Is social-emotional learning helping students? Or are schools using it as a Band-Aid to patch over more systemic problems?
The answer to both questions is yes, says Cathy Vatterott, a professor emeritus in the department of educator preparation and leadership at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. But the focus of her talk at the ISTE+ASCD annual conference in Orlando, Fla., June 28 to July 1 is about her concerns that too often educators default to SEL when they should dig deeper and reflect on how their own practices contribute to kids’ anxiety.
There are a lot of factors that schools can’t necessarily control that feed into students’ poor mental health—such as social media, the 24/7 news cycle, and the devices that kids use to access online content all day and night.
Vatterott points out that there are a lot of stressors that come from school decisions that educators should examine: assigning too much homework; placing high stakes on tests and grades; not giving adolescents enough independence when they developmentally need it; and not providing students enough time during transition periods and lunch to socialize, eat, and have a little down time.
Vatterott, a former middle school teacher and principal, is the author of the book, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs. She spoke with Education Week ahead of the ISTE+ ASCD conference.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are some examples of decisions schools make that undermine kids’ wellness and mental health?
These kids have no power in terms of their learning. We need to be doing more student-directed learning.
The other thing is the messages that we send: What’s in the trophy case? What characteristics are we putting up front and saying, “wow, this is really great. You got straight A’s. You’re the captain of the football team.”
What about those kids who don’t get good grades and aren’t captain of the football team, but have some really neat talent and interest? We need to broaden that base of what we reward and what we showcase in our schools.
We create test anxiety by saying, do you know [this content by the night before the test]? And if you don’t, you’re screwed. We do the one-shot learning by not allowing kids to redo or retake things.
You say social-emotional learning and mindfulness aren’t enough. Why?
We need to look at everything we’re doing in the school. I think SEL has been elevated to such a miracle cure.
What do we do as teachers? Well, we teach. We’re teaching [students] how to cope with the stress that they have. We’re teaching them to breathe. And I’m not saying that that’s not a good thing, but it’s not enough.
We’re going to teach kids how to take deep breaths before they take a test. How about we change what we’re doing with the test?
What’s the prevailing narrative here that you feel needs to be challenged?
One is that all we need is one more program. The second would be that what’s wrong with kids is something to be fixed, and there’s a fix for it. And the last thing is, “physician, heal thyself.” Look at ourselves as educators, look at our programs, look at our practices, and look beyond a fix.
The other thing that bothers me about SEL is our idea that we are teachers, and all we need to do is teach people something and that will take care of it: Let’s teach people how to handle their emotions. But it doesn’t change the overall stress that we as a school are adding to an already stressful life.
Two, how power is structured in the school, because we’re putting kids where they have a really strong need for autonomy, and we are telling them where to go, when to go. You can’t stand up in the classroom. You can’t go to the bathroom when you need to. There’s just some real bizarre things that we do that are totally the opposite of what we ought to be doing for [their] development.
Can we change how learning is experienced? Can we give kids a whole lot more to control over that? And that’s when we get into student-directed learning.
I don’t mean to say that there’s no value to SEL, that there’s no value in mindfulness training, but if I get really nasty, I would say the therapy dog is not enough. It’s not really looking at what we can do to tamp down the problem.
What should educators do to ensure school is not causing unnecessary stress for students?
The best thing they could do would be to survey students and parents about what in school contributes to stress? But lay it out specifically: [what] about learning, about homework, about grading, about workload, about your schedule?
