It’s common for teachers to say that today’s students are more likely to struggle with regulating their emotions and navigating in-person social interactions compared with those from previous eras.
In an effort to help, many schools are teaching students foundational social-emotional skills—which research shows can play an important role in supporting academic development and overall well-being. At the same time, schools are implementing these programs while also grappling with funding and staffing challenges, as well as the politicization of social-emotional-learning lessons and curricula.
Despite those hurdles, some schools have found an innovative vehicle for weaving character-building skills throughout the school day and after school: sports.
In a recent Education Week online K-12 Essentials Forum, experts and district leaders discussed how to incorporate social-emotional learning into team-focused athletic activities.
Why sports offer opportunities to introduce or reinforce SEL
Research shows that youth sports, when “intentionally designed to facilitate positive youth development,” can improve young people’s social-emotional skills, such as goal-setting, empathy, self-control, self-efficacy, and socialization with peers, said Megan Bartlett, a panelist during the forum and the founder of the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport, a national nonprofit that provides coach training and consulting services.
Sports are “uniquely suited” to help young people with their social-emotional development because it combines, “in real time,” three things, Bartlett said:
- A set of adults and peers who make students feel safe, so they can let their guard down and really engage in the activities;
- The opportunity to move their bodies—this has a positive impact on their ability to learn and their emotional regulation; and
- The opportunity to learn to navigate constructive forms of stress and other challenges.
With youth sports, the focus shouldn’t be solely on performance, Bartlett said. It should be focused on mastery, on helping young people see themselves improve on a skill, and on the benefits of having positive interactions with peers, she said.
How one district is incorporating SEL into sports
The La Mesa-Spring Valley school district in California is an example of a district using sports to help students’ social-emotional development.
The district, which serves about 11,000 K-8 students, created a sports league where students don’t just learn how to play a sport, but also how social-emotional skills can help them become better teammates on and off the field, according to the district’s staff members working on extended student services who were on the panel: Jennifer Montez, Heather Spruell, and Trinell Lewis.
The idea came about during the COVID pandemic, said Montez. “We needed to find a way for students to re-engage and to find a reason to come back to school.” she said.
Student athletes practice three times a week before school (for middle school students) or after school (for elementary students).
And once a week, they have a 30-minute SEL lesson facilitated by a social worker and the coach during practice, Montez said.
Those SEL lessons usually focus on things like emotional regulation, building team bonds and trust, and handling wins and losses, Lewis said.
The coaches and school leaders have seen a transformation in many of the students who go through the program, Spruell said. For instance, many kids enter the program not knowing how to handle losses, and they end up blaming teammates and having meltdowns. But as they go through the program, they are able to better handle losses and encourage their teammates, she said.
Tips for other districts that want to do something similar
The panelists shared tips for other districts or schools that want to use sports to help students with their social-emotional development.
- Don’t overthink it, Montez said. “It’s [about] building relationships with students first and foremost,” she said. It’s also important to invest in the staff and the coaches who are teaching the kids the skills they need to succeed on and off the field.
- Get buy-in from principals and school social workers, Spruell said. They need to understand why SEL-focused efforts are worthwhile and what their roles will be in making a program like this work.
- Make sure coaches have the right kind of training, Bartlett said. “We coach the way we were coached, and you have to undo some of that in order to really focus on the right things,” she said.
