumbles. Then, the long-handled spoon metaphor extends beyond misunderstood feelings to identifying potential weapons. Nevertheless, the metaphor accurately needs to transcend to the spoon as a communication device! The long handled spoon represents social distancing in these cases. Meanwhile, separation requires a channel to communicate. To be healthy, community must prevail. Frankly, no one typically is mortally wounded by a wooden spoon. However, the threat of being struck with one creates just enough discomfort to garner attention. In that sense, the spoon represents securing attention. Lethal threats are not relevant until later in the conflict’s escalation. In the spirit of Social Emotional Learning, conflicts need to move toward resolution through less lethal means, earlier in the interaction. The long-handled spoon represents the communications’ pivot point before violence intercedes. Essentially, a long-handled spoon facilitates opportunities to listen empathetically!
Social Emotional Learning – De-Escalate
Ultimately Social Emotional Learning contributes mechanisms to progress toward mutually acceptable outcomes. Once the long-handled spoon comes out, the potential for escalating friction, then violence emerges. The violence can be emotional, mental, or physical. Nevertheless, once escalation begins all three types of violence begin aligning to defend a particular position. When looking at aggressive interactions in our current society, people turn to more weapons than wooden spoons to engage and conquer adversaries. News media does a superior job of identifying, and often subtly escalating violence in our society. Unfortunately, division sells! That fact does not help. While defending with a wooden spoon is clearly a metaphor, it does articulate a better alternative than more lethal weapons that seem to get deployed more quickly when stress and trauma escalates. Consequently, behind the long-handled spoon, the opportunity to establish emotionally nurturing boundaries, emerges before the need for aggressive, physical boundaries. This dynamic gives people a better chance to reason a solution before violence prevails. Creating physical space, as well as social-emotional distance, can literally lead to the difference between a disagreement, an argument, and a life-taking tragedy.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Social Emotional Learning embraces developing tools to de-escalate tension. Walking away is often the best solution. Engaging a conversation that helps the aggressor articulate their feelings often facilitates harmony in place of the jaws of destruction. Often bullies do not want to be right; they want to be heard. Listening with empathy is an effective and essential social emotional learning tactic because listeners have access to the power that create calming interactions. In this case, listening is not waiting for your turn to talk. Poor leaders are notorious for getting listening wrong by imposing their perspective, then they are shocked when problems escalate! These dysfunctional leaders failed to listen with their heart. Often, they also fail to listen with their ears. They were simply waiting for the pause, to seize their turn to talk and proclaim! Managing someone with a long-handled spoon requires establishing a safe, social-emotional distance (if not a physical distance) so that communication can exist peacefully.
So, why a long-handled spoon? When properly executed, it can be used to serve the other combatant once they establish a comfortable, social-emotional distance; and are willing to communicate with their hearts as well as their ears. Also, the long-handled spoon represents sharing a meal at a safe social and physical distance until trust and mutual sharing are emotionally established. Furthermore, if food is nearby, what better way is there to acknowledge common ground than with a good meal?
By Glenn W Hunter
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Service
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements“
Please Donate: www.tyrs.org
Flexibility Involves More Than Monkey Bars
A third-grade schoolboy sees two classmates sitting next to each other on a nearby bench. The two classmates casually talk to each other during outdoor recess. The first boy quickly walks to the two sitting boys. He suddenly pushes the boy on the left off the bench. The aggressor then looks at the second boy and tells him, “That is how you get respect!” The second boy looks the aggressor straight in the eye and says, “That’s dumb! You pushed my friend. What’s wrong with you? Do you even know what respect is?” The suddenly ashamed outsider quietly says “No”; but quickly adds, “My big brother said that if I don’t push other people down, then the other kids will punk me!” The two unharmed and unfazed boys resume their seats, turn their back to the bully and continue their conversation.
Copycat
Unfortunately, such behavior regularly occurs on grade school playgrounds with assorted outcomes. While kids are often clueless to the consequences of their actions, they figure out basic concepts fairly quick. Respect is important because it represents a sense of acceptance. Ultimately, respect provides clues for ascending social pecking orders. The challenge is that pecking orders remain constantly in flux. Grade school kids cannot even comprehend flux, let alone adhere to it. A reasonable proxy is copying the behavior of the largest personality. Unfortunately, copying that behavior only rewards loudness, not goodness. For youth to evolve into functioning, contributing human beings, they must figure out how to navigate social pecking orders and demonstrate positive traits that are properly rewarded.
Fortunately, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) leaves clues to help with that process. Whether the focus is on coping skills, or anti-bullying, Social Emotional Learning equips youth with tools so that micro-communities learn to accept boundaries and embrace individual wellness for the group. Coping skills start with acknowledging that society has boundaries. Too often, disadvantaged communities believe that they must accept behaviorally inferior environments and corrupt safety authorities. In fact, individual misbehavior tends to be consistent across most societies’ boundaries. What is inconsistent are the consequences. What is the difference between petty theft and robbery? Often it is the interpretation of law enforcement and the subjugation that authorities wish to impose on a specific community. It may not be right; it certainly is not fair. Yet, this pattern reveals how authority figures in specific communities are empowered to perpetuate inferior status at their whim.
Violence
Unfortunately, official data often reports that targeted demographics and social strata are more prone to violence and crime. However, sufficient evidence points to the reality where interpreted information falls into the following categories: lies, damn lies, and statistics! Frankly, data is routinely provided to reinforce pre-selected, negative biases regarding youth of certain ages and pre-determined environments. Specifically, behaviors and biases continue systems where reporting bad conduct along stereotypes intentionally reinforce prejudiced conclusions. The outcomes too often reveal that the present power structure directly facilitates results leading to self-fulfilling reporting. Unfortunately, reported violence remains a byproduct of pre-determined targets and pre-determined interpretations. Unfortunately, the reporting continues to have wide discretion regarding the perception of individual threats according to cultures and demographics.
Violence rarely improves the quality of life in any environment. Fortunately, introducing social skills that emphasizes community and empathy have shown behavioral improvement in certain cases. Giving school-aged children time to share their frustrations and also, understand the perspectives of classmates, has resulted in better listening skills and less tension. Learning better behavioral processes does take time as teachers pivot their communication biases, as well as convincing children to trust their emotional sharing process. While that investment in time does detract from reading, writing and arithmetic, the time is returned because of fewer incidents involving verbal abuse, violence, and corrective actions. More importantly, the long-term benefits of empowering young students to articulate their feelings pays off in more time adapting to cooperative environments and fewer disruptive behaviors.
Conclusion
Allocating additional time to discuss emotions and group dynamics in a lesser judgmental environment contradicts many current practices. However, labeling children based on spontaneous behaviors and cultural biases has not worked well either. Currently, with so many socio-cultural forces at work presently in a simple community, how do insensitive, homogenous residents ever escape the evolving reality of prejudice and homogeneity? Sophisticated residents struggle as well upon bringing their own trauma along with embedded, self-righteous biases. Well, none of this is easy. Neither is visiting a child in a hospital at the hands of another child. Nevertheless, the solution for equitable outcomes and positive behaviors resides squarely in the interactions of school-aged youth. Realize that schools are places of learning and developing new skills by design. What needs to be included in the newly acquired education skill sets is the ability for children to safely confide in teachers and other school authority figures. This step suggests that adults demonstrate the ability to grow unbiasedly in new directions of fairness. This progress is essential so future generations have better examples of cultural cohesion.
The ability to play and interact across perceived barriers must be established, enforced, and sustained. Whether barriers are racial, linguistic, or economic, teachers, as well as administrators, need meaningful training to identify hot signals indicating socially biased conflict. Teachers also need an easier process to communicate potential problems to school leaders and parents. Realize that officials are under a lot of pressure regarding discipline, behavior, poor decisions by staff, and fiscal responsibility. Schools have stretched budgets like everyone else. The task is hard. Yet, children falling further behind academically and behaving uncivilly because they continue learning in environments of fear and bias has its own problems. School leaders must structure lessons the emphasize coping skills, emotional health, as well as academic fundamentals. Then, educators can intentionally and more successfully focus on demonstrating proper behaviors, instead of reactively deferring to stereotypical judgments.
By Glenn W Hunter
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Services
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements“
Please Donate: www.TYRS.org
Safety Is More Than Looking Both Ways
As young, school-aged children figure out their environment and relationships in order to grow as people, safety is a major challenge. While bullying remains an issue in many learning environments and at most grade levels, challenges involving security start early in school careers. In a quickly evolving environment, students endure bullying psychologically, technologically, and by old-fashioned physical conflict. In fact, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is no longer part of the elementary school yard vocabulary. Words, images, videos, memes, all hurt! Unfortunately, adults are too slowly becoming equipped with tools to protect their impressionable “pride and joy”. So, how does a child manage this onslaught of modern bullying?
Physical Safety
Even with social distancing being part of every current grade school child’s vocabulary, the physical safety of pandemics and personal contact among peers across numerous cultures still result in assorted trauma. One child with a different diet, or ethnic background, can lead to lines of separation that disrupt the schoolyard dynamic. Different eating habits may change the way youths’ senses respond to sensory stimuli. Nevertheless, a different aroma or accent does not justify physical altercations, regardless of the biased messaging of parents, or their favorite news channel.
Specifically, bullying comes from an individual, or group, projecting a sense of fear among others. When someone cannot grasp how properly to engage another person’s individuality, then shame, threats, and belittlement are avenues to force them to back down and cower. The problem with our school aged youth is that social habits are so well ingrained, that common practices are dictated by authorities that may or may not reflect the immediate majority. Yet, enforcement occurs. Lesser voices are silenced or minimized. Trauma escalates in a community as a direct result of authorities exhibiting inconsistent behaviors. The consequence are often anger and conflict. From the disempowered students’ point of view, the rules are just stupid!
Emotional Safety
The outcome of this confusion is a perceived threatening environment for the disenfranchised segments of the school community. Cognitive dissonance is a fancy term that means that things just do not make sense. The critical part of experiencing cognitive dissonance is understanding how the targeted individual chooses to behave. Without a logical basis regarding their emotional foundation, the resulting behaviors becomes even more unpredictable. Then authority figures default to enforcing rigid discipline to establish order. Unfortunately, the confused, defensive party typically becomes victimized resulting in all parties retreating to their center of power. Likewise, the disjointed individual receives the brunt of the justice because his behavior is perceived as outside the norm. Also, that punishment is the path of least resistance because of the lack of advocacy for the disempowered youth. The institution maintains order. The defaulted guilty power remains disenfranchised. Too often, the problem is compounded because that option is now the only available path.
Without a sense of safety in the learning environment, the opportunities for excellence are minimized. Furthermore, by minimizing emotional safety among disenfranchised students, they seek identity in misbehavior. From a social emotional sense this happens enough that disenfranchised students learn to expect it. From other students’ viewpoint, the dysfunctional behavior is the expected alternative for “those people”. In the absence of emotional safety, the default behavior is to attract whatever attention is available. Being recognized for poor behavior seemingly is better than not being recognized at all. Furthermore, the brighter the child’s intellect is, the more clever and effective that the attention-grabbing disruptions become!
Conclusion
The challenge following the attention-grabbing behavior is the fact that the authority figures too often neglect to channel high-energy behavior into a positive posture. The over-zealous, clever youth should be encouraged to embrace their gift to communicate and engage. Too often authorities choose to squash his energy, minimize her personality, or discourage the individual from sharing their gift. Ironically, the student then becomes an intelligent, disruptive student, as well as a potential leader whose charisma has spawned from intellectual curiosity. Yet, this does not guarantee positive outcomes. To create nourishing environments, students need outlets for their wit and intellect. They also need teachers who are both equipped and willing to go beyond stereotypes in engaging students’ intellects. Empowering students to use their talents passionately, enriches giftedness. A fine line exists between a clever student and a disruptive student. Cleverness and inquisitiveness have common characteristics. They both willingly question. Enhance that trait. Safety results from following leaders who can embrace both opportunities and calculated risks. Disqualifying those leaders for superficial reasons at an early age ultimately leads to stale communities that marginalize differences. Then, the rigid leaders act surprise when the trauma that they buried, sprouts into trees that foster environments that disrupt the status quo.
By Glenn W Hunter
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Services
Author of “Storytelling Wins the Best Engagements“
Please Donate: www.tyrs.org
Social Emotional Learning When Socialization Fails
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has been coddled like a lovely flower in an orchard, with regards to its environmental impact upon education by encouraging the purity of balanced early development. The format’s beauty has been well-received as it seems to bring educational vibrance to diverse environments, still the image begins to lose its luster when sensationalized success claims extend too far. Specifically, SEL programming has successfully helped students manage their emotions in finite environments. Furthermore, instances have been documented where adults are behaving with more empathy and compassion toward leaders, peers and students within their school communities. Nevertheless, ongoing behavioral improvements and examples of emotional growth too often get challenged by continued adult tension and bullying in the exact same communities. Frankly, why would an educator cede influence that they believe they deserve? Even when progressive skills are introduced and enforced, consistency still seems to be derailed by fear, violence, and too often stubborn leaders. How can enlightened young people bloom social-emotionally when the mature weeds routinely choke their growth in the name of consistency and the good old days?
Social Connectivity
Two key tactics stand out in introducing and reinforcing Social Emotional Learning skills in progressive environments. The ability to breathe and encouragement to engage civilly enhances the foundation for better communication. Asking better questions regarding peer’s well-being is a great start. Simply, taking the time to allow students, teachers, administrators, and community workers to exercise their ability to encourage and direct people involved with personal development creates a more deliberate path toward growth and learning. Even in restricted, or virtual environments, articulating and applying emotionally enriching skills have demonstrated improvements for better listening skills and peer socialization. The fact that teachers and students are encouraged to embrace and acknowledge individual concerns and feelings, has made positive differences in many classrooms.
Additionally, new social and communication tools that allow students to articulate their academic, social and emotional frustrations have often led to individual behavioral improvements. Part of that development features front line leaders who have intentionally exercised the ability to connect to students with full knowledge that unprecedented trauma is evident in their home and public lives. Obviously, not enough trained care workers exist to meet each student at their point of need. Yet, evidence of environments across geography and cultures have demonstrated that intentional breathing exercises and articulating frustrations have helped in diffusing personal stress where school environments may not have previously paid attention. The diverse and extreme behaviors that promote tension and negatively affect learning environments have attracted attention. No good outcomes result when loud, antiquated opinions express anger about imposing outdated rules that no longer apply to current social-emotional care. No one wins if present school leadership embraces nostalgic tools and mandates for navigating the most modern, escalated youth conflicts.
Age-Appropriate Behaviors
Other weaknesses regarding poorly executed Social Emotional Learning techniques involve equipping young people with coping skills that falsely align age and maturity. Once upon a time, ten-year-olds were fourth graders, at least at some point during the school year. However, parents now routinely start children’s school careers late to get an athletic advantage or launch children early to highlight their burgeoning genius. In reality, a grade-school class can easily have an age difference as large as three years because narcissistic parents erroneously believe that they are creating an advantage one way or another. What Social Emotional Learning has clearly taught educators who are informed is that children respond at different rates in accordance with different academic and social stimuli. Gaming the system for ill-conceived quantitative advantage is ultimately a fool’s errand. Kids grow intellectually and socially due to several influences beyond physical superiority or intellectual head starts.
To achieve better academic foundations in school-age development, the idea of falsely creating accelerated proteges overlook that the child’s self-esteem is vulnerable regarding their development in social interactions. An overachieving, brilliant loner is still a loner! The intentionality of Social Emotional Learning tactics emphasizes more wholistic development that emphasizes strengthening the child in the context of community. Friends are just as important as athletic prowess when children are eight years old! Age-appropriate behaviors rely on academic growth, as well as internal confidence in dealing with peers. Anti-bullying initiatives are more effective when the entire student body is being taught to embrace each other’s individuality. On the other hand, developing students to exceed arbitrary metrics that are based on data whose foundation may not statistically represent the explicit environment where the children live is a recipe for disaster. Social emotionally, youth respond better when their individuality is developed, nurtured and valued according to life experiences. Encouraging individual development over arbitrary metrics is a step in the right direction.
Conclusion
Progressive school districts can no longer afford to pretend they provide artificial advantages despite outdated mindsets. Particularly considering that several school districts and their schools are becoming less homogenized, developing children with cross-cultural tolerance has the potential to expand academic, as well as social- emotional growth. Unfortunately, this mindset requires experienced, incumbent teachers to broaden their views beyond antiquated, pre-meditated stereotypes. In a world of increasing racial diversity, as well as broader cultural experiences, flexibility and adaptability is essential for developing students that value confidence and inclusion. Clearly, none of this is easy. However, from a learning perspective, children have recently encountered emotional trauma from pandemics, cultural changes, and demographic shifts while seeking successful learning environments. The next step is to address inconsistent learning habits resulting from digressions in local benchmarks and academic rigor. Then, educators can normalize virtual learning standards to address inconsistent exposure to technological blended learning across diverse communities. Ultimately normalizing learning gaps, where two years of inconsistent attendance and learning has academic performance data scattered across the learning landscape, will provide legitimate targets for academic recovery. By focusing on newly normalized successful academic development and rewarding environments that value social uniqueness, achieving targeted benchmarks will be more aligned with students’ academic and social emotional capabilities.
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Services
To Donate Please Click: http://www.tyrs.org
May I Choose My Best Friend?
Making friends and keeping friends are essential pieces to developing functional youth. Considering that the developing youth in American culture spends significant amounts of time in school and social activities, a reasonable conclusion is that both school and community environments, are incubators for healthy, functional, mature development. Long-term friendships emerge from local, school communities. Social adaptability and environmental building blocks unite to develop young relationships in any community. To be clear, successful communities are built on foundations of individuals who successfully co-exist. Successful communities establish common characteristics and agreeable social norms. Before race, religion, social status, and other divisive elements take root, the fundamentals to co-exist safely must first take root. Character commonalities that youth identify in their peers are the first step in selecting best friends. Supportive, enlightened families are the second step.
SELF
Children make friends for the oddest reasons. Alphabetical placement is one potential way for early friendships to connect, then emerge. Imagine a youngster standing in line or sitting next to a peer who has been assigned that spot alphabetically. A whispered conversation starts after the teacher demands quiet. Next, these two mischievous rule-breakers are “best friends forever” simply because they figured out how to whisper without getting caught! Obviously, relationships develop because of several factors over time. Nevertheless, the root of connecting with another child can easily occur as a direct result of assigned proximity.
The ability to communicate and establish personal interaction creates a foundation for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. Beyond anti-bullying campaigns and stop-the-violence initiatives, SEL represents a commonly accepted set of behaviors that emphasize self-awareness, as well as mutual respect among people. Additionally, as more individuals connect under proper behaviors (or mischievous behaviors), the more respectfully school environments can nurture our youth to be functional individuals. “The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) identifies five competencies of SEL: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.” Without individually breaking down these competencies, in summary they reflect how youth can balance their communal self-needs with learning needs, in conjunction with social foundations that exist to facilitate functional environments. Basically, individual youths develop and function better behaviorally when operating under consistently taught best practices of social behaviors.
COMMUNITY
These common practices are particularly important to youth development for two particularly important reasons. The first reason reflects identifying required building blocks to build stable interpersonal relationships. Even physically nearby communities do not necessarily have common traits and values. Ethnicity, property values, and social status do not necessarily respect fixed, physical landmarks for the purpose of distinguishing cultural differences. Adjacent neighbors may have differences in ethnicities and values. However, communicating SEL values to families within the context of children’s learning environments provide great opportunities to bridge social gaps. Connecting school and cultural activities across economic and ethnic boundaries provide opportunities to embrace differences leading to more functional community members. Furthermore, empowering children to bring multi-cultural ideas home is a great tool to start the broader conversation.
Fundamentally, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to wide ranges of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that can affect student success in school and life. Consider skills not necessarily measured by academic testing: critical thinking, emotional management, conflict resolution, decision making, teamwork. While traditionally quantifying these skills presents challenges, consistently emphasizing these tactics can contribute to student education and impact academic success, employability, self-esteem, relationships, in addition to civic and community engagement. Social Emotional Learning tools benefit communities because they emphasize common social foundations, while incorporating routine behaviors that result in better inter-personal environments. Friendships start with common experiences and interests. Academic environments must become more intentional in encouraging such interactions.
CONCLUSION
While friendship is an integral part of human development from a very early age, the importance of developing broader relationships influences the strengthening of entire communities. Enforcing skill development that emphasizes proper character, as well as generally acceptable common, social values, is essential to individual and communal foundations. Many education leaders are quick to paint SEL with an anti-bullying brush. This perspective only reflects one facet. SEL requires reinforcing consistent values that celebrate the individual within the context of the community. Introducing key tenets of mutual respect requires celebrating differences as well as reinforcing positive, expected behaviors. Strong communities build strong personal connections among members where respect is essential to learning environments and surrounding communities. A great starting place is by instructing young students to select friends based on demonstrated character, then have school leaders celebrate individual uniqueness at every turn. More importantly, such civil behavior needs to be reinforced and celebrated among school and community leaders. Encouraging friendships based on common, life-affirming characteristics, and mutual respect create more effective citizens into the future.
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Services
Please donate: www.tyrs.org
Social Emotional Dysfunction Goes To School
Remember when schools wanted to stop bullying? Instead, anti-bullying evolved into Social Emotional Learning and consequently the fancy name generated more attention across numerous communities. Now, harassing kids without playmates has erupted into a virtual cottage industry that combines emotional torturing, racial insensitivity, psychological tyranny, and too often physical harm. As a result of school systems finally acknowledging and quantifying social and performance disparities across cultures, administrators now strive to empower the disenfranchised, while maintaining the status quo. That oxymoron’s results resemble the classic schoolyard division of cool kids and outcasts. Essentially, school leaders seem to want an honest competition for development where losers believe the competition ended with a tie, as winners enjoy a head start leading to crossing the finish line first. And everyone is supposed to be OK with this?
Approach The Problem
This problem did not birth overnight; nor will it be solved by the next morning. Improvement is hard work! To educate youth consistently and comfortably across assorted cultural and economic boundaries, an important step requires social inclusion. This step literally demands engaging youth as valued contributors regardless of background and demographics. Marginalize no one! Still, affluence appears across social and racial lines. Every child, family and culture have different capabilities and backstories regarding expected levels of learning and accomplishment. Each teacher has the choice of communicating inclusivity or separation, according to their individual values. Conceptually, Social Emotional Learning, when properly executed, emphasizes acceptance despite alleged differences, perceived background, or assumed privilege. Reality often disagrees.
Such outcomes require supporting marginalized students’ perspectives and opinions in open discussions to set clear examples to majority students that other perspectives have value. Intentionally dismissing stereotypes helps, too. Different does not equal wrong! Still, respecting differences remains complicated. Establishing environments that warmly acknowledge assorted perspectives is an important and admirable aspiration for growth. Specifically, proper execution requires that teachers, administrators, and other academic authority figures must be mindful of permitting diverse ideas to be exercised in broader, learning communities. Authority then requires open-minded adults. Boundaries must be established that limit academic and social influences disproportionately empowering the privileged, athletic, or attractive child. The targeted outcome is mutual respect. The execution too often defaults to a flowery report, then the status quo.
Remove Preconceived Privilege
Because more communities now culturally evolve at unprecedented rates, affluence, alleged ethnic superiority, physical giftedness, no longer guarantees social privilege. Recently, both economic strife and success has increasingly diversified. Psychological trauma has more clearly revealed itself due to changing economic circumstances, not simply because of demographic disadvantage. Rich parents lose jobs, too! Other unexpected lifestyle changes can disrupt economic, employment, health, or prosperity patterns within previously stable communities. Students, teachers, and administrators are experiencing personal trauma in unprecedented forms as family dynamics shift. Multi-generational households and their increased tension now extend beyond minorities. Consequently, instead of hiding behind status and tradition, school leaders can social-emotionally benefit our youth by authentically demonstrating genuine compassion for increasing sources and representations of community trauma.
Authentic communication within school communities can specifically feature sharing tools for overcoming change, while not exposing families’ circumstances for public opinion to judge. Most importantly, lesson plans need to be developed and administered with more cultural sensitivity in mind. One generic solution has never fit all ethnic challenges! Current, diverse, trauma-filled environments present new opportunities to reward indiscriminately academic improvement and excellence. Emphasizing commonality in students and their excellence must become a bigger part of classroom conversations. Sensitivity to assorted opinions and shared perspectives is essential to generating cultural safe places in classrooms. Social Emotional Learning emphasizes inclusion and empathy. Those behaviors must reinforce cross-cultural engagement through eyes, ears, and hearts, starting with school leadership.
Conclusion
Ultimately, more inclusive learning environments start with school leadership. Cultural sensitivity in administration must be reinforced and rewarded. Training and demonstrated accountability regarding inclusive behaviors must be celebrated at the highest levels. Acknowledge that disenfranchisement leads to dysfunction. Whether that dysfunction manifests in violence, racism, civil disobedience, or cultural exclusion largely depends on the adults. They set the example. Explicitly equipping entire academic communities with coping skills and cultural sensitivity to enforce behaviors with respect and sensitivity begins with academic leadership. When bigots and supremacists appear in school systems’ leadership, communities need to be prepared for bullying, harassment, and violence. Acting surprised by the behavior is no longer an option. Continuously demonstrating compassion and safety is!
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Service
To Donate Please Click: http://www.tyrs.org
https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Wins-Engagements-Glenn-Hunter/dp/B094SZRYZ5/
Survival Brain Or Learning Brain?
Emotional trauma has recently become a consistent companion to our youth, especially with respect to their capacity to learn and grow. From a Social Emotional Learning perspective, our young people’s growth is under attack to the point that understanding how to act in different environments is more and more difficult. The difference between right and wrong for youth has typically shifted depending on the particular environment where you find them. The major problem presently is that their school, home, and play environments continue to become more confusing. Between increasing technology access and restricted recreational areas due to the pandemic, the challenge morphs between how youth should behave in one environment, as opposed to how they behave differently in others.
Survival Brain
As social beings, humans are designed to protect themselves and others from external harm. Harm can come from physical attacks, as well as emotional and mental threats. Particularly concerning young people, Social Emotional Learning skills have become increasingly essential because personal threats are being managed differently. A grade school child can call another child a particularly nasty slur, and the second child may respond with a weapon. Essentially threats are perceived inequitably, and tend to escalate quickly because too many youths are ill-equipped to manage conflict. Clearly harm can happen physically, as well as mentally. Yet violence appears to escalate increasingly quickly. Such behaviors can be traced to minor threats that escalate to survival-based responses featuring violence in response to verbally-initiated, emotional triggers.
By emphasizing responses according to the survival brain, reason becomes secondary. Currently, survival responses escalate quickly because severity of threats are harder to identify, largely because of the trauma associated with unpredictable outcomes when youths’ interact physically. Furthemore, the Survival Brain informs that persevering as a species remains essential to the human experience. Even, youth benefit when they develop trust in people who are teaching them that the world can be harmful. Furthermore, harm can appear physically as well as mentally, or emotionally. Ultimately survival focuses on an individual’s ability to navigate advantages and disadvantages resulting from routine decision making in their environment.
Learning Brain
On the other hand, the Learning Brain uses a different approach to sustain survivability in the face of newly evolving threats. The Learning Brain sounds a lot like “school smarts”. Actually, from a Social Emotional Learning perspective, it actually points more toward adaptability. When new threats emerge, the Learning Brain engages in identifying solutions that will protect the individual, or the group. Self-preservation remains a priority, but the approach leading to a solution differs. Specifically, the Learning Brain processes information and facts. As new types of threats enter our youth’s environments, they have to become more astute at discerning genuine threats. The Learning Brain processes information so that better decisions are made for self-preservation. Fundamentally, when threats emerge in society, the advantage goes to the person that can recognize the threat and has visibility to an effective remedy. The Learning Brain essentially is processing alternatives to improve adaptability and self-preservation to sustain the individual.
To look at current school-based, Social Emotional Learning problems in the last 12 – 18 months, the ability to learn has been derailed by political agendas, fear among the teaching ranks, and trauma throughout families. In environments that emphasize repetition and certainty, the question resurfaces are learning assumptions safe, effective, or even relevant. Hiding behind unsafe environments, adult apathy, and social uncertainty, short-term learning has taken a back seat. The problem is that each learning step contributes to the next learning step. With students either missing days, ignoring assignments, or plain-old struggling with lessons, the inconsistency in learning has created an unprecedented problem. The learning inconsistency results in as much underperformance as the inadequately managed education administration does across the board.
Conclusion
Social Emotional Learning has to be emphasized because students have to be re-acquainted with confidence, as well as education. The trauma surrounding academic uncertainty has created a learning deficit. Furthermore, the inconsistency and devaluing of teachers’ contributions has fundamentally weakened their crucial role. In short, the education solution resides in re-establishing honor and self-esteem at every step of the learning ladder. Lessons have to be re-established as well as students’ confidence. The Survival Brain and the Learning Brain must be sufficiently re-ignited such that students and teachers feel safe and their contributions feel valued! That correction directly requires Social Emotional Learning solutions throughout school communities. Equity in education must be prioritized. The same for reinforcing self-esteem. Coaching and cajoling becomes as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Steps for personal confidence must be incorporated and validated. Then, the learning can take better root in fertile soil. Ultimately, Social Emotional Learning impacts the heart for learning that enables better learning in the head, and results in more knowledge-friendly environments.
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Board Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Service
To Donate Please Click: http://www.tyrs.org
https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Wins-Engagements-Glenn-Hunter/dp/B094SZRYZ5/
That Child Left Behind
At the beginning of children’s academic careers, they are young, eager, and possess absorbent minds. Beyond an academic foundation, primary schools were once instrumental in building communities where families flourished. Then, in too many cases, pedagogical standards and metrics moved to the forefront. What once represented a community had turned into a common geographic proximity of people who bused, walked, or drove past each other during pre-determined times to their daily obligations. Isolation and trauma became common terms to describe childhood, unless you counted technology-based communication as connection. Then, in the midst of this evolution a pandemic hit the nation and consequently, established practices and rules concerning schools no longer made sense for consistent interactivity and learning progress.
Lessons Learned
The ideas that evolved regarding masks and virtual learning, represented the best thinking from an antiquated system that ran into an ultra-modern crisis. Arguing whether health and safety issues should be governed by established learning practices completely misses the point of students’ emotional needs! The point is that a student’s cry for help is not necessarily based on academic challenges. Learning can be hard. Being ill-equipped to navigate emotionally, as well as how to connect culturally, eventually creates emotional wreckage.
Lessons through a Social Emotional Learning lens emphasize that children need to feel comfortable and confident to navigate their social challenges. Social comfort and personal confidence facilitate better learning environments. Social comfort extends beyond having friends in the classroom. Its power resides in the comfort level that individual youth embrace when encountering new experiences. Fundamentally, educating youth involves a sense of wonder and a sense of comfort. Fear is the enemy of open minds. In developing students in foreign environments, either remote or in person, new barriers and restrictions facilitate classrooms that become ripe with fear, inequality, and societal pressures. Illness becomes a refuge of certainty. The problem now becomes facilitating lessons that emphasize embracing challenges as learning opportunities. Unfortunately fear and uncertainty run rampant in an environment where institutions and health seem to cripple the security where learning best occurs.
Progress Revisited
In environments that demanded individual growth, many schools dragged through an atmosphere full of collective fear and uncertainty. Often, the next growth step was treacherous. Social pressure, illness, individual isolation, all interacted to limit individual student growth. To refresh learning and growth, school environments must embrace new ideas. When the most prevalent obstacles involve contagion, uncertainty and cultural attacks, then individual and emotional stability is impossible. Progress is no longer matriculating to the next grade. Progress relies more on children continuing on a path that embraces intellectual and social growth. Progress is having the mental and psychological faculties to engage the next learning level.
Unfortunately, what too many school communities have found in recent environments is diversity represented in an unattractive fashion. Diversity is not necessarily new points of views, but rather pointing fingers at different points of view. The big, hairy obstacle is maintaining positive self-esteem among students, as well as families, while students persevere through an inconsistent school environment. Lesson plans, virtual or physical learning environments, and minimized extracurricular activities, as well as peer camaraderie have all been compromised. Recapturing progress first means revisiting academic processes. Holding a child back scholastically because of illness, fear, or embraced apathy now results in blending multiple ages in a classroom. Who wins the tie regarding consistency: academic progress, social progress, or age progress? Factor in a pandemic where attendance became a wild card, and the distinction between academic preparedness stretches academically and genealogically.
Conclusion
Assuming that successful academic progress is the ultimate goal, then competence is logically achieved at the grade level where the youth participates. Age differences become a factor that must be navigated. However, these factors do not occur in isolation. Lack of academic progress can align with anger management from a home that endured illness and financial sufferings. The choices are difficult. Unfortunately, the process of incarcerating maladjusted young adults who had their social-emotional needs ignored because they were inconvenient, creates a much larger societal problem. Incorporating emotional and cultural self-care skills among students, teachers, and administrators will benefit entire school communities. Aligning maturity and intellect need to be drivers for progress. At this point in history an age-based academic system where youth endured assorted trauma from institutions, peers, and unprecedented home dysfunction, only creates opportunity for tension to escalate. Aligning academic progress with Social Emotional Learning gives students the best chance of personal growth in a system that prioritizes their individual development.
By Glenn W Hunter
Author of “Storytelling Wins The Best Engagements”
Chair, Touchstone Youth Resource Services
To Donate Please Click: www.tyrs.org
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