Advocating for themselves, learning how to handle emotions and treating others with respect are some things that many students struggle with. One way the staff of Yutan High School are helping students develop these skills this year is with SEL lessons. SEL stands for social-emotional learning, and teachers lead these lessons every Monday afternoon during Chieftain Time. However, many students grumble about these lessons, but they are truly beneficial to students’ overall emotional health and well-being.
Even though SEL lessons are a great way to teach students soft skills they will need later in life, many students don’t take these lessons seriously.
“SEL lessons don’t help us because no one pays attention or applies what they learn from the lessons,” one sophomore said.
However, this isn’t a good argument because teachers have to teach even if every student isn’t paying attention, and even if students don’t apply the lessons right away, they are planting seeds that will hopefully bloom eventually.
Another reason some students don’t like SEL lessons is because it takes up their time to do homework during Chieftain Time.
“Chieftain Time is my homework time, and I have a lot of homework on Mondays that I can’t get done,” one freshman said.
This argument also isn’t strong because this year the school increased the amount of Chieftain Time from just two days a week to every day, so even though students might not have homework time on Monday, they still have more time overall.
Not only are students’ reasons for complaining not valid, but there are also many advantages to starting these new lessons. One benefit is creating a better school environment by emphasizing skills like empathy.
“SEL lessons are important because they teach students how to show empathy because they don’t know what other students may have experienced,” one teacher said.
Students here are often impatient with each other, don’t listen to other students’ opinions and don’t put themselves in other people’s shoes.
This causes many conflicts between students, some big and some small. These lessons demonstrate that students need to treat others with kindness and respect even if they aren’t necessarily friends.
Another benefit of SEL lessons is that the skills that students learn can be used outside the classroom in the real world, whether they are working in a group, standing up for what they believe in or communicating with others. These are life skills that are important for students’ overall development and readiness for the real world.
“Students don’t realize it now, but all the skills we learn about are things that successful adults use every day at work and home,” another teacher said.
Overall, SEL lessons are beneficial because they are a new way to focus on helping students become better people emotionally and socially, not just academically. Teaching students life skills through these lessons should help the school become a better place for all students. Although some students don’t pay attention, the students that do learn valuable skills that they can use in their everyday lives. And maybe the students who are complaining about these lessons need to do some self-reflection on why these lessons are necessary in the first place.
