International SEL Day

Week Two: Mindfulness as a tool for Social Emotional skill buildling

Mindfulness is an awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of moment to moment experiences. Mindfulness helps us to see clearly and understand fully the changing flow of sensations in the body, emotions, and thought. By increasing our awareness we increase our skillsets needed for all five SEL competencies.

How SEL and Mindfulness Can Work Together.

To start, SEL uses an outside-in approach with a focus on teaching skills: a teacher introduces a skill such as recognizing an emotion or using “I” messages, the students practice it for a set amount of time, and then the teacher moves on to the next skill. SEL assumes that this process is enough to enable students to use the skill in all relevant, real-life situations.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, works from the inside out, drawing on the premise that each person has the innate capacity for relationship-building qualities such as empathy and kindness—a premise that research now supports.

Full article here.

Powerful Synergy: SEL and Mindfulness Working Together

Both SEL and mindful practices are pathways to individual empowerment and collective advancement. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a lifelong process by which youth and adults learn and integrate the intra- and interpersonal skills necessary for success in school and life. Mindfulness involves specific practices that help youth and adults in calming themselves, focusing their attention, and growing compassion thus creating the conditions for high-caliber academic learning and amplifying the effects of existing social-emotional programs and strategies.

Read Meena Srinivasan's full article here.