Relationships, Reflection, and Perspective: Social Emotional Learning in the International School of the Americas

• In Event: Learning From Successful Practice: Social Emotional Learning in Three Diverse Urban High Schools

Abstract

Purpose
Researchers have identified social emotional learning (SEL) as supportive of academic success and engagement (Durlak et al., 2011; Greenberg et al., 2003). This paper reports on one high school’s approach to SEL and its connection to a related field, social justice learning (SJL), in order to build upon limited high school level SEL research and improve policy and practice concerning both SEL and SJL.

Framework, Methods, and Data Sources
We drew from SEL (Durlak et al., 2011; Greenberg et al., 2003) and school climate research (Thapa et al., 2012) to study the International School of the Americas (ISA) in San Antonio, TX. ISA, which has a global community focus, is one of three urban, socioeconomically and racially diverse public schools producing high levels of academic achievement that we investigated in this project. Data sources included focus groups and interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents (N = 55), observations (N = 14), document review (approximately 30 documents; school website; student portfolios), and a survey of sophomores and seniors (N = 194; 81% participation; 61% female; 57% Latino). We utilized a case study approach (Yin, 1989) to describe and analyze SEL at ISA, and survey data to assess student perceptions.

Results
Teachers and administrators pointed to positive relationships and the practice of reflection, both elements of school climate and culture, as key to their SEL strategies. Several features, structures, and practices supported this approach. As an example, while it makes sense that students in positive relationships with teachers and other students will develop social emotional skills (e.g. social awareness, relationship skills and self-management; CASEL, 2003), ISA creates opportunities to foster these relationships:

• Structurally, the school is small (<500 students); several participants told us that students learn to get along with and rely on each other and their teachers because, unlike in a larger school, they had to interact with the same people over four years.
• ISA enacts practices that support relationships. For example, freshmen spend their first week at ISA in relationship-building orientation activities across their classes, and students at ISA travel together as a class each year – developing relationship skills brought on by necessity as they go.

Students told us that these relationships, in turn, create safe contexts to engage in reflection about their own academic successes and challenges, drawing one connection between SEL and academic success.

For many at ISA, SJL involved helping students apply social emotional skills developed through positive relationships and reflective practices to wider circles of community. For example, social emotional skills are important with friends, but become essential when trying to take the perspective of more distant others—the work of SJL requires this ability.

Significance
Our case analysis of ISA demonstrates how one high school implements a whole school approach to SEL, and points to how this might support student engagement and academic success and SJL. In a policy context driven by traditional measures of academic success, ISA demonstrates one way to leverage SEL to achieve academic goals while also fostering SJL.

Author

• Brandy Quinn, Texas Christian University