SEL for Adults: Self-Awareness and Self-Management

Teaching and school leadership are demanding jobs, to say the least. Yet research shows that cultivating social and emotional skills can help lessen burnout and turnover and increase job satisfaction in both teachers and principals. In addition, these skills can also help improve relationships with students, leading to higher academic achievement.

More specifically, several components of self-awareness and self-management can lead to the following outcomes:

Teachers who cultivate their emotional literacy, skills, and knowledge have more positive relationships with students.

• Intentionally developing educators’ emotional intelligence through training can shift teachers’ beliefs about how often to engage one-on-one with students, support them emotionally, and show concern for them outside the classroom.
• The positive emotions that often result from emotional skills motivate teachers to create strong relationships with students in the first place.

Teachers become better teachers when trained in emotional skills.

• Learning how to recognize, understand, label, and manage emotions improves educators’ ability to maintain an efficient and goal-oriented classroom.
• Emotional skills also help teachers to better scaffold student learning, offer their students helpful feedback, and provide them with a sense of accomplishment.

Emotional knowledge improves teachers’ experience of the job itself.

• Knowing how to relate to their emotions effectively increases teachers’ level of energy and their resilience when faced with challenges. They are also more engaged in their work, focusing much of their attention and effort on the task of teaching.

Managing emotions in a healthy way improves educators’ well-being.

• Teachers who are able to regulate their emotions enjoy greater job satisfaction and personal accomplishment, in addition to better support from their principals. However, the method they choose matters. Adults who use emotion regulation techniques such as “reappraisal”—or changing how you think or feel about a situation—rather than suppression show higher levels of life satisfaction and well-being, and less depression. (Note that emotion regulation strategies and outcomes vary by culture.)

Being there emotionally for students really matters.

• Research shows that both academic outcomes and behavior improve when students feel emotionally supported by their teachers.
• Students are more engaged in school when they experience an emotionally secure relationship with their teachers.

Teachers who are kind to themselves on difficult days fare better.

• Self-compassion has been linked to greater well-being, better relationships, and increased resilience. Indeed, practicing self-compassion may help educators to foster a positive classroom environment and to cultivate supportive relationships with students who challenge them.

Growing teachers’ awareness of their implicit biases is imperative to student success.

• Research suggests that black students are more likely to receive harsher discipline than white students due to teachers’ unconscious partiality to white students–and this bias might be just as likely to come from a black teacher as a white one.

Teachers who increase their awareness of the expectations they hold for students may make a profound difference in students’ lives.

• Studies show that when teachers hold high expectations, students are more likely to succeed academically, graduate from high school, and attend college, particularly if they come from ethnically and/or economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Research suggests that teachers should examine their preconceived beliefs around gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic factors, and also their reactions to student behavior (e.g., self-control versus angry outbursts).