SEL and Classroom Culture In an Age of Distance Learning

Everything about Ray, from his seat choice to his body language in class, indicated that he didn’t want to be noticed. And for the first half of his 9th grade year, he did enough to pass, earning Cs and Ds. Ray was the kind of kid who could easily have slipped through the cracks.

But Ray taught me an invaluable lesson about buzzwords, adaptability, and unintended results. Any connected educator has heard buzzwords like flipped classroom, gamification, social-emotional learning (SEL), differentiation, and personalized learning. And while these may just seem the latest bright and shiny objects to capture our trending eyes, if we step back and examine the pedagogy supporting these “buzzwords,” we can see the importance they have in reaching our students in both in-person and hybrid-distance learning classrooms……………………………………………………………