A Blog Series on the 5 Competencies of Social Emotional Learning
Self-awareness in the classroom is a key component of social emotional learning. Perhaps you’ve heard a lot about social emotional learning. Or maybe you’re using it in your classroom. There is so much great information out there about SEL! It’s great to get educated on the overall ideas of this framework because it’s chock full of useful stuff.
For the next several posts I’m going to break up SEL into bite size pieces to dig deeper into all the great things social emotional learning offers. This 5 part series will go in-depth with each of the 5 CASEL competencies which are, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.
First up in the series is Self-Awareness. Let’s dive in and see what this first competency is all about! CASEL, which stands for The Collaborative For Academic Social And Emotional Learning, is a major pillar of social-emotional learning. They created the SEL framework which is organized into 5 core competencies starting with self-awareness.
What is Self-Awareness?
So what is self-awareness? CASEL defines it as “The ability to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts.” (1)
In other words this competency is all about learning to get to know ourselves which includes things like our identity, likes and dislikes, strengths and challenges, feelings and opinions, and how our mind influences our emotions, words and behaviors.
Why is it important to teach students to recognize these things within themselves? There are a host of reasons that we will get into in this post.
Why is Self-Awareness Important?
Social-emotional learning emphasizes skills that help students manage their emotions and behaviors along with connecting with others. In order to do that effectively, you need to know the things within you and what makes you tick.
Think about it! Can you make goals for yourself if you aren’t aware of your dreams? How can you learn how to calm yourself down if you’re not aware of what upsets you? Are you able to express something you’d like to do with a friend if you’re not aware of your own interests?
Many students are not able to articulate these things on their own without being taught how. SEL gives kids the skills to understand how their minds work and why they do the things they do. When students know and understand themselves, they will be able do to things like:
- Use coping strategies when getting upset or frustrated
- Clearly express their feelings along with wants and needs
- Advocate for themselves
- Share ideas to cooperate with others
- Understand how their actions affects others to resolve conflicts
- Figure out how to organize their work in a way that suits them
- Make decisions of what hobbies to participate in
And much more. These are life long skills children will use well into adulthood. Helping students learn to get in tune with themselves builds them up for success in school and beyond.
Benefits in the Classroom
If SEL and self-awareness helps learners be successful in school, it’s natural that classrooms can benefit from this, too. Applying knowledge about oneself isn’t just applicable to individuals, other people benefit from someone else’s self-awareness too. This is great for classrooms!
Research has found that students who went through an SEL program at school also had improved classroom behavior, increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves, others, and school.
This makes total sense. As kids learn to improve their own perceptions and how to handle themselves they become more confident in their abilities. Students grow stronger in using tools to communicate with others. Student behaviors, attitudes and relationships get better!
Imagine a group of kids in a room together who don’t know how to communicate their feelings. They don’t put much thought into their actions or they may act on impulse. Some kids may fight to get their own way, say hurtful things, or distract others.
Enter SEL and self-awareness lessons and soon those students transform. Students begin to find new ways to say what they need. They learn to recognize when they are unregulated and know what to do to fix it. They learn how to do things like share or wait their turn because they are aware of how their actions affect others.
It’s as if when students get in tune with themselves they get in tune with their peers, and the classroom becomes a supportive and cohesive experience.
Self-Awareness for Teachers
Self-awareness isn’t just for students, it’s a great growth area for teachers, too! Educators can use their own self-awareness for their own self-care and to become skilled at teaching SEL and working with their class.
How Do Teachers Practice Self-Awareness?
Teachers that use their own self-awareness can greatly improve their teaching and classroom experience. What does self-awareness for teachers look like? Tuning into yourself can help you discover or determine the following things:
- Your teaching style
- Your limits and boundaries
- How to manage your time and balance your responsibilities
- Ways to create a classroom routine that works for you and your class
- How to communicate with co-workers and student’s families
- Personal and professional goals
- Ways to destress
- Creative lesson plan ideas
And of course much more. The bottom line is when you take time to get in touch with what moves and drives you, you will be able to go forward and grow as a teacher and individual. Your students and yourself can greatly benefit from your self-awareness!
Check out this post to read more about how SEL benefits teachers!
Teaching Self-Awareness
So, how do you teach self-awareness to your class? Keep reading! The rest of this post will offer strategies and lesson ideas.
The first step for teaching self-awareness is to make students aware of what it means and why it will help them to be successful in the classroom. Ways to do that include, making the term “self-awareness” a part of the classroom vocabulary and culture. Talk about self-awareness often!
Teach self-awareness check-ins with your class. It can be a simple reflective questioning you bring up as a class, or through 1:1 conversations. Ask things like how am I feeling? What am I thinking? What do I need? This type of reflective questioning gives students time to stop and think about things.
In order to become self-aware, students need to be taught how to think about their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Pointing out actions in the moment, like, “I see your classmate is trying to talk and she got interrupted, how did your actions affect her? Or “I noticed you are having a hard time staying on task right now. How does your body feel and what do you need?” These little self-awareness chats get your student’s brain cranking to help them see things within themselves.
If you’re looking for inspiration on specific activities that can help you try out these self-awareness strategies check out these next ideas.
“I Wonder” Promoting Self-Awareness and and Routine Check-Ins:
This is a simple activity that doesn’t require much work and can be used throughout the day. You can start the day with an “I wonder” question in a morning meeting. As kids get settled into their seats simply ask, “I wonder how we are doing this morning. Let’s check-in with ourselves. I wonder how our energy is. Or, I wonder how we feel physically. I wonder how our brains are feeling or I wonder how we feel emotionally today.”
Pause between each “I wonder” statement. You can have students just keep their thoughts to themselves. Or they can express things with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
After this you can implement “I wonder” questions after other activities too, like transitioning between lunch and afternoon, after a test, or after completing a difficult activity.
Simple check-ins worked into the day helps promote self-awareness because it gives students time to sit and think about what is going on within themselves.
How To Become Self-Aware Through Mindfulness or Guided Imagery Activities:
Meditation is a great way to pause and learn simple self-awareness techniques. Sometimes called mindfulness or guided imagery, this exercise allows students to sit back, relax, and ponder internal reflections that help them become aware of things.
Mindfulness can teach things like how does my body feel and pair it with breathing techniques to help work through the situation. For example it might sound like, “How does your body feel? Is your heart racing? Are your hands sweaty? Slow down and cool off by breathing in for 3 seconds and then breathing out for 3 seconds…”
Other meditation asks a series of questions where students can scan how they feel while breathing and then a talk about steps they can follow to reflect on different things. For example it might sound like, “Let’s get grounded in this moment by becoming aware of our surroundings… First focus on things you hear…. Then focus on things you can touch… Next focus on the things you can smell…”
Guided imagery sets up a scene where kids imagine they are an object and doing things like that object to help them become self-aware. For example it might sound like this, “Imagine you’re a beautiful flower blooming in full. You’re standing tall, your colors are bright, you are healthy. How might you look when you’re feeling tired. Are you like a flower that needs water? Are your petals wilting? Do you feel like drooping?…”
Journaling To Apply Self-Awareness Knowledge:
Journaling is a great way to get kids thinking and doing when it comes to self-awareness. Having a journal is an outlet they can use to take concepts they learned and put it into their own words. Using their own words creates meaningful connections to self-awareness.
Students can have a general notebook to journal in, or they can have a journal called, “I feel when” or “my feelings journal” where they write about their emotions, what is causing them to feel that way, or things they can do to work through their emotions.
The class can also do non-traditional journaling activities. Like listen to different types of music and write about what they noticed and how it made them feel or think a certain way. Journals don’t have to be just for writing. Students can create a picture or poster pertaining to a self-awareness skill they learned. The visual can be hung up somewhere to help remind them of using that skill later.
Consider adding mindfulness to your classroom! It pairs perfectly with SEL and is a great tool to bring calm and relaxation to a busy school day. With these best practices your students will have a great mindfulness experience.
Need Self-Awareness Resources for Your Classroom?
My social emotional learning curriculum explicitly teaches students what self-awareness is and provides practice opportunities for different elements of self-awareness.
You can also find these lessons in my FULL YEAR curriculum, which is the best value:
Leave a comment below and let me know your favorite strategies for teaching self-awareness in the classroom!
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