Social emotional learning

Gabby Tjiroze
Liza Mijiga

Have you ever wondered why your friend is stressed and why most people make bad decisions in an emotional state?

Well, social emotional learning is a core way of learning how to deal with emotions. This is where children and adults acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and maintain healthy relationships and to make wise decisions in life, when one happens to be in a drastic situation.

For the growing generation, social emotional learning has become a coordinating framework for families and educators. Our emotions can affect the way we react towards certain aspects in life and they can influence our job, school and other fundamental associations.

On one hand, unmanaged stress and poor regulation of impulses interfere with attention and it also contributes to behaviour that disrupts learning. There are also many other factors that affect us whenever stress is unmanaged, thus social emotional learning is crucial in one’s life.

It is therefore of paramount importance that teachers at schools play their part in promoting social emotional learning by providing instructions and emotional skills. They should communicate with students regularly about this and encourage the reinforcement of this lesson at home, by promoting that this goes beyond the classroom.

If people, especially our youth, become socially and emotionally competent, it means they will have self-awareness on this subject matter, and will be able to regulate their emotions and have good relationship skills.

These are some of the vital things to live up to if one wants to be socially and emotionally wise, and the importance of social emotional learning should also be considered in order to overcome emotional dilemmas in all sorts of areas.

*Liza Mijiga is a grade 9 pupil at Jan Mohr Secondary School.