Using Social and Emotional Learning in Middle Schools

 By Kelley Doswell, EdD, LCPC, NCC

It’s four minutes before first period and a student is standing outside my office, looking like she’s trying very hard not to cry in the hallway where everyone can see her. Students are lined up to see me, and I have to return a call from a parent. I let her into my office and listen to her. I spend time grounding and negotiating with her on whether she can make it to her classes today. 

This form of interaction is called social and emotional learning (SEL), and middle school counselors use this strategy daily. It happens in the spaces between scheduled programming, in the two minutes before the bell and in the relationship that makes a student willing to show up at all. 

However, are counselors using SEL with intention? Are schools building structures that allow us to do this work well? SEL is not a program to implement — rather an interaction that is nurtured. It is a way of being present with young people at the most neurologically chaotic period of their lives.

Understanding an Important Developmental Moment

The middle school counseling experience can feel like a different planet with the drama, the social hierarchies and the inexplicable emotional volatility. However, the explanation for this lies in neuroscience.

The adolescent brain is in a period of intense reorganization. The prefrontal cortex — the part responsible for impulse control, emotional regulation and long-term thinking — is still under construction and will not be fully developed until the mid-twenties. Meanwhile, the emotional processing center of the brain is running at full capacity. The result is a student who feels everything intensely and has limited internal tools to manage it. The interaction a school counselor has with a middle schooler happens in the context of a brain that is genuinely working harder to simultaneously process social information, manage emotional responses and figure out who they are in the world.

Counselors may need to remember this when they encounter a student who explodes over something that seems minor, shuts down and disengages, or who acts indecisive. It may even be easy to label a student in these incidences as dramatic, lazy and incompetent. The reality is they are experiencing a neurologically complex period, often without the emotional vocabulary, regulatory skills or trusted adult relationships to help them.

Applying SEL Competencies to Students

The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning identifies five SEL competencies: 

1. Self-awareness is the student who can say, “I think I’m anxious, not angry.” That shift from acting out an emotion to naming it can happen over time with a counselor who keeps asking questions even when the student doesn’t know the answer.
2. Self-management is the deep breath a student takes before an outburst. They decide to walk away and see a counselor before a crisis, instead of escalating a situation. 
3. Social awareness is the student who notices their friend has been quieter than usual and asks if they are OK. It is the moment a student from one cultural background tries to understand the experience of a classmate from a different background. In schools with diverse populations, social awareness can be a survival skill for a multicultural environment.
4. Relationship skills are built when students practice listening to each other, and when a counselor helps a student figure out how to repair a friendship instead of abandoning it. We are teaching young people that relationships require work, conflict is survivable and how they treat people is important.
5. Teaching students responsible decision-making helps them understand they have choices with consequences. 

The Requirements for Equity-Centered SEL

Despite the benefits, not all SEL looks the same or is equally accessible to all students. For those carrying the weight of systemic racism, poverty, community violence and historical trauma, SEL is a lifeline. As such, equity-centered SEL requires counselors to go further than teaching competencies in the abstract and name the systems that make emotional regulation harder for some students than others. This means building environments where students feel safe physically, racially, culturally and emotionally. 

Research is clear that adverse childhood experiences — abuse, neglect, household instability or exposure to violence — can leave an imprint on the developing brain. Students who have experienced trauma are not choosing to be dysregulated. Our role is not to demand regulation from students who have not been given the tools or safety to achieve it. 

Here are some tips for counselors:

• Examine your implicit responses to student behavior and determine if a response is to the behavior itself or your assumptions about the student. 
• Help students build their emotional vocabulary by asking them to be specific when describing what they feel because they cannot manage what they cannot name.
• Protect the relationship by making students feel known and cared for by a trusted adult at school. This helps them to be resilient in other aspects of their lives.

Note: Opinions expressed and statements made in this blog do not necessarily represent the policies or opinions of ACA and its editors.