What is one thing your can change today? You can choose to reframe your perception!
My work gets so much easier when I remember to assume that others have much better intentions than what their actions of behavior seems to suggest. I have blogged about Positive Regard before, and I often discuss it with people. Learning more about resilience and trauma-informed practices is great, and I hope that more teachers would get training or professional development about it, as soon as possible. The easiest way (for me) to start practicing the positive regard is to detach the behavior from the person and do my best to support the person as they are – because then I can respond, instead of reacting to the behavior or situation.
Sometimes we are told – or taught – how to perceive certain things like behaviors. It is important to remember that these perceptions are tightly related to the learning theories we use (behaviorism, constructivism, humanism, etc.). The learner-centered philosophy builds on the humanist worldview emphasizing construction of meaning and knowledge from individual experiences. It also requires showing genuine interest towards learners and practicing unconditional positive regard in teaching-learning interactions, which means that our perception of students’ behavior must stay in the right hand column of the image. Here is more about Learner-centered practices: What learner-centered really means.
Using SEL strategies helps us to reframe our perception. All SEL skills (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship skills and Responsible Decision-Making) are necessary for successful learning, but too often they are not taught throughout formal education. As children arrive to school with different skillsets of SEL, some will need more help than others.
By embedding the SEL skills to our instruction and classroom management we are helping students to better engage in their own, individual learning process. And this is why embedding SEL is so crucially important! They should not be an additional curriculum, but learned within every school subject and project. Here is another great resource for using SEL in Trauma-Informed Practices.
NotesFromNina 