Striving for Social Emotional Learning and Vocabulary Acquisition

I remember the first time I heard about vocabulary disparity between socio-economic groups and its impact on children throughout their lives. I was embarrassed it had never dawned on me that some kids are exposed to more language than others, and even beyond that, what they are exposed to is vastly different. As I embark on a journey to enhance standard language arts curriculum with social-emotional learning (SEL) skills, I am intensely aware of the disparity facing so many students. As teachers, we must be conscious of such needs.

Imagine trying to apply frosting to a cake
but the recipe only uses the word “ice”
as in ice the cake. 

Learning that children everywhere are exposed to more or less language than others made me think back to my childhood. My mother used to say to me, “Never use baby talk with a baby.” While I didn’t pay much attention to that as a teenager, now I understand the implications of baby talk and other forms of confusing language during those critically formative years. She always said she and my father spoke to me and my brother the way they expected us to speak to them. I can’t help but slap my palm to my forehead… Obviously, right?

Life-Long Impact

Sadly, this is not always the case. Though I was extremely lucky my mother could stay home during my early childhood years, many (dare I say most) children are not as lucky. Because she was present and understood the importance of language in a child’s development, I was a fluent reader by the time I was three and have loved being articulate throughout my life. Essay writing was always easy for me. Reading and comprehension came to me the way soccer or basketball comes to those of you who are athletic; like how the ball becomes an extension of you, reading and writing are for me.

Even now, I pour over each word here the way you rethink a free throw or penalty kick; you want it just right and you’ll practice it and hone it until you get it just the way you want it. What if you were only ever taught how to dunk though? You’d be a dismal member of your basketball team because dribbling and passing are crucial as well. (That about wraps up all the athletic-related words I know lol.) 

Teaching the Big Picture

In schools today, broadly speaking, language is taught as dismally as only learning to dunk. Up to first or second grade, kids learn dog, cat, ball, and so on. The concept of building these words using ‘og’ and ‘at’ and ‘all’ so the child can form other words sounds like a good idea and the intention is certainly sincere. However, studies are beginning to question this long-accepted plan. 

I have to wonder if all these years spent on words kids would pick up anyway was really the best use of their limited window of fundamental learning. I doubt anyone took the time to teach John Adams or George Washington the word dog when they were six years old. My point is that children are getting to middle school without the language skills and vocabulary they need not only academically, but socially-emotionally as well. Imagine the schoolyard fights, locker room trauma, and classroom behavioral issues that could be prevented if students had the social-emotional language they needed to describe and explain how they feel and why.

How about starting our youngest students’
education out with social-emotional vocabulary
and the context needed to structure it into usable language?

Making SEL Accessible

Part of making this language accessible to students is finding a way to make it practical and applicable to their lives. Students can’t apply what they can’t understand. For example, a 4th grader in urban New York as opposed to one in rural Kansas or one in a suburb of Colorado will have vastly different understandings of the world. Their perceived and real dangers, their parental involvement, and even how their school operates are all huge parts of their education. 

Each of them will be exposed to different vocabularies in differing quantities. However, all of these children will experience relationships, social situations, self-awareness needs etcetera. Therefore, they all need and would benefit from SEL. Once they all have a healthy vocabulary that applies to all of their lives, they can start learning how to navigate it and apply it to their specific lives and experiences. Now they have language. 

To help them develop their SEL vocabularies, they need accessible texts. As much as I love Shakespeare, his work is not really helpful in this instance. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan and Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (to name a few) are texts that teachers can use to help their students understand SEL and start developing those language skills. I write short stories such as The End, Ski Trip, and Super Lost to help students have engaging texts to read as they learn these new concepts. 

In the End…

Our youngest learners need to be trusted to learn bigger words like love, understanding, pain, sharing, vulnerability, empathy, and so on. This education needs to continue through high school. As students grow and develop, they have new experiences. As they have these new experiences, they’ll have new realities and will have new scenarios in which to apply their SEL skills. This is not a lesson to be given in one class for two weeks in fifth grade then forgotten. This is pre-k through 12th grades at least an hour a day kind of material. Another word for it would be curriculum. Social-emotional learning needs to become a standard part of every student’s education because so many are not getting it at home.