• What strategies, if any, have you tried using to help your learners develop the five core competencies of Social Emotional Learning? What successes and challenges have you had with these strategies?

In my context, I have tried to use some simple strategies to support the five core competencies of SEL (Social and Emotional Learning).

For the first core, self-awareness, I encourage students to ask themselves a reflection questions after teaching the lesson, questions like "Do I really understand the explanation about this topic?" "If I don't, which parts do I need more extra exercise?". These made students more aware of their feelings.

For the second core, Self-management, I try to guide the students to control their behaviors by setting clear classroom rules and encourage them to stay calm and focused. Sometimes I remind them to take a deep breath or a moment of pause when they are feeling upset. For the extra tip, 5 or 10 mins meditation before class 2 days during school week would help them a lot in controlling their emotion intelligently. 

Since, our students have diverse ethnic background, It is really important for them to have social awareness, group activities like cultural sharing or discussion to practice communication with respected language and to develop empathy.

In my context, the chance of classroom can avoid the conflicts is very rare but it doesn't mean that they are 100% bring negative impact to classroom. The key is how the teachers and peers helped the students to improve their relationship skills between one and another. Instead of judging on one person sided story it would be better if we can listen to both perspective and giving them equal and non judgmental feedbacks on the conflicts.

In term of Making responsible decisions, the teachers need to guide students to know every pro and cons of the decision that they are making. If the problems coming up in the classroom, I asked the students to solve and ask them what can we do better next time. In this way we let the students to grow and reflect on their actions.

These strategies bring some success to the students in the classroom but some are still struggling. But this demonstrate that It also takes time to consistently apply these strategies in every lesson.

I believe I could use some lessons and games from IRC because these are displaced student-friendly most of the games and lessons do not need much resources and time to prepare for it.  The plans would work well in my context because of they are engaging and help students to practice real life skills. These could create a more supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

The SEL is important strategies to improving students academic skills as well as developing the skills they need to live positively in the community.