'Everyone's In': Social-Emotional Learning at Shore

As news reports echo with disturbing accounts from survivors of school violence, and as pressing education issues such as bullying and student anxiety keep parents and educators on high alert about how well schools are caring for children, the concept known as “social and emotional learning” has become ever more central in discussions about student well-being and success.

 

Many education researchers have come to see social and emotional learning as a key that unlocks solutions to a host of challenges. Through programs that emphasize traits such as self-awareness, relationship-building, decision-making, and resilience, social and emotional learning is proving a robust toolkit for increasing academic achievement; nurturing prosocial behaviors such as kindness, sharing, and empathy; improving student attitudes toward school; and even reducing depression and stress. In short, social and emotional learning—particularly in the formative elementary and middle school years—can shape the foundations of students’ ability to succeed in high school, college, and life.

 

 

At Shore, the high stakes around this kind of learning have underscored a decades-long commitment to creating and sustaining a culture in which students feel safe and may thrive. From Pre-K to Grade 9, Shore students today find vital social and emotional support within a layered, research-based network of strategies and structures that’s broad in scope and surprising in sophistication. 

 

The complexities of maintaining such a culture, however, can sometimes be difficult to grasp. According to Lower School Head Sara Knox, this is at least in part because Shore’s comprehensive and very deliberate focus on social and emotional learning appears, to visitors and others, as simply the “natural” caring instincts and intuitive classroom practices of highly skilled Upper and Lower School teachers. But creating a culture in which students’ well-being is genuinely a priority, says Knox, is anything but a happy accident of a caring culture and expert teachers. 

 

In the Lower School, building such an environment starts in the homeroom, where social and emotional learning are at the center of every day’s routine, thoroughly integrated into a teaching model called “Responsive Classroom.” According to Knox, “This model gives us a division-wide set of shared practices to ensure that all our students feel safe and feel they have a voice.” In the Responsive Classroom model, students learn and practice a set of social and emotional competencies—cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self control—alongside academic skills; the combination allows them to do their best work, and be their best selves. 

 

 

As fourth grade homeroom teacher Stacy Tell elaborates, the Responsive Classroom model formalizes a host of practices that were already innate at Shore. “One of the reasons I was drawn to Shore in the first place was because tapping into social and emotional learning was part of the culture here. While we pride ourselves on our challenging academics, we’ve also always valued the ability to nurture who the child is as a person.”

 

Step into any given Lower School classroom, and this philosophy is immediately apparent in the Morning Meeting, says Sara Knox; the Morning Meeting—like its end-of-day corollary, Closing Circle—plays both a practical and a social-emotional role. “Morning Meeting gives our teachers the opportunity to talk about the day, and it also allows time to go through community-building activities that emphasize those social-emotional aptitudes.” The lightweight, non-academic exercises can include sharing weekend highlights, playing whole-group games, or reflecting on a theme, such as kindness or making mistakes. “All of these help kids find a level of comfort in the classroom and with their peers much faster than they would in a traditional school environment,” says Knox. “Teachers actively make space during these meetings and at moments throughout the day for conversations about students’ concerns, prompting them to use language such as, ‘I’m feeling frustrated because…’ or ‘I was sad when….’ Over the course of a few months, students begin to feel safe in voicing their feelings openly, and to sense that they have the support of their classmates in exploring anything that may be on their mind.” 

 

“I really give my students credit for how open they are with their classmates,” says Stacy Tell. “There’s real vulnerability there, especially in the beginning of the year, when kids find out one of the things we’re going to be working on in the classroom is our interactions with each other. That can feel daunting! But after three or four months, it feels normal and comfortable. Responsive Classroom reassures them we’re all here together, taking care of our community.”

 

In Shore’s model, sharing the good is just as valued as expressing a concern. Children are encouraged to praise someone for actions or words that they notice and appreciate, such as a classmate taking care of a friend, or owning responsibility for something they’ve done. “This kind of interaction is key in helping kids develop the reflex of sharing and reflecting on their experiences with the support of a peer group and their teachers,” explains Knox. It is one of the primary ways Shore ensures that no one “falls through the cracks,” Knox says. “Everyone’s in, and there’s no way for a child to simply bow out of participating.”

 

 

According to Stacy Tell, the regular participation in community-building clearly impacts not only classroom dynamics, but also academic performance. “We know students in third, fourth, or fifth grade, for example, are intensely invested in the social interactions they encounter throughout their day,” Tell says. “Issues around social cliques and friendships can become prevalent distractions. So it’s not surprising students can have difficulty focusing on their small-group math lesson when the person sitting next to them said something unkind at recess, and they’re still feeling the tension from it.”

 

Tell explains that the work of building community in the classroom helps students develop social and emotional tools that allow them to meet these interpersonal challenges. “One of the most important skills we practice in our classrooms is self-advocacy—the idea that when something is bothering you, it’s okay to tell your friend that they’re bothering you.” While it may require a lot of coaching and practice, “In the long run,” says Tell, “being able to speak up for yourself and fix problems with peers—without needing to turn to an adult for a solution—builds independence.” At the same time, students are learning when and how to ask for help. “It’s the flip-side of self-advocacy,” Tell says. “When a child can see and express that something is beyond their experience or beyond what they can control, and that they need support from a parent or teacher, that’s just as important as tackling problems on their own. Speaking up to ask for help isn’t a weakness; it’s actually a strength.” An important part of the social-emotional toolkit in every grade is empathy. According to Tell, “While we talk a lot about Harkness discussion—how to enter a conversation, how to agree and disagree—sometimes it’s easy to miss that being a good listener is just as important.” The ability to look outside themselves, to step into someone else’s shoes, serves children in the classroom and in life. 

 

“Since the beginning of time, I’m sure teachers have probably wanted their students to absorb all of these incredibly important social and emotional skills—self-advocacy, asking for help, actively listening—but may not have had a name or a system to do so,” Tell reflects. “I love that at Shore, we do.”

 

For Tell’s fourth grade students, Shore’s Responsive Classroom model finds full expression in their “fireside chats,” intimate group conversations held every Friday afternoon. Using a battery-powered tea candle as a talking totem, the class sits down together for a completely student-led reflection on the week. “Sometimes it’s a compliment-fest,” Tell explains, “where everyone wants to say kind things to their classmates. At other times it’s about something that’s not going so well in the classroom.” Tell recalls one chat during which students discovered they all were experiencing similar negative feelings about academic and social stresses. “To learn they weren’t alone in their feelings was incredibly powerful for them,” she says. “It let us move forward to talk about how to fix what was bothering us.”

 

Beyond the homeroom, teachers continue the conversations that begin with their students. “Much of the work that our teachers do outside the classroom is, in fact, discussing who our students are as individuals—their interests, struggles, conflicts, and gifts—and what they need from us to be at their best,” Sara Knox explains. Each week, she meets either with her Lower School homeroom faculty or with special-subject teachers, who see multiple grades for SAIL, science, Spanish, studio art, and music. “The purpose of these meetings,” she says, “is, of course, to collaborate on topics in the curriculum, but more importantly it is to share observations about our students, identify those in whom we may see emerging strengths or new challenges, and together develop concrete tactics and next steps to support them.”

 

 

According to Katie Hertz, Shore’s school counselor, “Our system is nimble. By that I mean that taking care of the social and emotional health of our students is something the whole faculty feels responsible for. Everyone is attuned to it; that’s the beauty of our culture and our community.” Meeting with grade-level teams each week, Hertz is able to work with faculty members to identify where help may be needed, and to respond quickly with new areas of focus in the curriculum to support groups of kids, or even entire grades. “For example,” Hertz explains, “right now I’m working with several grades in the Lower School to provide extra support with social skills.” Hearing a need for this kind of help during weekly meetings, Hertz responded with the concept of the “lunch bunch,” a regular get-together with students whom she leads through guided conversations about specific types of interactions, such as conflicts between friends, recess issues, and problem-solving. “The lunch bunch,” says Hertz, “is a forum for modeling vital social skills, practicing good communication before problems develop in the classroom.”

 

The nimbleness Hertz describes pays off as children “graduate” from the Lower School’s homeroom model to the Upper School advisory system. There, though students move between multiple teachers for their primary subjects, they meet numerous times each week with an advisor, who in many ways serves the same role as a homeroom teacher. Sean Melia, Dean of Students and sixth grade English teacher, explains, “The advisor is something like a shepherd, guiding their small group of advisees through the year. He or she serves as the point person for the kids, and very often for their parents, as well.” Students’ access to an advisor’s support is built into the academic schedule at several points throughout the week. Each day during what’s called “Eighth Hour”—an open half-hour period at the end of the daily class schedule for catching up on work, meeting with a teacher, or participating in an extracurricular activity—students visit their advisor for what can be anything from a brief check-in to a longer conversation about a specific concern. Wednesdays, advisee groups share informal conversation over lunch with their advisor, and every Thursday during a dedicated advisory period, more formal sessions on specific topics are convened.

 

“Middle school is all about navigating social and emotional challenges,” emphasizes Melia, “and the advisor helps to create a safe space where there’s room for being real with those worries and struggles.” Students look to their advisor for help with everything from mastering study skills to negotiating changes in friendships; the conversations may be free-form and one-on-one, or they may be group discussions connected to specific issues relevant to an entire grade, such as elements of the Community Code, or the use of social media. In Shore’s program, however, the advisor is not alone in providing this kind of support; he or she is at the center of a network of adults responsible for supporting children socially and emotionally, as well as academically. 

 

 

As Katie Hertz explains, students are encouraged to seek out help and support from any campus adults they “click” with. “We want every student to have at least one person they can turn to, whether or not it’s their assigned advisor. This can be an athletic coach, a teacher from a previous grade, or a member of the staff.” She continues, “But ultimately, the message we hope all our students absorb is that they’re not in it alone. Whether they’re reaching out to a specific teacher about a challenging assignment or to an advisor about a larger concern, we’d much rather have a student send an e-mail late at night, asking to talk the next day at school, than become distraught and lose sleep over something. I think our students genuinely sense this—that they’re accepted and supported by their teachers no matter what.”

 

Just as in the Lower School, Upper School faculty members as a group form another layer of support for their students. Subject-area teachers in a given grade come together every other week to discuss matters in the curriculum and to share observations or concerns about their students. For Sean Melia, the most common themes that emerge through these regular faculty discussions are around study skills and organization, difficulty with finding friend groups, and behavior that’s disruptive or unkind. “Being in the same room together means that each of us can contribute observations that help us identify kids who might be struggling,” explains Melia. Because numerous teachers in addition to the advisor will have experience with each student, there’s a kind of “institutional knowledge” that’s built over time to help inform understanding of a given student’s situation. 

 

Once a concern is noted, teachers work together to consider strategies for helping. “Again,” reminds Melia, “it doesn’t have to be the advisor who takes the next step. Shore is great about providing opportunities for teachers and students to be together in multiple settings, whether it’s at lunch or snack, at recess, during sports, or in the hallways.” When a conversation with a student is needed, the first step is usually gentle and supportive. “We start from the point of what we’ve seen throughout the course of the day,” explains Melia, “and why we’re concerned and want to help. With this approach, most students immediately sense that we care about them and want to do everything we can to support them.”

 

 

As school counselor, Katie Hertz is in the unique position of serving both students and teachers. “If there’s one trend I’ve noticed over the past several years in my role, it’s that teachers are now on the ‘front lines’ with regard to kids’ concerns; they really see it as part of their job to be aware of and help address whatever those may be.” Particularly in the Upper School, Hertz notes, “Students are increasingly coming in the door very aware of what’s happening in the world, whether it’s school shootings or the ‘#metoo’ movement.” And while faculty members are more than willing to engage students in hard conversations about these topics, frequently they bring emerging concerns to Hertz, who may then pull Sean Melia into a collaboration. Often, they’re able to compare notes they’ve both made based on communication from teachers, and they’ll tailor a response together. 

 

Recently, Melia and Hertz heard from eighth grade teachers about significant signs of stress related to their students’ receiving secondary school admissions decisions. As Melia recounts, “Our students were trying to absorb major news: ‘Congratulations, you’re in!’ Or, ‘We’re sorry, not this year; and by the way, one of your friends got into the school you wanted to get into.’” Melia and Hertz put together a package of articles and videos to help guide teachers in conversations with students about managing this major moment in their life. “Neither bad news nor good news is simple to deal with,” says Melia. “We wanted students to be equipped to handle disappointment, as well as to manage being over the moon when friends might be dealing with news they didn’t want to hear.”

 

Still, there are times when an individual student’s needs extend beyond what the Responsive Classroom model or the advisory system can address. These are times when communication with parents becomes critical. “Keeping a channel open with parents is a constant in our program,” emphasizes Katie Hertz. “When our teachers observe something troubling with a child in their classroom, there’s an immediate communication from the homeroom teacher or the advisor to start a dialogue with parents. When the contact from school confirms something parents have been seeing at home, the additional information can be reassuring, and can help parents feel like they have our support.”

 

 

Hertz continues, “Even when the news from the classroom isn’t great—when we see a child struggling with anxiety or behavioral challenges, for example—parents are almost always grateful for the open communication, and the way it demonstrates the tremendous amount of care we want to give to their children. It also means that at parent-teacher conference time, they’ll never hear something concerning for the first time. They’ve already received the phone call or e-mail from us, and they already sense the partnership.”

 

According to Lower School Head Sara Knox, student anxiety is one challenge that’s increasingly discussed among teachers, and between school and home. “While student anxiety does seem to be on the rise at every school, we’re becoming more and more adept at working together—pooling what we’ve noticed about a student, sharing any successful solutions we’ve found, and enlisting the help of our families—to build strategies for a child that directly get at their particular source of stress,” she explains. “For example, if we observe that transitions from one part of the school to another are anxiety-provoking for a Lower Schooler, we can then have a teacher hold that child’s hand during those moments, or create a way that the child can actually manage the anxiety themselves, such as holding a stuffed animal.”

 

As school counselor, Katie Hertz encounters students struggling with a range of needs. “Individual learning styles that require intensive structure and support are one of the emerging areas where I collaborate closely with faculty,” particularly in the Lower School, she says. “We’re simply seeing more children who need services like occupational therapy, speech therapy, and help with sensory integration, and we’re increasingly partnering with outside specialists in the community to provide the additional support.” 

 

Professionals such as occupational therapists help students perform particular tasks necessary for participation in all aspects of school life, from paying attention in class to managing their behavior. According to Hertz, “Shore works with agencies that can provide specific types of therapy to individual students right in the classroom, so they don’t have to leave the school to get the support they need.” Bringing specialists in-house also means that families of children with unique needs—who are otherwise perfectly capable of thriving in Shore’s program—can choose Shore, rather than looking to other institutions that may not be able to offer a comparable school experience.

 

Among Upper Schoolers, Hertz deploys several strategies to help students cope with concerns that continually evolve as children mature. When a new need surfaces—in a weekly faculty meeting, through an advisory conversation, or simply through teachers’ day-to-day understanding of their students—an advisor or other trusted adult will gently encourage a child to reach out to Hertz. “Of course, I know that by seventh or eighth grade students are not as eager to admit that they’re going to see the school counselor,” Hertz observes, “so I am constantly on the lookout for ways to spend time with the child, developing a level of comfort and familiarity that makes our interactions feel natural.” One favorite style of “appointment” is the walk-and-talk around Shore’s Oval; other sessions range from quick check-ins between classes to regular weekly meetings in Hertz’s office. “Regardless of the setting,” Hertz says, “I try to be proactive and solution-oriented with my students. For example, if a student is struggling with managing the academic pace, we talk about ways to prevent time crunches, or we consider whether getting extra help could alleviate feelings of being overwhelmed.” When these types of interventions don’t seem to be enough, Hertz’s conversation with student and parents turns to recommending professional therapists outside of school who are better suited to provide intensive support and, if needed, intervention.

 

 

As Hertz sees it, the next “frontier” in supporting students socially and emotionally at school is enabling them to elevate their own voices and create their own solutions. “When our students bring difficult topics to us—Parkland, gender identity—we want them to guide the conversation and choose the path themselves, whether it takes the form of activism, special programming, or meaningful, focused discussion across grade levels.” A student “walkout” planned for April 20 to draw attention to the issue of safety in schools is a perfect example. According to Sean Melia, “Whatever this movement is, however long it lasts, the students are like a freight train, and in some ways the most important thing I can do is just get out of the way, let the kids lead, and watch as they carry others along in their wake. Feeling that they’re empowered to organize their classmates and make their voices heard—it means so much to these kids, and I’m excited to see how it might affect the rest of the school year, and beyond.”

 

Katie Hertz views Shore’s expanding curriculum in the area of mindfulness as another frontier. “Mindfulness, too, is a powerful tool to enable kids to have a voice in their own emotional well-being,” she says. Most Lower School teachers have incorporated mindfulness into their daily classroom routines, and theater arts teacher Sarah Carlin teaches mindfulness, yoga, and meditation to the entire eighth grade. “Just as we’ve implemented Responsive Classroom as a way to formalize a collection of practices that already exist at Shore,” Hertz says, “I’d like to see us do the same to establish a mindfulness practice and curriculum school-wide.”

 

With such an enormous range of strategies available to address a very broad spectrum of students’ needs (Hertz estimates that she personally meets with about a quarter of Shore’s student population—either individually or in small-group or classroom settings—on a regular basis) it can be difficult to imagine how, and where, multiple years’ worth of observations and insights about an individual child are organized and appropriately shared. For example, new teachers need a comprehensive understanding not only about their own students, but also about every child in a grade; even the most experienced grade-level teaching teams depend on the insights of their colleagues when it comes time to build Lower School classroom rosters or Upper School grade sections for an upcoming school year. 

 

“Admittedly, Shore’s commitment to deeply knowing and caring for each of our students’ social and emotional needs requires a tremendous amount of work on the part of our teachers,” says Sara Knox. “But,” she continues, “that’s the beauty of an independent school—it’s what our teachers do and what they do best.” Every year, teachers add observations and knowledge to shared social-emotional narratives—dubbed “learning profiles”—for each individual child with an area of concern. “Learning profiles are an incredible repository of insights into our students. All the evolving needs and changing strategies connected with a child stay with them from year to year, constantly being updated and improved.” Over the summer, teachers review learning profiles and other collected knowledge for all of their incoming students, so in the fall they can be prepared to help every child be successful from the first day.

 

“The way we move students from one grade to the next is actually quite intentional,” explains Knox. “As we look ahead to the start of a new school year, we dedicate many hours of work to evaluating Lower School homeroom rosters and Upper School grade sections. We’re weighing academic balance, of course, but also the balance of personalities and social-emotional dynamics.” For example, faculty members strive not to overfill a class with either outspoken or reserved personalities; they want to allow both groups of students room to grow. Another critical piece of the process is considering specific relationships among children that can either help or hurt. “Sometimes that may look like an intentional separation,” says Knox. “We do give kids a break from each other when we see perhaps an unhealthy friendship, or a grouping where a strong voice hasn’t given quieter voices a chance.” The opposite is also true: “When we can identify very healthy, helpful relationships—kids who work well together and seem to need each other to be successful—we’ll very intentionally ensure those children are together.”

In reflecting on Shore’s program for social and emotional learning, fourth grade teacher Stacy Tell captures a notion that is likely common to many observers. “For adults—teachers and parents—the social and emotional lives of our students may come to the surface at only intermittent moments during the day. When we talk about supporting children socially and emotionally, it can be hard to point to specifics that don’t feel as if they’re reactions to those times when something concerning bubbles to the top.” 

 

Yet for elementary and middle school-aged children, social and emotional concerns constitute a powerful current that’s never confined to isolated moments. Rather, they’re a central piece of the learning they’re engaged in at Shore each day. As Dean of Students, Sean Melia tries to empathize with their experience, and works at imagining a younger version of himself. “I remember what a completely different time it can be,” he observes, “and what a great time, too. Like all of my colleagues, I have to keep reminding myself to take a step back, and to consider that these are kids with much less experience in life than I have—and a pressing need for the understanding and support that I can give them. As a school, this is what we are all engaged in: the difficult but incredibly gratifying project of understanding children, and demonstrating that understanding to them every day.”