Social-Emotional Learning

Open mic classroom activities or school events can improve students’ engagement with their writing and help shy students open up, but they also require careful preparation, experts say.

When planning a poetry slam or open mic reading night, educators need to think intentionally about the environment they want to create, building up to the event in a way to ensure that all students — even those least-inclined to step up to the mic — feel included, and that audience members are supportive.

Creating the space to take risks and for students to be in “discovery play mode” means building norms of trust for how they respond to each other, said Heather Schwartz, practice advisor at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. 

“Students need explicit guidance about how to give feedback,” she said. “It’s not necessarily clear to them exactly how to be helpful and kind but still feel free to share areas where they think their peers can grow.”

Get the audience involved up front to be positive and encouraging, said Peter Kahn, a member and featured presenter for the National Council of Teachers of English and a consultant with Columbus, Ohio-based Schooled on Poetry. 

“If I were going up [on stage], I would say, ‘Hi, my name’s Peter,’ and then the audience would say, ‘Hi, Peter!” in an exaggerated way,” he said. “And you say, ‘My poem’s good,’ and the audience says, ‘Yes, it is!’ to psyche them up.”

Schwartz said she finds that sharing her own writing while it’s still in draft stage and modeling how to take feedback can be helpful in preparing students to do the same. 

“You don’t have to make any changes, but be willing to hear feedback,” she said. “And give them the opportunity to practice like it’s the real thing — mimicking that opportunity, whether it’s putting them in front of a microphone or having an audience of guests where they don’t know everyone.”

For students who still seem “super-reticent” about getting on stage, Schwartz suggests working with them one-on-one. “But if you create that kind of culture where everyone is supporting everyone, most students are willing to share something,” she said.

When faced with students who seem like they truly don’t want to participate, Kahn, a former English teacher and spoken word educator, hopes that some part of them does — and he attempts to draw that out. 

“I would talk to them [and say], ‘If you are nervous, or scared, that just means you’re a human being,’” he said. “Fear and excitement elicit the exact same physical response. Instead of saying, ‘I’m scared,’ say, ‘I’m excited.’”

Kahn suggests pairing students up with one another to provide feedback, perhaps looking for their favorite lines and talk about which parts of the poem or story “popped off the page.” 

Students who feel confident from the get-go should be assigned as “captains” for the event and paired up with more nervous kids, Kahn said. “They’re not going to need as much practice time on their own.”

Time permitting, Kahn suggests inviting a visiting writer to a workshop in which students have the opportunity to share their work with the guest and garner feedback. 

Once the open mic activity or event itself approaches, prepare the audience to show appreciation by clapping before and after the performance and snapping when they hear those “striking lines,” as a way to create a call-and-response dynamic without disrupting the speaker’s flow, he said.

“You can hear through the snap — you couldn’t through the clap,” Kahn said. “And talk about being in the moment and respecting the mic: If someone is talking about how their grandma passed away, and they look out in the audience, you don’t want to be smiling. If it’s a humorous poem, you don’t want to be stone-faced. Be in the moment, and let your face and body language reflect that.”

For a poetry slam or other competition, Kahn prefers not to show students’ scores as they’re assessed to cut down on the stress level. “If you’re doing a slam, it’s inherently a competition — but wait until the end and just announce a runner-up and a champion,” he suggested.

When planning the event, it’s better to involve students as much as possible to give them a sense of ownership “in terms of how we greet people as they’re entering, what we call it, how the seating works, the lineup," Schwartz said. “Because it doesn’t feel like something that’s being done to them but something they’re being invited into, fully.”

Increasing rates of loneliness and isolation have become a growing concern for researchers and policymakers in recent years, with some calling attention to the role schools can play in equipping students with the skills to overcome what has been described as an epidemic.

In September, for instance, California launched a Men’s Service Challenge aimed at finding 10,000 men to serve as mentors, coaches and tutors for young men and boys. The effort — which comes in response to evidence that these issues have had an outsized impact on boys and men — followed an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom that cited an increase among boys in suicide rates and disconnection, as well as decreased college attendance.

For schools, Newsom’s executive order called for increased efforts to recruit men as teachers and counselors, as well as a review of research into the impact of red shirting boys at the start of kindergarten.

Findings from the American Institute for Boys and Men published in August show that men and women reported similar rates of loneliness, emotional support and close friendships — although men were more likely to report not feeling like they belong to a particular group or community.

“Loneliness in general is a problem,” said Milena Batanova, director of research and evaluation at Making Caring Common, a Harvard Graduate School of Education initiative focused on moral and social development in young people. 

She added that the problem underscores the importance for schools and districts to sustain strong social-emotional learning programs, which evidence shows improve social skills and sense of belonging while reducing loneliness and social isolation.

People are spending more time alone and have fewer friends and groups they’re attached to, Batanova said.

Making Caring Common conducted a national survey last fall in partnership with YouGov, which found that millennials and lower-income families reported higher levels of loneliness. The report, however, showed no significant differences based on gender. 

“I don’t know if there are any systematic gender differences in studies of SEL,” Batanova said. “We of course know that boys internalize how they feel, as opposed to girls. Boys might need more targeted screening, asking them more specific, relevant questions. They might withdraw and seem irritable. Girls are more open to saying, ‘I’m lonely.’”

She added that there "needs to be some education for adults, recognizing and identifying issues, and then obviously knowing how to communicate about them differently with boys vs. girls.”

High-quality, sustained mentoring and structured interest groups around sports or other hobbies through schools or third-party entities can also provide mentoring and help foster a sense of connection, Batanova said, adding that while she doesn’t like to generalize, physical group activities play well with boys. 

“Adolescents can sniff out when programs are too contrived or forced,” she said. “Programs need to meet them where they’re at, and match with their interests and extracurricular needs.”

Unfortunately, the relative robustness of such offerings tends to depend heavily on how well-resourced a school and its surrounding community are, and gaps in resources are widening. “It’s kind of like the ‘Hunger Games’ out there,” Batanova said. “It depends on where you live and what kind of schools you go to.”

When SEL programs are under-resourced, for example, loneliness becomes a secondary or even tertiary focus, which is understandable prioritization under those circumstances, Batanova said. But “we want to be preventative,” she said. “It can also miss a lot of kids. Targeted inventions and programs are important.” 

Schools should try to leverage community supports like local Boys & Girls Clubs to gain needed interventions for populations particularly at-risk, Batanova added. “That’s why schools, obviously, do need many resources. They do need funding for mental health support. They need to be able to provide those services … I very much worry that the [funding] gaps are widening between schools that are well-resourced vs. those that are not.”

Educators also need to keep in mind that there are different dimensions of loneliness, Batanova said. While adults might immediately think of students who don’t have enough friends or don’t know how to make friends, others might have a large number of friends but still feel like they’re lacking meaningful connections. 

“That’s another example of being more targeted,” she said. “It’s important to get to the bottom of what’s going on so these kids can be properly intervened with, which is why those community supports are so important.”

University researchers are another type of partner that under-resourced schools and districts should consider, Batanova said. 

“They’re always in need of testing out programs, trying different modules and components of interventions for improvement,” she said. “It could be a win-win with very low cost. That requires someone to coordinate and manage those relationships, and be creative in how they’re done.”

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Two lawsuits are challenging the U.S. Department of Education's decision in December to cancel about $60 million in grants for programs in K-12 schools that provide academic, health and social services, particularly in low-income and rural communities.

According to a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Teachers and Chicago's Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, the Education Department discontinued 19 multi-year Full-Service Community Schools grants on Dec. 12. The funds were set to expire Dec. 31. The lawsuit, which was filed Dec. 29, says the cancellation of the funding was unlawful and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council receives funding from the Full-Service Community Schools program to provide wraparound services at eight schools in the Chicago area, including at Curie Metro High School where students have access to after-school programs like STEM clubs, workforce development, college mentoring and academic tutoring. 

Patrick Brosnan, executive director of Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said the organization was "shocked and dismayed to learn of the termination of our FSCS grant," according to a Dec. 29 statement issued by Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs. 

"We hope and pray that these necessary grant funds are restored, and we can continue to provide the needed services so that all students and families in our community can achieve their goals and thrive,” Brosnan said.

In a separate lawsuit filed Dec. 30, the attorneys general of Maryland, the District of Columbia and North Carolina challenged the Education Department's action. The two states and D.C. said they were in the middle of five-year grant cycles totaling between $1.9 million and $50 million when they got notice that their grants would be terminated, according to the complaint. 

In Maryland, for example, the funding has helped increase attendance at two Baltimore high schools and has provided housing assistance for students, the lawsuit stated.

“The Department of Education’s unlawful decision to abruptly cut funding for FSCS programs will strip hundreds of Maryland students and families of essential support for food, housing, and educational resources,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, in a Dec. 31 statement. 

Under the Full-Service Community Schools program, the Education Department provides grants to historically Black colleges and universities, higher education institutions, nonprofits and local school districts to provide a variety of health, social, financial and academic services based on local needs. In fiscal year 2025, the program was funded nationally at $150 million. 

 

Conflicts with Trump administration priorities

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department, said in an email Jan. 5 that the grant funding wasn't being cut. Rather, the money is being reinvested "immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students."

Biedermann said that the non-continued grants didn't align with Trump administration priorities. She said many of the grant programs "use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to."

Some examples from the discontinued grants that conflict with Trump administration priorities, according to Biedermann, include:

• The prioritization of staffing recruitment and development strategies “that foster DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and growth among schools.”
• A grantee that planned to implement a “district equity plan including equity in grading and curriculum, professional development, crisis and community response, social and emotional learning, discipline, and school climate and culture.”
• Professional development activities that “focus on anti-racism practices at the school system level, as well as trainings focused on culturally responsive practices in and out of the classroom.”  

"The Trump Administration is no longer allowing taxpayer dollars to go out the door on autopilot — we are evaluating every federal grant to ensure they are in line with the Administration’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education," Biedermann said.

Over the past year, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has sought to shrink the size of the federal agency through staff reductions and budget tightening. McMahon and President Donald Trump have said the ultimate goal is to eliminate the Education Department. 

The Trump administration's scrutiny over Education Department programs and practices has included moves to eliminate activities supportive of DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives, including certain grant programs for student mental health programming, deafblind student services and teacher training grants.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in the Dec. 29 statement issued by Democracy Forward, said the Education Department did not attempt to communicate with districts or even request to ask for modifications when discontinuing the Full-Service Community School grants. 

"These grants were simply terminated on a whim," said Weingarten, adding that for every $1 spent on community schools, there is a $7 return on investment.

"For a secretary who claims she’s concerned about achievement and attendance, why terminate a program that boosts both?" Weingarten asked. "And for a secretary who is crisscrossing the country talking about civics, why not simply follow the law and allocate the community school grants to the districts that have been counting on them?”

Academic research and best practices show that when infused in age-appropriate ways, executive functioning can be taught as early as preschool and kindergarten — and, if they aren’t, students will have to play catch-up.

In the early grades, creating in-classroom jobs for students is often the key element in this, which can look like passing out papers, carrying the lunch basket, leading the line, sharpening pencils, caring for plants, or delivering items to the school office.

Rista Plate, senior researcher at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning cited literature showing that the development of social-emotional learning skills like organization, planning and self-management that fall under the executive functioning umbrella are associated with higher rates of graduation (by about 23%) and even employment and overall well being later in life.

Developing young students' executive functioning skills “cultivates a sense of independence and responsibility, trusting you to leave the classroom, execute a task, and return,” said Plate.

Additionally, research points to "executive-functioning-related skills as being a key mechanism for supporting students’ behavior in the classroom, giving them skills and tools that help them engage in learning,” she said.

“These are skills that need to be practiced,” said Heather Schwartz, practice advisor at CASEL. “They can be learned and strengthened."

Schwartz said classroom jobs give students an opportunity to practice those roles. "It also creates a strong sense of belonging when kids understand that they all have important roles in the classroom," Schwartz said. "The students who are struggling the most with self-management benefit from both having the jobs to practice those skills, but also being seen for their strengths in the classroom.”

In addition to assigning jobs, even playing games like freeze-dance can help students develop executive function, Plate said. “It’s letting your body have a lot of activity, pause it, hold yourself there — that’s important for building skills for calming your body.”

Plate added that having students co-create plans for classroom activities and understand and practice those routines are also pathways to developing executive functioning skills.

Another suggestion Schwartz offers would be asking students to estimate how long different tasks will take, which builds the concept and practice of time management.

The development of executive functioning skills has taken on added importance since the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2023 paper in the Early Childhood Education Journal found that nearly 80% of pre-K and kindergarten teachers said the health crisis had a negative impact on student functioning, Plate noted.

“We’ve been hearing from teachers since the pandemic that there’s a real need to add student skills and competencies related to executive functioning,” she said. “These skills can be improved, but it really requires an intentionality to work toward that, to cultivate these opportunities.

Plate recommends a whole-school approach so the teachers, school leaders and other staff are all working toward supporting and reinforcing this.

It's not always easy to get across, but developing social and emotional skills like executive functioning underpin academic success, Schwartz said.

“They’re so critical for reading and math,” she said. “It’s about having teachers feel the permission, almost, because most teachers understand why these are important to focus on as part of the academic structure of the day.”

When schools provide social-emotional learning programs to all, students perform significantly better academically than peers in schools without universal SEL, according to a meta-analysis published in the American Educational Research Association's Review of Educational Research on Oct. 9.

The large-scale analysis — which looked at 40 studies involving more than 33,700 students in grades 1-12 in a dozen countries — found students in SEL programs clocked better grades and standardized test performance, and that improvements were seen in both literacy and math. Research particularly showed that elementary school students benefit from SEL programs, though research on middle and high school students is more scant and less conclusive.  

Duration of the SEL program matters, with programs longer than one semester — defined as roughly four months — consistently linked to higher academic achievement, while shorter programs showed limited impact. The researchers suggested that school leaders embed SEL into core instruction across grade levels. 

Social-emotional learning — which grew popular as a tool for developing students' soft skills and a buffer for alternatives like punitive discipline — became controversial after conservative-leaning parents and lawmakers alleged it was a way for educators to indoctrinate children instead of focusing on core academic subjects. 

Bills in at least eight states sought to curb SEL around the height of this controversy, according to an update from the American Psychological Association in 2023. The practice was swept up in a wave to curb other educational equity initiatives that became politicized with the launch of the parental rights movement during the pandemic.

Many districts, however, continue to use SEL — even if not by name — as a way to teach soft skills such as emotional regulation and collaboration that they consider integral to student success in academics and life outside of school.

"Contrary to the perception that SEL is only about fostering students' social and emotional growth, our findings show these programs also make a measurable difference in academic achievement," said Cheyeon Ha, a professor at University of Southern California and lead author of the study published in AERA's Review of Educational Research. 

Ha and another researcher on the team, Christina Cipriano of the Education Collaboratory at Yale, said in a press release that SEL was "integral to students' overall development" and said it "should be part of every student's school experience."

In fact, when SEL became a point of controversy, education leaders urged clearing up misconceptions around its practices rather than abandoning them altogether.

Some have resorted to rebranding SEL, while still adhering to the practices and principles associated with it, according to research released in October by the EdWeek Research Center.

Some 16% of educators surveyed last spring said their school or district tried to limit controversy by referring to SEL by another name in the past school year, the center found. Survey respondents from the South and from suburban areas were more likely to say they were rebranding SEL. Common alternatives include "character education," "life skills" and "communication skills," according to the research center.

About 4% of the teachers, principals and district leaders surveyed said their schools ended SEL initiatives altogether to avoid controversy. Nearly half, however, said they continue to use SEL and call it by its original name. 

"Our analysis underscores the importance of explicit SEL instruction in schools," said Cipriano of the meta-analysis released Oct. 9. "These programs should not be viewed as add-ons but as essential components of all students' school experiences."