Oceanside High School to focus on students’ emotions

Over the next year, Oceanside High School will implement a social emotional literacy (SEL) program which administrators believe will promote positive decision making among students during their years at in classes and beyond.

According to Assistant Superintendant of Curriculum Bob Fenter, SEL allows students to understand and label their emotions to have success in both school and the workplace.

“It’s more than being nice to one another,” Fenter explained. “It’s really helping students to understand what they’re feeling and to develop strategies even when they’re not feeling particularly happy to still be productive.”

The incoming freshman class, Fenter said, has already internalized SEL concepts in the middle school and elementary school over the past few years.

The students have been taught to use tools to pinpoint exactly what emotions they are feeling at a given time, so that they recognize how their emotions affect their work and social interactions.

One such tool is the mood meter, a four-colored, quadrant grid which younger students have been taught to look at and determine how they feel at that moment.

“The goal is not to change those emotions, they should feel sad or angry if that is how they are at the time,” Fenter said. “Instead, we want them to say, ‘How can I still be successful at school today even though I’m angry?’”

Another tool used is a classroom charter, which details how the students and teacher will treat one another throughout the year.

SEL is part of the work done by Dr. Marc Brackett, a Yale professor who researches building students’ vocabulary to help label and manage emotions.

High School teachers involved in the Government Economics Mentoring (GEM) program will attend full training in SEL concepts Nov. 28-29. The training will provide the teachers with an understanding of the concepts so that they can provide the student mentors with the same understanding.

“We think that by embedding it in the health class, it will allow the kids to use their anchors, in this case the seniors who will be trained in [SEL],” Fenter said. “The teacher doesn’t need to teach it, but the students need to be able to use it to see how to get through the day.”

The mentors will be taught SEL concepts next academic year, while the teachers and staff will attend a few more training days scattered throughout the remaining school year.

“For all kids and all people, emotions are a very significant part of our lives and when we don’t have a control over them, we don’t have a handle on our relationships,” Fenter said. “It’s really a career-readiness type of thing.”