There is abundant literature on the many benefits of promoting student choice (for an accessible overview see, “The key to making improvements: as the students”).

Among the positive outcomes associated with giving students authentic choices in what they will learn, how they will learn it, and how they will demonstrate their learning are:

• Better attainment of learning objectives
• More engagement in the classroom
• Better generalization of classroom learning to real life situations

I would like to suggest another reason for providing students, especially adolescents, with meaningful choices and then honoring those choices – they know better than adults what is really important to them.

This may be particularly true in the field of social and emotional learning (SEL). Although tremendous gains have been made in the past 25 years in terms of understanding the importance of SEL, best practices in implementing SEL, and the many positive outcomes associated with high quality SEL programs, it is still a budding field, as evidenced by the existence of at least 40 different SEL frameworks encompassing more than 100 social and emotional skills.

Educational equity is achieved by equipping students with tools to overcome some of the pre-existing barriers that impede their ability to succeed in school and thrive. Although educational equity was a priority in many school districts prior to the events of the past year and a half, talks surrounding the initiative have amped up–of the 10 largest school districts in the United States, eight now identify equity as part of their mission statements or core values.

Achieving educational equity requires multiple strategies and initiatives because the sources of inequity are so numerous and varied. One of the most important strategies is the promotion of students’ social and emotional competence (SEC).

First, we must understand how equity is defined. Recently, Jagers, Rivas-Drake, and Borowski asserted that educational equity “means that every student has access to the resources and educational rigor they need” (2018, p.1). Similarly, the Center for Public Education stated that, “equity is achieved when all students receive the resources they need so they graduate prepared for success after high school” (2016, p. 1). Both definitions make clear that the focus of educational equity efforts needs to be on the individual student. Equity is achieved when every (Jagers et. al) or all (CPE) students can benefit from education.

There is an oft-cited parable in children’s mental health about two individuals fishing on the banks of a river. In the midst of their outing, they notice a child in the middle of the river, struggling to stay afloat and in obvious danger. One of the anglers drops their fishing pole, swims out and brings the child to safety on the shore.  No sooner does the angler resume fishing then another child comes floating down the river, struggling to keep their head above water. Again, the angler swims out and rescues the child.  When the situation occurs a third time, the angler throws down their fishing rod and starts to walk away leading the second angler to ask, “Aren’t you going to save that child too?” The first angler responds, “No, I am going upstream to stop whatever is throwing these children into the river.”

This allegory may well represent the situation that many educators may find themselves in as students return to school this fall.

With limited resources–a big one being time–and so many students in need, teachers could be faced with the dilemma of either focusing on students who are in crisis or “going upstream” to provide supports to all of their students to forestall the development of mental health concerns. This is, of course, a false dichotomy; educators, student support personnel, and administrators do their best to support all children. Nevertheless, students in crisis can exhaust schools’ resources leading to a lack of focused attention on prevention, or promotion of positive mental health behaviors.

The promotion of student resilience, the ability to cope successfully with adversity, is a useful approach for addressing: 1) supporting students in crisis, 2) helping to prevent additional students from developing emotional and behavioral problems, and 3) promoting the well-being of all students.

Summer is here, and if you haven’t taken the opportunity yet, it’s time to relax. Teacher stress amidst the pandemic has understandably received a lot of attention, but even before COVID-19 turned our world, including our schools, upside down in an unprecedented way, 61 percent of teachers reported that work was “always” or “often” stressful, which is twice the rate of the general population and akin to the stress levels reported by doctors and lawyers (Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016).

That stress also has a ripple effect. The negative impact of stress may begin with an  educator’s physical health and mental well-being and spreads to affect relationships with students and colleagues, the classroom environment, student achievement, and teacher turnover (Bintliff, 2020; Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, 2020; Greenberg, Brown, & Abenavoli, 2016; Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014).

While there are a variety of ways to combat stress in general, including diet, exercise, meditation, and other techniques, SEL provides a unique lens for stress management in the context of the classroom.

In addition to helping manage personal stress levels, educators with strong social and emotional skills are better at navigating everyday challenges, are more prepared for the challenges of classroom management, are better able to model social and emotional skills to students, and are more adept at implementing social and emotional programs. National surveys indicate teachers want more professional development on the topic of SEL and how to tailor it to meet the needs of their students, yet most teachers do not receive SEL instruction in their preparation programs (Hamilton & Doss, 2020; Melnick & Martinez, 2019; Schonert-Reichle, Kitil, & Hanson-Peterson, 2017; Schwartz et al., 2020).