At Deer Hill School, we have long believed in the importance of the spirit of belonging.  When children truly feel like they belong in their school community, they flourish – they feel comfortable asking questions, taking risks, going big.  They help each other out and applaud each other’s successes.  The old days of teachers expecting students to just sit there and be quiet while they delivered the curriculum are long gone – at least at 208 Sohier Street!  We respect our students’ voices and we know that the more students interact with one another while they process what they are learning, the more powerful and long lasting that learning will be. 

In our schoolwide effort to promote social emotional learning through our curriculum and our daily routines, we have focused through the month of September on the spirit of belonging.  Third grade teachers have been teaching about its importance through the book “One Hundred Dresses” by Eleanor Estes. In the fourth grade, all classes are reading the book “Wonder” by Raquel J. Palacio.  Each of these stories illustrates the importance of acting purposefully to create a genuine atmosphere of belonging, and especially when there is a person unhappily wandering around the margins of the group.  In the third and fourth grade I’ve had the pleasure of reading aloud the picture book “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” by Peter Brown. This is the story of a tiger who gets tired of having to dress up in top hat and tails and act very properly all the time.  He is dismissed from his town when he sheds his clothes (cue giggling fits among the third graders – “He’s naked!”) and goes to live in the wilderness alone.  But he soon gets lonely and goes back home, thinking that he’d rather be uncomfortable with his proper animal friends than be comfortably wild but all alone.  When he gets there, he sees that the other animals have also become more “wild,” and so he finally relaxes, knowing that he can be at home among the other animals.  (The illustrations in this book are outstanding.) 

Talking points from the story include the idea that we all need to belong to a group of people that accept us for who we are – where we don’t have to dress a certain way to fit in, or talk a certain way, etc.  Students understand this right away – they know when they are in a place where they feel like they belong, and they certainly know when they don’t feel that way.  Students I spoke to said they were pretty sure they could recognize if another child was feeling like he or she didn’t belong, and they had good but simple helpful suggestions on what to do.

In the fifth grade, we’ve been learning about the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which takes the concept of belonging and enhances it to mean a spirit of connectedness so powerful that what happens to you also happens to me.  (There is no English equivalent for the word.) We talked about how this concept was instrumental when the country of South Africa transferred power from the minority white Afrikaaners to the majority black South African people who were there for generations before.  According to Ubuntu philosophy, even victims are connected spiritually to perpetrators, and it was this way of thinking that was so helpful when Apartheid was ended and Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa.  The video that we watched on the spirit of Ubuntu can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDX0bwJlNIc.  We also shared a poem that was written by a Deer Hill fifth grade class two years ago on the subject:  UBUNTU POEM  only.pdf

Finally, we had a school spirit assembly on Friday, September 29^th, where we celebrated the spirit of belonging at our school.  If you would like to see the slide show and my notes, the presentation will be posted soon.

Our next theme is “The Spirit of Curiosity at Deer Hill School”  - I can’t wait!

Social Emotional Learning at Deer Hill School

     At Deer Hill School we have been making a concerted effort to strengthen our school culture through the integration of social emotional learning (SEL) skills with our daily academic curriculum and routines.  As a faculty, we have been studying the work of the Collaboration for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to learn more about the skills related to social emotional well-being so that we can have a shared understanding around the topic.  The term “social emotional learning” can mean many things to different people, and so developing a common language around the subject is a necessary first step if we are going to strengthen our school culture.  At Deer Hill School, when talking about social emotional learning, we use the CASEL skills framework:

     For decades schools have devoted varying degrees of emphasis on the skills and conditions associated with social emotional wellness.  In my time in education, we have taught “values clarification” and “character education,” usually as enrichment classes separate from the academic curriculum.  Sometimes we limited these skill sets to be solely within the purview of the Adjustment Counselor.  Or the parents.  However, good teachers have always understood that these skills must be embedded in the academic curriculum and in the daily life of the classroom – they are too important to be relegated to the margins of education and it would be a mistake to squander our opportunity to strengthen students’ abilities in these areas.

     Not only do we attend to the social emotional well-being of our students because it is the right thing to do, but research has consistently shown that social-emotional learning and academic achievement are related.  When students demonstrate healthy self-awareness, they are able to utilize strategies for learning that are most helpful for them.  When they are successful in self-management, they can minimize the distractions brought on by stress and control impulses that have an adverse effect on learning and attention.  When students have strong relationship skills they improve their ability to work successfully in groups – a necessary condition of learning and working in the 21^st century.  When they are socially aware, they develop the strengths of empathy and multiple perspective taking.  Responsible decision-making is vital for students to be successful in every domain of their life, including their own personal safety.

     Throughout the year you will hear and read about the methods through which we promote social emotional learning on a daily basis through our academic curriculum, our classroom and schoolwide routines, our enrichment program, and our special occasion assemblies and ceremonies.  Because we believe in a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset (that is, with purposeful teaching and effective effort, all students can strengthen their aptitude for learning) we believe that we have the ability and the responsibility to improve upon the social emotional wellness of all of our students.  If you are interested in learning more about CASEL and the framework with which we and other schools are working, check out the link at http://www.casel.org/.  You will also find our schoolwide goal and supporting objectives and activities in this area in our 2017-2018 School Improvement Plan.

     As always, please feel free to contact me about this topic or any other aspect of your child’s learning experience at Deer Hill School!