TICE y enseñanza aprendizaje

Embedding SEL and Mindfulness in a Virtual Learning Environment: a personal experience

Ma. Eugenia Falabella *
Universidad de Jaén

Introduction

As I am a passionate online teacher, who is constantly trying to enrich her virtual classes, incorporating SEL and Mindfulness into them has become my main objective these days, not to mention with this pandemic. Throughout this reflective paper, I will try to show a timid attempt to accomplish this ultimate goal, with the intention of creating a relevant and meaningful bond between ICT and the two wellbeing techniques already mentioned.

Briefly speaking, Google Classroom has allowed me to interact with my students in a truly friendly VLE (virtual learning environment.) As a teacher, I have been able to create, here, both graded/summative and formative tasks to accompany my students' process and progress. Through formative tasks in Google Classroom, I have had the chance of fostering their sense of self-awareness, and to enrich this situation, Remind  has been added to our classes. This is a sort of safer WhatsApp), where we share feelings, thoughts, ideas and our deepest emotions towards any aspect that is going around.

Self-management is the heart of the matter in online education. If you do not organize yourself and your schedule, you may feel under pressure, with really negative effects. Google Classroom and Remind, together, have given students the chance to get their tasks scheduled beforehand, acting as a reminder. This is very useful to lower their level of anxiety.

Jamboard and Padlet  are tools that may be incorporated into Google Classroom. As they foster collaborative interaction in a funny way (through sticky notes, colorful pictures, links to videos and Bitmojis, etc.), both social awareness and relationship skills are paramount in them: I am what I am because I interact with others.

To round off, to be digital competent in a VLE as Google Classroom is, and to cope with all the apps mentioned so far, autonomy, that is to say, to be a decision-maker, is one of the main axes to succeed, not only respecting others, but taking care of oneself.

Why is SEL necessary in my lessons, in a Virtual Learning Environment?

“Why do you want to be an English Teacher? What is it like to be a teacher for you?” Usually, these are my opening questions, in my classes, as a teacher trainer. I have been mulling over the reason for choosing these queries. One may think that it is “the obvious” in the first class, in a Teacher Training College. However, I do believe that I AM, actually, the one who is trying to go deeper and deeper into my understanding as a professional in the educational field. These are questions not just meant to my trainees, but to me, to my inner self.

What I may claim, after years of experience, is that committed teachers are not teachers but educators, which is broader and wider and encompasses many more responsibilities. To be an educator means to grow personally, both in your subject matter and in your soul, nurturing your heart, your emotions. Why? Because in this way, you would be able to help your students grow as well, but holistically.  Pretty sure, an educator will cater for contents and procedures as set in the official Curriculum Design. Yet, that educator will go further; that educator will monitor and mix himself/herself in the realm of his students' emotions, interlocked with his/her own.

What happens with all the above said in a virtual learning environment? Is it possible to pay attention to emotions and to feed oneself in front of a PC monitor or through a cell phone? I am convinced that it is not only possible but a "must." Technology has entered the school to stay forever. Through technology or ICT, students have been able to do something no law has been able to do: to bring reality, to bring society to the class, even, creating a class "without walls", which resembles, in the form of a wonderful metaphor, to the global village we are living in, interconnected through a global language, English in this precise case (Crystal, D. (?)) To be able to cope with this “apparently” astonishing picture -not for our digital natives, but for those labeled as digital immigrants- (Prensky, M. 2005) as educators, we must focus on what is known as "digital competence" (Jenkins, H. (?)). The two pillars of this concept, curiously, are closely related to SEL. One of them is "collaborative work" and the other one, "autonomy", both triggering the attitude of being responsible for our decisions through clear and healthy communication with peers.

These two components necessarily require social awareness and empathy, the self-management of our own emotions if I am going to connect with other people, thus, recognizing what I feel (https://casel.org/what-is-sel/).

With all this accomplished and tackled, not only will our students be competent in the target language, but also, they will be better citizens in this world, feeling compassion and care for everyone, even everything surrounding them.

On a slightly different note, though interesting and appealing, matching a virtual learning environment for online education and SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) is not an easy task. Apart from the technological skills required along with the pedagogical competencies to deal with a certain topic, as Koehler et all (2009) suggest in their famous TPACK model (TPACK), to help students feel at ease as if they were in a face-to-face context is a challenge to highlight, but not impossible to sort out through different strategies.

For starters, the wit creation of tasks is the heart of the matter. Those tasks should show such a variety of input so as to cater for all learning styles, or at least, most of them. Thanks to the development of the ICT world, we, educators, can research a wonderful fan of tools and apps to promote knowledge within a SEL framework.
Along with tasks, putting always forward thought-provoking questions and/or asides, for example, to open or to close a virtual meeting is an engaging technique.
Finally, to cope with all the above said, one of our greatest trails is to show flexibility, trying to move out of our comfort zone. In doing so, in experimenting with new things, you will be given your students the chance to taste more flavors, to enjoy more choices, and so will you!

Last but not least, as in a face-to-face TEFL class, in an online one within the SEL parameters, to set short or long term objectives is the first stepping stone to jump on. With clear objectives, the sequence of tasks runs smoother and easier and the benefits will be openly evidenced (Weissberg, R. 2016).

When using Google Classroom, for instance, students can "know and can manage themselves", thus, regulating their emotions in order to cope with tasks. With a calendar that works as a reminder, together with the use of Remind as the informal app to chat, students can organize their inner timetable to cope with an external one.

Padlet and Jamboard (the latter, an extension of Drive that can be linked to Google Classroom) foster cooperative and collaborative in such a way that they push them to "understand the perspectives of others and relate effectively with them", which goes hand in hand with "making sound choices about personal and social decisions", due to the fact that collaboration implies, first of all, autonomy and a decision-making attitude towards life.

What are the benefits of mindfulness?

After having explored solid grounded resources, I understand mindfulness as a state of our mind. Picturing in mind Richards and Rodgers’ definition of method (1999), and after all the reading done so far, to me, mindfulness would be a technique to be included in the sequence design of any approach to the TEFL.  Contrary to what is suggested in SEL (2015), mindfulness is a practice or a strategy that works from your inner self to the outside. When implementing mindfulness, one tries to learn to cope with and to acknowledge one's emotions, feelings, attitudes, reactions, etc., when facing different situations in life, with a complete sense of compassion, as well. To do so, one needs to enter a state of total awareness of the present moment, of the "here and now"principle, of the unique moment that exists in life.

Mindfulness can help enhance social and emotional learning through the right and appropriate didactic setting. As said before, mindfulness puts the emphasis on the capacity each individual has, in a present state of awareness, to recognize his/her own sensations, either positive or negative, to better, to interact with the outside world.  On the contrary, SEL proposes an outer input to create a sense of consciousness of our feelings, and in this way, being able to work on them, both in the individual and social spheres.  Though at first sight, they seem to oppose each other, I firmly believe they are the two sides of the same coin, necessarily, complementing each other. This bond could hopefully occur in the appropriate context and teaching sequence, created by the teacher in charge of a class (Cameron, L. 2001).

Last but not least, indeed, mindfulness can be considered as a tool to develop/promote SEL core competencies. Creating habits is important to sustain the development of social and emotional competencies, thus, repeating an activity at least once a week (for example, the one suggested in the example below) will provide various opportunities for students to get engaged and develop coping skills, making our goals explicit to them, which is necessary and paramount.

Putting theory into practice: designing a SEL and Mindfulness teaching sequence for a VLE

This pandemic has found me transitioning part of my job, here in Argentina, from a face-to-face context to a total virtual and distance learning environment. I am currently a tenured teacher at Campo de la Formación en la Práctica Profesional 1, at the Teacher Training College, in Chivilcoy, a city 160 km west from Capital Federal, in the province of Buenos Aires.

According to our Curriculum Design, this subject, under normal circumstances, is expected to be developed as a three-hour- weekly workshop, with a second term totally devoted to the first TEFL class observations, with focus on the teacher's role and its structural framework.

Being this one a subject from the first year and having started classes on April, 13th (a month after the national lockdown was declared), many are the challenges to, trying to match SEL, Mindfulness and ICT, challenges faced through the subsequent teaching sequence, which is a mere example of all the work done:

Final words

Promoting safe and positive classroom environments, even if they are virtual learning settings, where students feel comfortable to share and learn are key steps that teachers need to start taking into account if we want successful students, global citizens, especially in times of so much uncertainty. It is also important to create routines in a virtual class as we do in a face-to face situation, which supports learning sustainability. I am sure that with a constant and well-planned approach to SEL, our students will improve their engagement, develop their social and emotional skills, reduce their stress and anxiety, and feel more focused and engaged, forgetting the distance a computer or cell phone screen may create.

* Ma. Eugenia Falabella : Egresada de la Universidad de Jaén y docente universitaria del Campus FUNIBER. Actualmente también colabora como Directora de Tesis de estudiantes de la Universidad de Jaén.