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What does the BC Curriculum Say?

So far I’ve defined SEL, looked at a great website that offered tons of education and resources, looked into CBT, took a deeper dive into what social emotional apps were available for both students, teachers and individuals and now I want to look at what does the BC Curriculum say about social emotional learning?

As a teacher candidate, if I’m passionate about SEL it’s important that I have support through the curriculum. Looking at teaching the whole learner is a concept that is fairly new. It’s only been in the last 10 years that SEL has been on the curriculum agenda. In 2015, the BC government developed a new education curriculum that included the development of the Core Competencies. The Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning. They are cross curricular and develop when students are engaged in areas of learning. The three major headings are communication, thinking, personal & social.

https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies

To unpack these three headings of the Core Competencies, the BC Curriculum website (listed above) does a good job of providing a definition and expectation about how it fits and is to be incorporated into the curriculum. There are also Sub-Competencies that fit within each Core Competency. I found these Sub- Competencies super interesting. The Core Competencies are interrelated and interdependent and each Sub-competency is naturally intertwined with all the other Sub-Competencies. As students move through the profiles in one Sub-Competency, their growth will influence development in other Sub-Competencies. These Sub-Competencies are called Facets, Profiles and Connections. There is also a tab of Illustrations that provides very detailed examples of what that learning may look like. The Illustrations give the teacher examples on what they may see but also guides the teacher in examples they can use in class or actives they can set up to create a classroom culture of SEL.

Needless to say, I’m quite impressed with this area of the BC Curriculum website but unless a teacher or teacher candidate has experience with SEL, I can see how it still may be questionable about how to support or teach SEL in the classroom. The good news is most schools have a team to help support, guide and provide resources. Your inclusion support team at your school may have access to activities or be able to help guide you through assessing this learning in your classroom. Part of inclusion support is also school based teams and if a student is having a particularly hard time or may need additional support and communication outside of the class, school based teams can help provide resource. In SD62, they also have student engagement facilitators. Student engagement facilitators have more specialized training in social emotional support and may be able to offer your student additional learning individually or in groups. Another great resource is your school counsellor! A lot of the time, the school counsellor will have activities, resources or ideas to help support the classroom. So remember, you’re not alone! It takes a village!

As a teacher, it doesn’t need to be hard or big detailed lessons. It can be small, everyday tasks that you start with your classroom. A simple SEL Google search, Pinterest search or image search will also provide you with thousand of resources at your fingertips. Here are a few examples of everyday smaller examples of SEL that can add up:

  • journalling
  • mindlfulness
  • check-ins
  • positive affirmations
  • self awareness
  • active listening
  • celebrations of diversity or successes
  • classroom contracts

So I encourage you to check out the BC Curriculum website and get to know the people in your schools who specialize more in SEL and may be a great resource for you as a teacher and an amazing support for your learners!

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash