Umoja - Student Development Corporation

Umoja- Student Development Corporation was founded in 1997 by Lila Leff. Umoja means "unity" in Swahili. Umoja- Student Development Corporation (https://www.umojacorporation.org/) is an organization that teaches educators how to better support students through social emotional learning (SEL) and restorative justice.  Umoja believes that by teaching and training educators on ways to support and better develop students, students will have a better chance of success in their futures. On the Umoja website it states, "We build deep social-emotional learning (SEL) skills in educators to transform the ways young people experience school and the ways schools exist to serve society." Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are at the center of Umoja’s work.

            One of the deans at my internship went to a professional development workshop at Umoja to learn more about SEL and restorative justice (because learning from the school social workers was apparently not enough). The information that was learned from Umoja was then presented at an all staff institute day. Even though social workers have been teaching and implementing SEL, other educational professionals are only starting to realize the importance and the ways in which SEL can improve other areas within the educational environment. Additionally at my internship, fighting has been a big issue this year. One of social work’s best practices for when there is conflict is through implementing a restorative justice process. At the all staff institute day, information from Umoja about restorative justice was also presented. Below is one of the information sheets that was presented when talking about restorative justice but is also just a good self-check in general when working with any student.

References

Umoja-Student Development Corporatin. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from

https://www.umojacorporation.org/.

SEL Guide

https://schoolguide.casel.org/

My item of interest was given to me by my supervisor as a tool for self-reflection. The resource was found on the CASEL guide to school wide social emotional development. The assessment tool is intended to give staff the opportunity to reflect on areas of strength or defeict in working with students especially related to social emotional intelligence. Additionally, my school has used the guide to schoolwide social emotional learning to help develop our school wide social emotional development intuitive. The website walks you through the different steps of developing social emotional learning in your school. As the need continues to grow for social emotional learning its important that we know how to implement this system in our schools. This tool can serve as a great tool when speaking to administrators as they are often hesitant to implement systems that aren’t strictly academic in nature.

Teaching Tolerance

My item of interest is a website called Teaching Tolerance which provides resources and tools to help schools address equity within the building and gives articles and supports around current issues.  I choose this website because it can be filtered down by different categories such as: race and ethnicity, religion, ability, sexuality, class, immigration, bullying, and activism.  You can also find information and curriculum around SEL in the classrooms and how to incorporate that into your schools.  There are many free resources and the ask is for only a donation if one is able. 

There are many other resources beyond articles, including lesson plans and posters.  I like the lesson plans because they can be filtered down by the above categories and also by grade ranging from kindergarten all the way through grade 12. There are text for students and text for educators.  You can also subscribe to get articles sent to your email that are appropriate for what is currently going on.  For example, there was an article about how to speak with students about being mindful about Halloween costumes and why that is important.  There are currently articles about Thanksgiving and what that actually means for Indigenous Persons in America.

The website is located at www.tolerance.org

Stephanie Hernandez

Mindfulness Practice            

Working in a school setting, the term SEL is thrown around alot in conversation. As school social workers, we use SEL to help guide our practice when working with students in areas of self-awareness, decision making, and social awareness. Focusing on the social emotional part/experiences of a student helps the social worker get a holistic viewpoint of the student. However, a new term that I recently heard at my field placement is mindful practice, this year all staff members at my field placement are required to attend professional development on mindful practices. Researching more about the topic I noticed the similarities of mindful practice and SEL, adding mindful practice as a support for SEL. “Mindfulness and SEL each prescribe certain practices and psychoeducation (which means discussion of psychological concepts that helps students better understand and regulate their internal life and behavior).” The goal of mindfulness practice is to train adults in acquiring skills to then teach to their own students. The 3 main skills to learn are: emotion regulation, attention control and self-awareness.

            Emotion regulation, is how one responds to emotions and how that respond impacts our well-being. Learning how to respond in a mindful way can help our emotion regulation. Attention control, in practicing mindfulness, one learns to select and object of attention and to hold a connection to that object, and to come back to the object when one is distracted. This skills is helpful for students to be successful in academics, and goal-directed behavior. Finally, self-awareness includes present moment awareness of the body and emotional cues. These 3 skills combined will allow students to create mindful habits for dealing with difficult situations. Mindfulness practice is a new technique that is still being researched and implemented in schools. There is still much to be learned from it but the benefits so far have been positive in decreasing negative student behavior, promoting self-awareness and contributing to academic success.

http://www.mindfulschools.org/foundational-concepts/integrating-mindfulness-social-emotional-learning-programs/