Features:
1. AI + SEL?! 2. Tools of the Trade: An SEL-in-action anecdote from a Good Inside community member 3. Talking Points Cards for back-to-school feels
End-of-summer is a busy time for families & educators. So, let’s keep this brief! This week’s issue is all about those back-to-school, end-of-season complexities … with an aim toward more simplicity.
Not a teacher, parent or child? Never fear! Our social-emotional tools are good for emotional processing at every age & level. Jump to the ⭐️starred items⭐️ to explore grownup tools for work & home. Sign up for our monthly Work Mood version for more.
Even if you aren’t a teacher/SEL pro (that’s “Social-Emotional Learning professional”), you may be acquainted with CASEL & their laudable efforts to standardize curriculum, frameworks & best practices around emotional education. ⭐️It’s the standard-in-the-making that’s already setting the stage for the work world.⭐️ Substack’s own Nick Woolf, creator of CASEL’s SEL in 5 newsletter, has just output a new endeavor: Empathy in Bytes, also on Substack, exploring the relationship between people, AI & our use of this so-called “genius in the room” to gain real knowledge.
(BTW, for fun, I engaged an AI bot in a conversation about feelings. Read my ⭐️notes comments/images⭐️ sharing the dialogue, & let’s talk about it!)
Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of my absolute fave parenting book on the gentle/SEL approach to child-rearing, also hosts a parenting community for people to practice these tools. This week, I smiled to see the following anecdote (summarized here for privacy) show up in my inbox.
A “mother of many boys” shared that her 5yo had written on a wall in their house. She used a strategy (several, actually, toward the same end) to help him clean this up without shaming him. What worked was her pretending to blame the wall-writing on his stuffed animal, while also hugging the toy & telling it, “I know you’re good inside & that you didn’t mean to do this.” Her child modeled her behavior, saying the same thing to his toy … then slowing down to tell her he had actually written on the wall.
She concluded:
“It took much longer to go through this process than I really felt like I had, but it was a much more peaceful resolution than it has sometimes been in the past with a little help from a stuffed dog!”
Talking Points Cards has a kids version deck that opens that dreaded conversation many of us are struggling to have at this time of year——the one that sets our kiddos on the right path for a successful new school year, regardless of classroom circumstances.
(Hint: These cards also make a great tool to keep on the school SEL shelf!)