Educators offered a necessary lifeline
Five minutes into his first online school day of the year last month, my older son was in a panic. He didn’t have the right notebook, he said, and rather than make do with something else, his proposed solution was to shut off the computer and forget the whole thing. Maybe try again the next day.
A few deep breaths later, along with assurances from a classmate that a lot of the class was missing something or other, he calmed down, grabbed a sheet of paper and settled into a day of e- learning. It could be best described as a near- miss. Scenes like this one, many without the happy ending, have repeated themselves in households around the state and beyond since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and there are many signs that difficult conditions will be with us for some time.
Students are stressed like never before. Many probably can’t put their feelings into words, but they’re feeling the effects of lockdowns, curtailed plans and hybrid learning schedules. Parents are pressured, too. And teachers, the people so many of us count on to be stabilizers during turbulent times, may be the most stressed of all, facing the challenge of reaching students both in person and over the internet often simultaneously. It’s an untenable situation without help.
A statewide effort is looking to take on this challenge.
Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in collaboration with a number of statewide education organizations, a 10- hour online course called “Social and Emotional Learning in Times of Uncertainty and Stress: Research- Based Strategies” is designed to provide Connecticut school staff with the skills and strategies to understand and manage their emotions and those of their students.
It’s being offered to all Connecticut school staff, not just teachers, for free courtesy of Dalio Education. Recently a number of educators in various roles came together to extol the course’s benefits, which they say gives them a baseline, and a language to approach problems students are having coping with the many competing crises in their world. These troubles didn’t start with COVID- 19, but everything has been worsened by the pandemic, with the added challenge of distance learning putting even more pressure on everyone involved.
The key is understanding what the terms in question mean. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions and those of others, while social and emotional learning is a process in which children not only acquire emotional intelligence but develop empathy for others and learn problem- solving skills.
The benefits of developing these skills are clear. “Children with more developed social and emotional skills are more adept at paying attention, setting goals, persevering, thinking critically and problem solving,” Marc Brackett, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, which is a part of the Yale Child Study Center, said in an op- ed of which he was a coauthor that described the program. “They act with responsibility, honesty and integrity.”
These can sound like basics, the sort of thing that should be a given for anyone who works with young people. It’s hard to imagine anyone excelling at academics without social and emotional intelligence undergirding their education, and these skills are in use already in a wide range of state school districts. But the basics can too often be overlooked. Especially at a time of high stress, the building blocks of success can be misplaced. The course on offer in Connecticut aims to help educators find them again.
Educators on a video call a few days ago, which also included Brackett and Barbara Dalio, cofounder and director of the Dalio Foundation, said the program has been something close to a lifesaver. Many of the challenges they’re seeing in their students aren’t new, but all have grown more severe because of the pandemic. Teachers need more help than they’ve traditionally been given if they’re going to make it through.
The least we can do is see that they get it.