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by Eleanor J. Bader
It is the third week of classes at P.S. 130, The Parkside School in Brooklyn, New York. A group of fourth graders sits on the floor, watching five others — a mix of nine and 10-year-olds from other classes in the school — take seats in front of the room.
Emma Gonzalez, a group facilitator from The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, gets the ball rolling by introducing the theme, respect for difference. “We are all different in many ways but we need to live together respectfully," she begins.
A quick survey of where the students or their parents are from hammers the point: Albania, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Trinidad. “This diversity makes the world very rich,” Gonzalez continues. “Imagine a world where we were all the same. That would be boring.”
Heads nod as Gonzalez tells the assembled students that the children in front of them are going to describe how they’ve been hurt by racial or religious prejudice.
Ibrahim begins. “I was in Burger King and this lady came up to my sister and asked where we were from. She told her Egypt and the lady said, ‘You should tell your parents to convert to Catholic.’ That made me mad.”
Another boy describes being made fun of for speaking Arabic. Then Ivette takes a deep breath and shakily tells the group about an incident in the lunchroom. “This boy came up to me and said, ‘People from Jamaica are stupid. I hate your culture and I hate you.’”
Gonzalez jumps in. “He didn’t even know you, did he?”
The students are riveted by what they’ve heard and when Gonzalez asks if any of them have had similar encounters, almost every hand goes up. “It’s sometimes hard to talk about things that make us sad or angry,” Gonzalez continues. “But see, you are not alone. That’s why we all need to tell our stories.”
And they do, one after another describing insults that have been lobbed in their direction.
“Once the children learn that the people around them won’t laugh or make fun of them, it’s healing for them to tell their stories,” Gonzalez says. “They discover that they don’t have to hide or be silent. They can stand up for themselves and be assertive. They also learn to be good listeners as the storytelling catches fire. From time to time someone will cry, but it ends the isolation to hear that other people have been called names, making it easier to talk about ways to stop these comments and behaviors.”
The Morningside Center was founded in 1982 -- it was originally called Educators for Social Responsibility, Metro Chapter, but was renamed to honor the Morningside Heights neighborhood in which it is based — by teachers concerned about the dangers of nuclear war. It has since evolved into a nationally recognized champion of social and emotional learning, known as SEL, bringing programs to approximately 80 New York City public schools a year.
Inadequate Skills Undermine Democracy
Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of the bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, is one of the founders of a now-international social and emotional learning movement that is pushing for the inclusion of SEL in pre-K to high school classrooms. He and other SEL proponents believe that in addition to academic mastery, children need to learn how to handle distress and negative emotions, be self-aware, and have empathy for others, whether the others are of a different race, ethnic group, gender, or sexual preference. These teachable skills, they argue, are imperative since scholastic achievement alone is not enough to ensure personal or workplace success once the students come of age. Worse, Goleman warns that democratic governance is undermined when these skills are not adequately developed.
“Careful research evaluations are showing that SEL not only improves children’s social and emotional abilities, Goleman writes, but also lowers risks like violence, substance abuse and unwanted teen pregnancies, while making kids better behaved and more positive about learning."
While teachers are not therapists, SEL advocates encourage them to intervene when students bring emotional baggage or racial or ethnic stereotypes into the classroom. The rationale for doing so is simple. Recent studies conducted by Columbia University researchers and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, a network of SEL proponents working in all parts of the U.S., found that students who
