Using SEL to teach writing and writing to teach SEL

By Stacy Bailey

If teaching composition competencies were easy, people would not struggle so profoundly during the composition process that many feel compelled to conclude that they are “just not good writers.”

Likewise, if teaching people social and emotional competencies were easy, people would not struggle so profoundly during the humaning process that many feel compelled to conclude that they are “just not good at relationships.”

What if we put these two critical yet complicated competencies in service of each other? Could we help people become better writers and better relationship managers in one fell swoop? What if one of the reasons that people struggle so much with the one, is that they learned it in absence of the other?

Let’s tackle the composition process first: it’s messy. People need to scaffold so many skills one on top of another that one false step can often make it feel like the whole scaffold is crumbling. The composition competencies have been defined by “experts” in education. They have been codified and parsed into the smallest minutiae. We in education know these are standards. Students, by the time they graduate high school should be able to “Write with a clear focus, coherent organization, sufficient elaboration, and detail” and, “Effectively use content-specific language, style, tone, and text structure to compose or adapt writing for different audiences and purposes.” All the while, applying “standard English conventions to effectively communicate with written language.”

Do you think that most high school graduates can do that? This alone begs another question: The subjectivity of the whole evaluation of composition. What constitutes clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient elaboration? Who gets the final say in whether the use of content-specific language, style, tone, and text structure was effective? It’s enough to make the strongest of students doubt themselves.

The other process that we want to consider here is social and emotional learning (SEL). These skills too have been codified by a body of experts at the Collaborative Association for Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL): intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, and responsible decision making. They too have been parsed into minutiae: having self-confidence and engaging in self-motivation lead to better intrapersonal skills; perspective taking and social engagement lead to better interpersonal skills; and being able to identify a problem and analyze a situation lead to responsible decision making skills.

Do you think that most high school graduates can do that? This alone begs another question: The subjectivity of the whole evaluation of social and emotional competencies. What constitutes real self-confidence? Who gets the final say in whether the use of problem identification and analysis of a situation was effective? It’s enough to make the strongest of students doubt themselves.

Now let’s see what could happen if we put these two in service of each other. Would the sum of the parts be greater than the whole?

I’ll jump right into the deep end (in the Language Arts teacher world at least) and talk about grammar instruction. It’s often the most reviled, “let’s just get through” it part of a lesson for teachers and students alike. Frequently we rely on endless direct instruction or lots of worksheets. The likelihood of transference from worksheet lessons to actual writing is slim to none. The ability to make grammar relevant, exciting, and sexy is also non-existent.

Now, imagine a world in which you are teaching grammar to students who have the ability to identify problems, analyze situations, evaluate approaches, and reflect on application of strategies. Really take a minute and imagine that…

See, the trick to teaching grammar is not to have the kids look at a word and memorize the part of speech. It’s about getting them to see the meta-level of language. To see each set of words as a problem that needs to be analyzed. If kids can grasp the concept that 4=4 and 2+2=4 and x=4, then they can grasp the concept that pig can be a noun (Look at the pig), a verb (I am pigging out), and an adjective (I gave the animals pig chow). So kids who can identify the problem, analyze the situation, and evaluate their approach can do grammar. Likewise with teaching structures of composition. If you tell a student that her writing within a paragraph is not fluent, and she has the ability to analyze the problem, and reflect on the application of strategies (in this case the transition techniques that you taught her), then she can improve her own writing.

Getting your students to this point is merely about teaching them the critical Social, Emotional, and Academic skills needed to process complex information. This requires spending time imbedding these skills into your instruction (for more information on how go here).

Does it work in the reverse though?  Kids who use SEL skills can become stronger writers; can kids who use composition skills become stronger in their SEL competencies? When students produce a piece of writing that is the culmination of their reading and research, then that piece of writing becomes a way for teachers to evaluate what a student knows. And writing is so personal.

Anyone who has graded stacks of essays knows that each students’ voice comes through in their writing. It’s the number one way that I caught plagiarism when I was teaching high school. I would be reading a 9^th grade essay with all of its hesitations and angst and suddenly hit a paragraph that was beautifully crafted, articulate, and perfectly punctuated. The words were different, the sentence structure more sophisticated. A quick Google search later, and voila: plagiarized paper discovered.

What if students were reading, researching, and writing about strategies for interpersonal communication and the benefits of being a good communicator? What if they were creating narratives in which characters had internal dialogues surrounding recognizing their own strengths and building accurate self-perceptions rather than accepting the labels foisted onto them by society? What if they wrote about a topic with which they are familiar, but did so from another point of view therefore engaging in deep alternate perspective taking?

The composition instruction need not be any less rigorous with these types of prompts and projects. Along the path to composition greatness, the act of reading, researching, and writing about SEL skills becomes ingrained in a person’s being in a much deeper and more meaningful way than it would through direct instruction. A quote often attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupery reminds of teachers of something that often gets lost in the classroom: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” When we make our teaching into solutions to our kids’ problems, they will be more willing to learn.

This isn’t a panacea, but it sure beats worksheets and lectures. Any what if the two are missing pieces of each other? Try it and let me know what you think. Rather than me assigning you the task of teaching these skills to your students, I would like you to yearn for the classroom full of students who have the ability to manage themselves.