Working on SEL? Start with student talk.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has become a key focus of district administrators, school leaders, and teachers across the country — and with good reason: educators are learning the complex ways in which student self-awareness, emotional regulation, and interactions with others not only drive student outcomes but help foster students’ development into flourishing human beings.
Yet one simple question continues to vex instructional leaders working on SEL: what does a rich SEL classroom environment even look like?
While some school districts have adopted annual point-in-time surveys, one often overlooked — and even stymied! — feature of rich SEL classroom environments is daily student talk.
According to recent research, educators who incorporate more social and emotional learning in their teaching foster deeper student engagement, which can be found in the amount and quality of student discourse in classrooms. That’s because students who feel safe, supported, and seen by their teachers and peers will be more involved in classroom discussions — and teachers who generate productive classroom talk dynamics will create opportunities for students to express themselves and their understanding of content fully.
Students who feel safe, supported, and seen by their teachers and peers are more involved in classroom discussions — and teachers who generate productive classroom talk dynamics create opportunities for students to express themselves.
For students to develop self-awareness or the ability to regulate their emotions, they need opportunities to talk through their feelings and to interact with their classmates in meaningful ways. This may sound obvious, but those opportunities for student talk are often nearly absent in classrooms today.
Making subtle instructional changes that encourage students to interact as they learn SEL skills such as listening, self-control, and empathy involves creating a strong sense of community in the classroom. Community means that everyone has a role, a contribution, and a sense of belonging. When teachers create that kind of community, student motivation to engage increases because their contributions are meaningful to them and meaningful to the community at large.
Thinking about SEL in the context of student talk and student engagement enables powerful teacher reflection that addresses root causes of student apathy and frustration. Consider how students might be feeling in classrooms today:
Do students feel anxious having to produce the “right” answer in front of their teachers or peers? If so, a teacher in this instance might want to ask more authentic, experience-based, open-ended questions that bring in the perspectives of her students.
Do students need specific supports to help them engage in discussion? If so, a teacher might want to establish classroom norms, provide sentence stems to help students feel comfortable replying to the teacher and each other, and acknowledge students for making their voices heard.
Do students want to see themselves in the curriculum? If so, a teacher might want to employ more culturally responsive pedagogy or ask his students to share examples of the concepts from their own lives.
Thankfully, each of these instructional practices can also be measured privately, objectively, and frequently through platforms like ours at TeachFX, which uses voice AI to give teachers feedback on their teacher vs. student talk ratios, open-ended questioning, wait time, diversity of participation, and more. So instead of relying only on annual surveys, teachers can get feedback every day or week on SEL-informed instruction based on students’ oral engagement in their classroom.
With frequent feedback on student talk, educators can make ongoing measurable progress towards creating a rich SEL environment.