More Confusion and Facile Thinking Manifested in the Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee >>>>> Introduction to and Presentation of Detailed Recommendations on Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning (Article #6 Concerning MPS Administrative, Board of Education, and Public Confusion)

After the section on Graduation/ College and Career Readiness (given in my immediately previous article) of the Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee comes the section on Relationships and Socials and Emotional Learning, with detailed committee recommendations, which I present below in full before providing my own comments:

 

Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning

 

From our conversations with high school students invited to meet our committee as well as based on our experiences as students, parents, staff, and community members, thee Workforce 2020 committee members share a strong belief in the importance of relationships between students and staff as determinants of success.

 

The 2020 Advisory believes the district is rightly emphasizing social emotional learning and supports its role in developing positive relationship skills for both students and staff.  We also believe resources should be allocated to support this work as an integral component to the district’s school improvement plan.

 

Advisory 2020 Recommendations---  Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning

 

>>>>>    Staff development opportunities giving teachers tools to improve their relationship building skills---  especially ways they can better know their students.

 

>>>>>    Creating space amidst the demands on what teachers teach to conduct activities allowing teachers to better know their students and for students to be better understood and heard in the classroom.

 

>>>>>    Building-wide experiences for students and staff to engage in quality relationship building with each other and their surrounding community.

 

My Comments

 

The 2020 Advisory Committee is clearly under the sway of Superintendent Ed Graff with its embracing of and comments on Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning.

 

I consider the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) program advocated by Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent Ed Graff to be vastly overhyped. 

 

This SEL program and moniker are consistent with a lot of education professor verbiage;  the program is advanced particularly by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.  (CASEL) and features five main skills for human development :  self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and building personal relationships.

 

All of this is important but should be implicit in the proper approach to the impartation of excellent education.  Whether self-awareness and the ability to establish productive and emotionally satisfying human relationships can be artificially taught by expensive CASEL consultants is doubtful in the extreme.

                                                         

Illustrative are the following realities:

 

Superintendent Ed Graff has not committed himself to building strong relationships with vocal members of the community who are dissatisfied with the academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  He has not attempted to connect with longtime community activists, particularly those of the African American community.  While he has won significant support from his own staff, there are those whom he has alienated and taken action against when he felt his professional position threatened or capability questioned for leading a district comprised of the particular racial and ethnic groups represented among MPS students..

 

The objectives professed by the overhyped SEL program are best manifested and developed in the context of the classroom experience, led by teachers who have engaged with pertinent issues concerning student-teacher relationships in the course of the extensive and intensive retraining that they should undergo.  And the development of such relationships at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) and elsewhere among district staff should proceed in frank discussions that would be best led by eminent community leaders of many types and ethnicities in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

In the classroom, the whole-class, teacher-led format, with heavy student participation via class discussions and debates, is ideal for examining a diversity of perspectives in discussing academic issues with application to current life and future life prospects of students.

 

This organic, substantive, community and classroom based approach to the development of the skills identified as important by CASEL is superior to any formalistic program led by overpaid consultants from that organization.