SEL Journal Recap: 3 Things We Learned About Culturally Sustaining SEL in the Classroom

Key Points

• When Emily Meland and Gretchen Brion-Meisels struggled to find resources that explicitly brought social and emotional learning (SEL) and teaching practices that celebrated and nurtured students’ cultures together, they decided to create their own: an integrative model of culturally sustaining SEL.
• Their model features elements that make culturally sustaining SEL possible: three foundational capabilities for educators, two processes for students and educators, and three practices. 
• Here are three key takeaways from Meland and Brion-Meisel’s research paper on their proposed model, published in the SEL Journal. 

1. Foundational Capabilities for Educators

Culturally sustaining pedagogy is a strengths-based, student-centered approach to teaching and learning that celebrates students’ unique backgrounds, communities, and experiences. 

To meaningfully engage in culturally sustaining SEL, Meland and Brion-Meisel propose that educators must:

• Self-reflect. 

Be reflective and aware of your behaviors, emotions, and interactions, including how your own cultural background may impact your expectations of students. When possible, engage in reflection with trusted colleagues through shared communities of practice.

• Build caring, authentic, and reciprocal relationships with students.

Foster genuinely caring relationships and two-way communication with students. Maintain high expectations for all students, and actively work to eliminate barriers to their well-being and success.

• Shift the balance of power.

Share power in the classroom through actions like inviting and supporting students’ voice and choice, encouraging peer learning and discussion, and listening to student, family, and community wisdom and expertise. 

2. Processes for Students and Educators

In the researchers’ model of culturally sustaining SEL, educators’ foundational capabilities are supported by two facilitative processes:

• Co-construction

Together, students and teachers create the classroom environment, knowledge, and skill development to meet the needs of all students. For example, collaborate to develop and maintain classroom charters, and seek and integrate feedback from students on classroom learning and environment.

• Co-regulation

Children who struggle to self-regulate need emotional support and stability from the adult in the room. It’s also helpful to teach and coach in-the-moment regulation strategies, like deep breathing. To do this effectively, it’s important to attend to your own well-being, ideally through individual, collective, and systems-level resources and sources of support.

3. Practices

At the top of the model sit three practices that Meland and Brion-Meisel say are essential to making culturally sustaining SEL a reality:

• Predictable and inclusive norms, structures, and routines

Develop consistent classroom routines, expectations, systems, and scaffolds that “draw upon students’ strengths, abilities, interests, and backgrounds and invite all students to participate.” For instance, include SEL scaffolds like pictures, posters, manipulatives, and structures like a Thinking Spot or Calming Corner.

• Multi-modal and transformative activities, lessons, and content

Classroom instruction embraces the various ways students learn and explicitly builds their social and emotional skills. Materials should “actively and accurately incorporate students’ histories, heritages, cultures, and experiences,” allowing students to practice perspective-taking and demonstrating empathy and compassion for people from diverse backgrounds.

• Individualized intervention

Engage with students one-on-one in support of their social and emotional skill development. Provide consistent opportunities to learn and practice these skills, and communicate regularly with students’ families around student strengths, challenges, and development of social and emotional skills.

To learn more, read the full research paper in the SEL Journal. 

Interested in being published in the SEL Journal? Submit your work to the Journal’s special edition on “Integrating Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning.” Letters of intent due Feb. 15. 

Related Posts:

• 5 Must-Read Articles From the SEL Journal 
• How Can School Districts Elevate Student Voice? Check out Three Case Studies From Across the U.S.

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