Social-Emotional Learning with Mirrors & Windows

Here we are, already marching (creeping?) along in August, about to start—or have already started—a new school year! As educators, we know that feeling of being a bit excited and ready to go but having that one foot dragging, still in summer mode. Also, this year requires much special attention as we reacclimate our students to a year of in-person learning (hopefully). With that in mind, we on the ELA content specialist team at Carnegie Learning want to help you prepare to take that big step forward in teaching literacy to your secondary students.

This year, we must help our students adjust to our transformed environment and support them through the many social and emotional challenges they may face. Something to consider for a great start is how to foster social-emotional learning right from the beginning of the year. Here are some thoughts on how to do it effectively using Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature.

Seeing Is Being Seen: Building Empathy and Compassion

As students get back into classrooms, we must support them as they activate the social-emotional skills necessary to work in a collaborative setting, focus on their goals, and persevere through challenges. 

CASEL (Collaborative For Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), the leading organization working to build demand and capacity for SEL, defines SEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions” (italics added).

How can we offer guidance and support to our students in gaining understanding and empathy for others?

Try this: Utilize the questions found before and after reading selections in Mirrors & Windows to allow students to share their perspectives and apply their points of view to the overall theme of the selections. Teachers can use these questions to lead small group discussions, as a stimulus for a written response, or as an oral response using FlipGrid, which is fully embedded in our online learning environment.

With these questions, students will make meaningful, authentic connections to what they are reading and learn from their classmates’ perspectives, too. This will create SEL experiences for students as they will see themselves in the literature and see things from another’s perspective—mirrors and windows at work.

Take a look at this example of questions after Amy Tan’s personal essay, “Fish Cheeks,” from a 7th grade unit, Experiencing the World:

In the selection, Tan explored a time when she was keenly aware that her family’s customs were glaringly different from their guests’. These questions could facilitate a discussion about judging others and how we treat newcomers to our school, neighborhood, and even society, building empathy and understanding for others’ experiences—even when they do things differently.

So, let’s practice social-emotional learning in our classrooms by helping our students grow in their understanding of themselves and others, leading to deeper empathy both in and out of the classroom.

Whole Novels for the Whole Child: Culturally Responsive Teaching

Another important way to build social-emotional learning into your curriculum from the start of the year is to incorporate tools that create a culturally responsive learning environment.

In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond defines cultural responsiveness as: 

While classes in all subject areas should practice culturally responsive teaching, ELA teachers have the unique opportunity to respond to and build cultural knowledge and create a safe space for learning through the power of literature. What’s even better is when you can teach whole novels, practically a luxury in today’s fast-paced classrooms, which allows for sustained engagement with diverse portrayals of human experience. This year, take advantage of our resources that support your students’ engagement with novels.

Try this: Use Mirrors & Windows’ Novel Studies, which allow students to choose novels that connect with their identities and interests. Novel Studies are student-centered guides to more than 100 titles (and growing!) from which you and your students can choose. All you need to do is select and provide the novels, and you already have full lesson plans to guide your students through meaningful discussions and activities that capitalize on their cultural knowledge.

It’s like inviting your student groups to participate in small book clubs to read and critically discuss novels that resonate with them! All with flexible instructional support that fits in and around your core curriculum.

Here are some of the titles you can choose from:

• Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
• The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamarat and Susan McClelland
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Ghost by Jason Reynolds
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Taking Sides by Gary Soto
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 See the full list.

Culturally responsive teaching validates students’ diverse experiences and leverages those funds of knowledge as a platform on which they expand their understanding of the human condition, develop critical thinking skills, and build empathy for others. Whole novels do all three, so we hope you’ll use the Novel Studies resource to support you this year.

Together We Learn: Student Engagement and Collaboration

Finally, build social-emotional learning this year by getting learners working together.

For many students, working collaboratively with peers leads to better engagement in classroom activities. According to Cornell University’s Center for Innovative Teaching, there are several benefits of collaborative learning:

• Improved higher-level thinking skills
• Stronger oral communication
• Better self-management
• Greater leadership skills
• Improved student-teacher interaction
• Enhanced student self-esteem and responsibility

Try this: Make the most of the variety of collaborative learning tools featured in Mirrors & Windows:

• The eReader’s collaborative annotations allow students to read one another’s reactions to the text and send a written, oral, or video response for further reflection.
• Group-based activity prompts, which help students develop social awareness skills by acknowledging the perspectives of others as modeled through the instruction. Students also practice relationship skills by listening attentively and communicating clearly while unpacking text.

Learning effectively in a community builds social-emotional competencies, which leads to strengthening the many communities we and our students belong to. So, let’s set some ground rules and establish our expectations to help get everyone started!

Time for a Strong Start

It’s time. Time to turn our focus from our own summer reads to what our students are reading. Time to think about what we can do to build our students’ perspectives and engagement with their reading, their peers and their independence. It’s time to bring us all back, to the best of our abilities, to read, learn and grow together.