On Wednesday afternoon, Hamlin Middle School faculty members engaged in a learning exploration with Nick Haisman-Smith of the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning. Mr. Haisman-Smith and the Institute for Social Emotional Learning have visited Hamlin several times over the past year.

Among other areas, the Institute focuses on honing the following skills with educators:

• Conduct classes in ways that build capacity for personal reflection, meaningful conversation, ritual and group harmony.
• Use silence, creative expression, listening and cooperation to activate SEL in all subject areas.
• Use SEL principles to facilitate more powerful academic curriculum design.
• Exploit the link between literary themes, creative writing, storytelling and SEL skills.
• Facilitate the use of clarification, support and proposed solutions in conversation to unlock the power of collective wondering.
• Work with values to build teacher resilience, humanity and creativity.
• Model the resilience, compassion and inspiration at the heart of SEL.

Hamlin faculty members participated in community building activities, defined and refined the purpose and goals of the middle school advisory program, learned new ways to tangibly bring SEL into advisories/classrooms, and reviewed open session training (a specific type of conversation held in advisory to support the social/emotional welfare of students). As part of the session, teachers shared best practices including ways to: celebrate birthdays with only words of appreciation, create class mantras, practice mindfulness, observe silent reflection, and honor attention (among many others).

The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning also worked with Lower School faculty at a different session.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.instituteforsel.net/