Scaffolding for social-emotional competencies: guiding our pupils the Positive Discipline way

By Beatriz Fabro

A child who is enrolled at a full-time six-hours school program from pre-kindergarten to the last year of primary school will have spent about 12,000 hours away from home and inside a classroom by the time she enters elementary school. The amount of time children spend with educators has been increasing during the past decades. That might be related to changes in the structure of family routines, but also the availability of a rising number of extracurricular activities and all sorts of complementary programs, both frequently held inside a school environment. On top of that, teachers have been required not only to teach an information-centred curriculum but also to innovate by scaffolding for life-long learning skills, teaching towards social-emotional competencies such as relationship skills, responsible decision-making, self-awareness, social awareness and self-management. Hence, it's our call as educators of our times to act for change and merge both things, aiming for a generation of whole-hearted citizens.

Naming the five essential social-emotional competencies like that might leave us on the verge of including them in our (very busy!) lesson plans for the twelfth of never, but they are quite achievable targets. The educational works of Dr Alfred Adler, Dr Rupholf Dreikurs and Prof. Jane Nelsen prove it and have resulted in what is called the Positive Discipline approach. This relational approach aims to build strong relationships and fix damaged ones with tools that do not cause harm, pain, shame or guilt. Its five fundamentals are: mutual respect; the sense of belonging and importance; strategies that are effective in the long run, social competencies that will influence the personality positively and, last but not least, child empowerment.

Before we untangle each of the five fundamentals, a teaching growth mindset is a must-have. Each fundamental should be part of our class atmospheres, not through endless overwhelming social-emotional lessons plans, but in a smooth and gentle union of actions that are part of how one lives together with another inside this tribal classroom.

To begin with, mutual respect is about a continuous attitude started by the teacher and, with time, mirrored by the pupils as it solidifies as the only means of communication. Leading a class based on mutual respect means that teachers' and pupils' voices are heard and regarded, and different points of view are pondered and equally valued. This takes us to the second fundamental: the sense of belonging. The feeling of connectedness is a powerful tool that influences the level of involvement and attachment a pupil has towards her peers, her teachers and her school community. It is built when one's importance to the group is communicated, recognized, and daily practised. Children will do better when they deeply and really feel better about themselves and the environment they are in.

Subsequently, it's essential to highlight that the Positive Discipline classroom strategies are effective in the long run. When a teacher faces a conflict in which she can either solve the problem for the children and end it all quickly, or solve the problem with the children's help and ideas, she must consider what option is more likely to build life-long problem-solving skills. Teachers who are scaffolding for social-emotional competencies should keep a big mental note saying: "how does it build a life-long skill?". As adults, we are entitled to the responsibility of taking care and supporting our children, but not entitled to shield them from challenges and take the easy way out of ordinary school conflicts.

A final point is how such strategies will affect a pupil's personality positively and empower this child to act and contribute to society accordingly. When we teach, we may think that we are planting seeds which we will never see bloom, but when we teach the Positive Discipline way we see them blooming right in front of us every single day. In a child-centred Positive Discipline classroom environment, teachers will see simple but huge evidence that her pupils' personalities are being shaped towards respect and cooperation, as well as children being empowered to solve their conflicts, share their feelings and support one another in an evergrowing learning curve. It's vital that teachers start looking at their pupils through new lenses, seeing possibilities for social-emotional growth that can be found from a quotidian playtime at the playground to facing academic challengings such as grammar and mathematics.

Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? - Prof. Jane Nelsen 

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Fonte: Talking EFL Magazine - 2021 Issue Link: http://www.talkingefl.com/