Social and Emotional Learning - Unit 1

Unit Overview
What to Expect from this Course? In this class, the focus is on
understanding the relevance of the course and providing a course
overview. you will be able to explore the various dimensions of your
lives and develop insights about yourselves and relationships.

Self Awareness and Happiness The aim is to develop awareness about

oneselves - who they are, what their strengths and limitations are,
and how they can develop themselves. This will help them to learn
interlinkages and distinctions between thoughts, emotions and
behaviours. This will make them aware of the differences between
happiness and pleasure and help them ponder on sources of happiness.

Self-awareness is the experience and understanding of one's own

personality - how an individual understands his own feelings, motives,
desires, and behaviour, and the triggers for the same. Hence, self-
awareness can be considered to be vital for personal development.
focus on the student's intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness

Happiness - The term 'happiness' includes pleasant and positive

emotions which can range from deep satisfaction and contentment to
pleasure and excitement. The focus is to develop the long-lasting
feelings of contentment rather than momentary and short-lived
emotions of excitement and pleasure. encourage and foster feelings of
wellbeing and life satisfaction.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-

control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success. People
with strong social-emotional skills are better able to cope with everyday challenges
and benefit academically, professionally, and socially. From effective problem-solving
to self-discipline, from impulse control to emotion management and more, SEL
provides a foundation for positive, long-term effects on kids, adults, and communities.

SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the
knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and
achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish
and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-

community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that
feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum
and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of
inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and
contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

The CASEL 5 addresses five broad and interrelated areas of competence and
highlights examples for each: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness,
relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The CASEL 5 can be taught and
applied at various developmental stages from childhood to adulthood and across
diverse cultural contexts. Many school districts, states, and countries have used the
CASEL 5 to establish preschool to high school learning standards and competencies
that articulate what students should know and be able to do for academic success,
school and civic engagement, health and wellness, and fulfilling careers.

A developmental perspective to SEL considers how the social and emotional

competencies can be expressed and enhanced at different ages from preschool
through adulthood. Students’ social, emotional, and cognitive developmental levels
and age-appropriate tasks and challenges should inform the design of SEL standards,
instruction, and assessment. Given that, stakeholders should decide how best to
prioritize, teach, and assess the growth and development of the CASEL 5 in their local
schools and communities.
According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL),
an organization devoted to students and educators to help achieve positive outcomes
for PreK-12 students, SEL involves five core competencies that can be applied in both
the classroom, at home, and in students’ communities. These five core competencies
are:

Self-awareness

To recognize your emotions and how they impact your behavior; acknowledging your
strengths and weaknesses to better gain confidence in your abilities.

Self-management

To take control and ownership of your thoughts, emotions, and actions in various
situations, as well as setting and working toward goals.
Social awareness

The ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person who may be from a different
background or culture from the one you grew up with. To act with empathy and in an
ethical manner within your home, school, and community.

Relationship skills

The ability to build and maintain healthy relationships with people from a diverse
range of backgrounds. This competency focuses on listening to and being able to
communicate with others, peacefully resolving conflict, and knowing when to ask for
or offer help.

Making responsible decisions

Choosing how to act or respond to a situation is based on learned behaviors such as

ethics, safety, weighing consequences, and the well-being of others, as well as
yourself.

Broadly speaking, social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to the process through
which individuals learn and apply a set of social, emotional, and related skills,
attitudes, behaviors, and values that help direct students. This includes thoughts,
feelings, and actions in ways that enable them to succeed in school. However, SEL has
been defined in a variety of ways (Humphrey et al., 2011).

Happiness
Happiness can be a pleasant feeling for a brief time or for a long duration. When you
help a needy person or your friend it may make you feel happy. When you are in need
of help and your neighbour helps you, that condition may also give you happiness.
Happiness is not only an emotion but refers to living a good life, experiencing well-
being and enjoying good quality of life. Happiness and well-being can be attained
through many ways.
1. Material resources: Money, clothing and housing, provide us with the possibility to
satisfy our basic needs. Different needs and their nature were discussed in an earlier
lesson. We must satisfy both our primary and secondary needs to be happy.
2. Cognitive competence: The ability to search and find what we need is also
important. Thus we must be knowledgeable, intelligent, and open to learning.
3. Subjective competence: When we believe in our problem solving capacity we have
faith in our self and our abilities to achieve our goals.

Characteristics of Happy People

Happiness depends upon situational and personal characteristics. The key personal
characteristics are:
• Mental and physical health: People who are physically and mentally healthy are
happier than those who suffer from poor health.
• Psychological characteristics: Happy people believe that they are in control of the
situation, are resilient and confident and open to learning experiences (as we will
discuss in self-actualization). Generally happy people are found to have high self-
esteem, get along with other people, feel more in control of events in life, and, are
optimistic that they can achieve their goals. Most importantly such people are
moderately happy most of the time.
• Good personal relations: Happy people interact socially and fulfil social needs of
sharing, bonding and in return get support from them in time of need.

Life events: Happiness is correlated with happy events, such as, promotion, winning
an essay competition, parenthood or marriage. Do you think more wealth means
more happiness? Once our basic needs are met more wealth does not mean more
happiness. Research has indicated that happiness is more important than wealth.
There is a strong correlation between happiness and self-esteem, extraversion,
optimism, self management skills, good personal relations, progress towards goals,
spirituality and religious beliefs. Therefore happiness is closely related to different
aspects of the individual and behaviour. Societies that report being happy, value
wealth, access to knowledge, personal freedom and equality

WE HAVE MANY EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL ROUTES TO HAPPINESS--We are never

helpless

An important underlying cause of hopelessness, powerlessness, and depression is

a belief that we cannot find any possible route to happiness. Do you ever think that
you have no choice except a path that will make you unhappy? The next time you feel
trapped, unhappy, or depressed ask yourself, "Am I assuming that I can't find one
route to happiness in this situation?" "Am I assuming that I have no choice but to be
unhappy in this situation?"

Challenge that "no choice" belief. Tell yourself that no matter what the situation is,
you have many routes to happiness! Perhaps you have not yet found those routes.
However, someone in this world has learned how to create happiness in a similar--or
even worse--situation. How did he or she do it?

Once you believe that you can achieve happiness in that situation, that belief will give
you hope. Hope will allow you to start looking for new, creative routes to happiness
that you may have previously overlooked.

Seek happiness and you will find it. This is a positive self-fulfilling prophesy. It is
amazing how many people have never valued their own happiness highly and have
never learned how to play, have fun, or create happiness.

Seeking happiness is partly choosing to find interesting things to do, but it is mostly a
mental skill--learning how to make every activity as interesting and fun as it can be.
The more we begin to look for creative ways of generating interest and enjoying
ourselves in difficult or unpleasant situations, the more skilled we become. I have
seen people learn how to be happy in many "impossible" situations.

EXTERNAL ROUTES TO HAPPINESS

We have both external and internal routes to happiness. External routes to happiness
include any actions that utilize our external environment to contribute to our
happiness. In a typical day we take many actions like eating breakfast, talking with
family members, working, playing golf, or going to bed. These actions generate
external effects that, in turn, affect our internal world. It is as if we use the external
world as a mediator between our actions and our senses so that we can achieve more
desirable internal states.

Our happiness is dependent upon the satisfaction of our values--current and

anticipated. The most common way to satisfy our values and find happiness is
through external routes to happiness. If we are hungry, we eat and satisfy that hunger.
If we want the love and fun of a friendship, then we can be a friend to others.

We can set goals, plan, and take actions to get money, friends, material goods, or the
job we want. Or, an activity may provide interest and fun in itself. By choosing to do
that activity, we get immediate increased happiness. Many of us are so focused on
these external routes to happiness that we may even assume that they are the only
routes to happiness.

Our Western culture emphasizes these external routes to happiness. Indeed, they are
important! They produce our food; build our houses, schools, and factories; they give
us art, music, and philosophy; and they give us our family, friends, and lovers.
Developing our knowledge and skills to use these external routes can lay a strong
foundation for happiness.

However, think of the famous people who have "had it all"--yet killed themselves.
Why would someone with more money, popularity, sexual prowess, and success than
you or I will ever have kill themselves? To be maximally happy, we cannot depend
exclusively upon these external routes. We must achieve inner harmony to be happy.
No amount of external goods or success will ensure internal harmony.

While many who "have it all" are unhappy, others--like my client fighting for her life
against cancer--achieve happiness with limited external resources. How can she be
happier than the person who has so much?

How can we be happy when the external world is not to our liking? What happens
when we don't have the resources to get what we want? Sometimes we fail no
matter how hard we try. What happens when we lose something or someone we love
dearly? In some cases, internal routes to happiness may be our only means to finding
happiness.

Creating our own worlds. To the degree that we cannot find or obtain environments
we want, we can strive to create them ourselves. Dr. McFerrin Stowe once said that
no matter how inhospitable or crazy the world may seem, and no matter how badly
others may treat you, it is possible to create your own world that reflects your own
values. For example, in your family the husband can be treated like a king, the wife
can be treated like a queen, and the children can be treated like princes and
princesses. Each person can treat the others as if they are the most important people
in the world. Even if you came from a family that was more like hell than heaven, you
can make your own little version of heaven right here on earth--even alone in your
own home and daily life.

INTERNAL ROUTES TO HAPPINESS

Victor Frankl lived in worse conditions than hopefully any of us will ever be exposed
to. He spent several years in Auschwitz and similar camps. Many "realists" would have
said to Frankl that he had no hope. Yet Frankl chose to live. He considered death, but
believed that life was too precious to give up so easily. He quoted Nietzsche,

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

Once he chose to live, then he chose to live life as positively as possible. He had few
external routes to happiness available, so he focused upon internal routes. Victor
Frankl developed a positive inner world to overcome the terrible external conditions
at Auschwitz. He knew that he was creating mental images that were a fantasy. Yet
spending hours each day creating thoughts and a complex and positive inner world
made his life interesting and even enjoyable for much of his day.

This rich inner life helped him survive, and also allowed him to create a more positive
world for others. He not only helped those in the death camp, but his books have
helped millions more since then.

Whose way was the most rational? The "realists," who focused on the reality of the
terrible conditions in their environment and died--or Dr. Frankl who developed
fantasies and survived. After the war, Dr. Frankl led a very successful and happy life.
After the war, the "realists" were still dead.

If we look at the lives of the happiest people and the people who have had the biggest
impacts on the world, we usually find that they were not "realists" in the sense that
they saw only what was there in their world. Instead they were dreamers who first
created a mental image that was better than the image they saw in the external world.

Developing positive internal worlds not only gives us direction, but it gives us positive
feelings and energy to move in that direction. Our positiveness and enthusiasm can
also help motivate others. Even if we believe that we have little hope of ever making
that image a reality, the image can still enrich our lives the way Victor Frankl's image
enriched his.

Some major internal routes to happiness. Internal routes to happiness can include
almost any mental activity--from appreciating a tree or enjoying music to
contemplating life. We can learn new beliefs, skills, or habits which can dramatically
affect our personal power and happiness. We have seen how making happiness a
conscious top goal is important. Awareness that each choice we make affects our
happiness is also important.

We have less control over our environment and people in our lives than over our own
thoughts, actions, and emotions. Of these, the most important is our thoughts--for
they have most control over our emotions and actions.

Yet, most of us fail to notice the obvious connection between our thoughts and our
emotions. We make no attempt to discover or understand the hidden mental
structures that generate those thoughts. Yet, these underlying mental structures are
at the heart of our personal power and happiness. If you want to be happy--especially
in the long-run--explore and develop these important parts of yourself.

 Develop your HIGHER SELF--that part of yourself that unconditionally loves

you and others.
 Develop a POSITIVE WORLD VIEW--you can learn to feel gratitude for all you
are given, and learn to accept (feel calm about) all aspects of life--even the
most frightening.
 Develop your positive LIFE THEMES and ROLES--and learn to overcome old
negative ones. Develop good role-models, self-expectations, and goals for
every role in your career, family, groups, or play.
 Resolve inner conflicts--that underlie your daily negative emotions.
 Create INNER WORLDS and PLANS--create visions in your mind as a first step
toward creating both internal and external reality.
 Learn, think, and problem-solve--keep expanding your mind. Involve it in
interesting and challenging activities. Keep learning and growing in a variety of
interest areas. Keep growing as a person. Optimal challenge and growth
underlie happiness.
Joy of Giving
Have you ever noticed how you feel when you give away things? The Joy of giving
just cannot be put into any words but only felt. It is a greater feeling than while
receiving any kind of gifts.
Studies have shown that some parts of your brains get activated when you give
and receive gifts.

Giving could be in any format. For some it could be money while for others it
could be time. Some people find great pleasures in giving care and working for
others or for the society. The happiness that one finds in giving out may differ
from person to person and their interests. It has also been observed that children
also experience a sense of joy when they give their things to whom they like. The
joy of giving could be seen on the faces of the people who share and give. The
smile, the glow the happiness all is very much evident and it is such a pleasure to
see those faces. Studies have shown that most people when they are down or blue,
and when they get involved in giving out something, it brightens up their mood
and makes them happy.

Basically, giving means ensuring that you are making someone happy by providing
them what they wanted and thereby making them feel happy and cared.

Truly giving from the heart fills your life with joy and nourishes your soul. Giving
provides an intrinsic reward that’s far more valuable than the gift. As Mahatma
Gandhi said, “To find yourself, lose yourself in the service of others.”

Giving takes you out of yourself and allows you to expand beyond earthly limitations.
True joy lies in the act of giving without an expectation of receiving something in
return.

Academic research and thousands of years of human history confirm that achieving
meaning, fulfillment, and happiness in life comes from making others happy, and not
from being self-centred. Mother Teresa is a famous example. She found fulfillment in
giving of herself to others. She helped change the expression on dying people’s faces
from distress and fear to calmness and serenity. She made their undeniable pain a
little easier to bear. Giving is one of the best investments you can make towards
achieving genuine happiness. True giving comes from the heart, with no expectation
of reciprocation. You’ll find that the more you give, the more you’ll receive. It’s the
joy and love that we extend to others that brings true happiness or union with God.
When we give, we reap the joy of seeing a bright smile, laughter, tears of joy
and gratitude for life. We know that if people give just a little more—of their time,
skills, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, wealth and love—the world would be a more
peaceful and healthier place.

The rewards of giving are priceless. If you want to have happiness, you need to give
happiness. If you want love, you need to give love. It is only in giving that you receive.
No matter what your circumstances in life, you have the ability to give.