Social-Emotional Learning at Marin Waldorf School
“Emotional intelligence can’t be bought or rushed. It develops with the slow emergence of identity, and the gradual accumulation of life experiences.
”
Building a healthy social environment and emotional intelligence in our students is fundamental to our work at Marin Waldorf School. As educators, we seek to foster not just skills and knowledge, but personal character, compassion, social responsibility, and kindness in our students. We do this in many ways.
Learning Together
Our curriculum and pedagogy are based on the understanding that, as best-selling author Jonathan Haidt writes in his new book The Anxious Generation, “Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.” Starting at the earliest ages, Marin Waldorf School emphasizes cooperation and collaboration in the classroom, with ample time for both guided group work and unstructured play in our early childhood programs.
In the grades, we place tremendous value on activities that encourage students to work together, whether that’s building a motor with a partner in 8th grade physics class or rehearsing for the annual class plays. Music, in particular, is a deeply harmonizing activity that encourages students to cooperate and listen to each other—one of the reasons that both choir and instrumental music are such a big part of our curriculum.
Strong Class Communities
Close teacher-student relationships and intentionally small class sizes bolster our students' self-confidence and sense of belonging within the MWS community. Here, students benefit from working with the same team of teachers over multiple years, creating an environment in which each student is individually seen and supported. (Click here to read more about how we build strong teacher-student relationships through a practice called looping.) Importantly, our teachers model compassion and kindness, and ask our students to do the same. We also promote open conversations between parents and teachers, building a trusting relationship with the child’s needs at the center.
A Strong School Community
In our close-knit school community, children get to know each other, across ages and grade levels. Both preschool and kindergarten classrooms are mixed-age, laying the groundwork for the cooperative community feel in grades 1-8. Our 1st grade-8th grade buddy program unites our oldest and youngest graders, while students in grades 1-8 get an opportunity to play together during recess, twice daily. Frequent all-school assemblies and festivals, from the Michaelmas pageant to the annual Lunar New Year assembly, bring the entire school community together. Importantly, we want families to be involved in their children’s lives and education.
A Thoughtful Approach to Technology
At Marin Waldorf School, our rich interdisciplinary education emphasizes hands-on experiences, human relationships, and creativity. We don’t use tech in the classroom, unless it is required for assisted learning. Children are encouraged to build social skills through group work and free play; to develop their imagination and creativity through the arts, music, and stories; and to boost their bodies and brains with experiential activities, from games to knitting to woodwork.
A Program in Social Ethics for Middle Schoolers
Research shows that programs that explicitly teach social-emotional skills can have a lifelong positive impact on learning, social skills, and confidence in children. Starting in middle school, students at MWS participate in an articulated program in social ethics and social emotional learning, which includes topics like technology and its responsible uses, anti-bias education, sexual ethics, and health. These discussion-based classes are an opportunity for students to share their thoughts and questions in a supportive adult-guided environment.
Why Do We Teach Social-Emotional Skills?
In recent years, social emotional learning, or SEL, has become an increasing focus in elementary and middle school education. Not only is SEL linked to improved student performance and overall well being in school, it promotes the uniquely human capacities—like communication, collaboration, and empathy—that are expected to become increasingly critical in the future.
"Now is the time for leaders, across sectors, to develop new ways for students to learn that are more directly, and more dynamically, tied to where our economy is going, not where it has been. Critically, that involves bringing the same level of rigor to training around people skills that we have brought to technical skills," write Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn in the New York Times.
Perhaps most importantly, we believe that healthy human relationships are at the heart of a meaningful life.