Disentangling SEL: Advocating for Black sociality, questioning white teachers’ emotionality

ABSTRACT

This article disentangles social and emotional learning (SEL) into its 2 constitutive parts—sociality and emotionality through a backward mapping of the School Development Program (SDP) developed by James Comer. This article argues that Comer’s school-level intervention is a process model for how to achieve SEL outcomes given its intentionality toward making schooling a homeplace and its capacity to buildout conditions of Black sociality. The SDP also challenges how teacher preparation programs perpetuates harm to students of color by codifying white emotionality. This harm suggests a need to reimagine teacher preparation. This article thus concludes by recommending that teacher preparation programs should study more models and processes like the SDP and confront color-evasiveness.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional Resources

1. Griffith, M. W. & Freeman, M. (Hosts). (2019). School colors [Audio podcast]. Brooklyn Deep. https://www.schoolcolorspodcast.com/

This podcast provides a variety of important stories about public school education in New York City. Of particular interest is a three-part (Episodes 2-4) series detailing organizing efforts by Black and Brown parents living in the neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville to take control of their children’s educations in 1968-69. The story of Ocean Hills-Brownsville documents how Black and Brown parents organize to ensure that their children educationally thrive.

2. Joffe-Walt, C. (Host). (2020). Nice white parents [Audio podcast]. Serial Productions and The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html

This podcast is a much-needed reminder of the outsized impact white parents have on shaping America’s entire educational geography. This includes a critical discussion of the fact that education is more segregated today than prior to the Brown decision. This podcast helps contextualize current erroneous complaints from white parents that their children are being forced to learn Critical Race Theory.

3. Oakland Unified School District (n.d). Restorative justice. https://www.ousd.org/restorativejustice.

This website offers education researchers, policymakers, and practitioners an entry into how OUSD conceptualizes social and emotional learning as a practice of restorative justice. Of particular interest is the “Restorative Justice Feelings Chart,” which expands upon more traditional iterations of such charts to include emotions that are culturally relevant and Afro-humanistic (e.g., “connected to ancestors”).

Notes

1. The School Development Program consists of 9 process elements: 3 teams, 3 operations, and 3 guiding principles. Teams included: (a) School Planning and Management Team, (b) Student and Staff Support Team, and (c) Parent Team. School Planning and Management Teams consisted of school staff, parents, and other adult stakeholders and undertook three operations: “(a) the development and monitoring of a comprehensive school plan with specific goals in the social climate and academic areas; (b) staff development activities based on building-level goals in these areas; and (c) assessment and modification” (Comer & Emmons, 2006, p. 356). Three principles guided these operations: (a) no-fault problem solving, (b) consensus decision-making, and (c) collaboration. There were also 6 interrelated child development pathways central to the SDP: speech and language, physical, moral, social-interactive, psychological-emotional, and academic-intellectual.