Targeted Instruction
Field Practice: Targeting Instruction for
Social and Emotional Skills
Students should be intentionally taught social and emotional skills while at RELCs.
Teaching SEL with Intention
Students engage in a variety of activities while at RELCs. They explore the natural environment, undertake science investigations, participate in environmental stewardship activities, learn about cultural history, hike or canoe with their teammates, and take team challenges. Some of these activities, such as facilitated teambuilders, are designed with social and emotional growth in mind. Any of them, however, can present an opportunity for field instructors to teach social and emotional skills, if they are explicitly framed and debriefed with intention.
How do field instructors intentionally teach
social and emotional skills?
Use activities such as facilitated teambuilders early in a program to assess students’ skills and determine which specific social and emotional skills the field instructor can support in their time together.
See activities as opportunities for students to practice social and emotional skills. Go into an activity with specific skills in mind, and be explicit in the framing about which will be needed. A field instructor might, for instance, introduce a science investigation with a discussion about the collaborative nature of professional science. In order to engage with science, the students will need to practice their listening and communication skills. Similarly, a field instructor might introduce a nature art activity as a chance for students to reflect on and express how they are feeling. On an adventure hike or when preparing for a physical challenge, consider asking students what skills they might practice or what “muscles” (emphasizing the cognitive or emotional kind) they might flex during the challenge. Afterward, prompt students to reflect on what they learned about themselves and each other by participating in that experience.
Provide opportunities for students to transfer their learning to their home or school life. Ask how they will take what they’ve learned back with them. How will they apply a specific skill? Can they think of a time in their lives when they have had to use that skill? Refer to whatever is being discussed in the debrief, such as communication, perseverance, and so on.
Tools
This activity toolbox provides short descriptions of activities that field instructors can use to focus on specific categories of social and emotional skills, along with a longer description of one activity in each category.
This set of debrief questions can be used by field instructors to prompt student discussion and reflection on specific categories of social and emotional skills.
This self-reflection guide is designed to support field instructors in reflecting on their own social and emotional skills, as well as on how they support students’ skill development.
This Social and Emotional Learning Routine from BEETLES offers a structure to support students in developing SEL competencies as they participate in any environmental education experience.
