Social-Emotional Learning is focusing on the whole child and providing them with all the necessary tools to be successful as a human and as a student. It is important to focus on the social-emotional needs of students because it raises the self-awareness of the student and allows them to connect to the teacher, peers, and curriculum in an effective and productive way. Our role as an educator is more than just providing a student with content knowledge about a specific subject. It has evolved into us helping to shape them as an individual and then helping them navigate real life situations and problem solving that will be the key to their success after they leave our classroom. In a traditional educational setting, our role was to provide students knowledge of the content area we were trained in. Under the SEL model, teachers are helping students learn who they are as an individual first, and then bridging the emotional connection between their identity and how who they are impacts their connection to the content and their understanding of new information along the lines of their own experiences. It also teaches the student of the greater role they play in the world around them and how their actions and decisions affect those around them in multiple ways.
