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“Why Did You Do That?” A Teacher’s Quest to Finding a Solution to Social-Emotional
Learning in a Transitional Classroom
“Why did you do that?”
This is a question I commonly find myself asking my students, and I am usually met with
no answer. On this particular day, it was a completely valid question. It was a calm Friday
afternoon (or as calm as it can be with eleven six-year-olds waiting to go home for the weekend)
when I pulled out the class treasure chest. Every Friday, students who did not get a mark in their
folder for not following the rules got to pick one of the fun items in the treasure chest. I was just
about to start calling the students in twos from the carpet where they were sitting, careful not to
draw attention to those who did not earn treasure chest, when I heard someone crying. I looked
around frantically to make sure there was no life-threatening issue when I found the student who
was clearly in pain.
“What happened?”
“Brock (all names are pseudonyms) hit me. He punched me in the stomach,” she said
with tears streaming down her face as she clutched her stomach.
I sent her away and called up the little boy who punched her, who was already looking at
me and grinning.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, looking between both of his eyes for an ounce of
sympathy in them.
“I was just really excited for treasure box!”
Many moments like this occurred in our transitional first-grade classroom that made me
think about how to prevent situations like this from occurring. I wondered what social-emotional
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learning (SEL) would look like in this classroom and if my students would genuinely benefit
from its use.
Purpose
Transitional classrooms, which are in between grade levels meant to help students who
are not quite ready for the next grade, bring their own set of challenges for many reasons. The
students come into the classroom with noticeable gaps in their reading, writing, and
mathematical skills. These students may also be identified as being slightly behind in their
development compared to their peers. Many situations, like the one mentioned above, led me to
want to help my students regarding their emotions and ability to express what they were truly
feeling. This study aimed to examine what happened when intentional SEL conversations and
activities were implemented in a transitional classroom, a classroom with less than normal
circumstances, and to analyze the perceptions of the students and teacher. The students interacted
with a mood board, also known as a feelings board, and in different social-emotional center
activities in an effort to answer the following questions:
Research Question #1: What happens when a mood board and social-emotional centers are
implemented in a transitional classroom?
Sub-Question: What are the student and teacher perceptions of the implementation of a
mood board and SEL centers in a remediation classroom?
Research Question #2: In what ways are the students able to reflect upon their reasons for their
misbehavior or emotions when social-emotional centers and mood boards are implemented?
At the time of the study, I was a graduate student in my year-long clinical teaching
placement at an elementary school in West Texas. Sunnyside Elementary served around 450
students in grades K-2. The campus was slowly growing in diversity, with 65% classified as
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White, 22% Hispanic, 5% African American, 3% Asian, and 5% Mixed Race. About 18% of the
students were classified as economically disadvantaged, 2% were emergent bilingual, and 14%
received special education services.
Literature Review
The stages of development range from child to child, depending on the many different
genetic and environmental factors each of us faces. Nonetheless, there are certain characteristics
that place children into specific stages. During early childhood, specifically between ages two to
seven, Jean Piaget anticipated that children will grow exponentially in their cognitive
development and emotional intelligence (Rabindran & Madanagopal, 2020). This includes skills
like moving from egocentrism, which is the inability to see that others have a different point of
view than you, to a more holistic sense of self (Rabindran & Madanagopal, 2020). A delay in any
of these areas or the other mentioned development characteristics associated with this stage
could mean the child is behind in their cognitive, physical, or social development. Because play
and belonging with peers are so crucial at this age, the lack of social-emotional skills can impact
their next stages of development.
Social-emotional skills include the ability to work with others, form relationships with
peers and adults, and identify their own emotions in a healthy manner. SEL, intentionally
embedded lessons that teach skills about emotional regulation within themselves and responding
to others, indicate academic and social success in young students and set the foundation for
children to build healthy relationships (Mondi et al., 2021). With the assistance of parents, peers,
and other adults, children can develop “more definite and individual emotional expression”
needed for social interactions (Kowsalya et al., 2012, p. 181). It allows them to “express
emotions in socially and culturally appropriate ways” while safely exploring their environment
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(Darling-Churchill & Lippman, 2016, p. 2). Obtaining these sets of skills in early childhood is
even tied to an increase in health outcomes, seeing as emotional regulation is a natural survival
tactic (Mondi et al., 2021). Interventions like SEL are especially important for students marked
at risk during their first few years of schooling, whether that decision is based on their behavior
or academic status because the lack of social-emotional skills is common amongst these students
(Daunic et al., 2023). In studies with children who are experiencing delays in their
communication, SEL activities have been shown to improve their ability to express themselves
and “encourage emotional conversations” that they may not have otherwise wanted to participate
in (Rangel-Rodríguez et al., 2021, p. 17).
Kindergarten repetitions are common for students marked at risk early on in their
academic careers, with transitional programs not being the only retention initiative in place
(Ferguson, 1996; Schulting et al., 2005). Transitional programs are retention programs that allow
students to spend an extra year in the grade they just finished while allowing them to get a
jumpstart on the next grade level. Different criteria go into placing a student into a transitional
classroom depending on the age and grade level of the student, including cognitive, physical,
and/or social-emotional delays (Kim et al., 2021). These students may exhibit disciplinary issues,
low achievement scores, lack of fine/gross motor skills, or anything else that falls under “social
and academic immaturity” (Karweit & Wasik, 1992, p. 7). While most children fall into this
placement due to academic readiness, other students are placed here because of their social-
emotional skills and maturity, which highlights the importance of these skills at such an early
age.
Transitional first grade at Sunnyside Elementary, also called T-1, is a classroom where
the students learn kindergarten Texas Essential Knowledge and Skill (TEKS) in the first
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semester and first-grade TEKS exclusively in the second half of the year. The program in the
West Texas school district I taught in was meant to combine goals and standards from
kindergarten and first grade to give these students the readiness needed for first grade. The
program focused on their academic readiness as much as their emotional maturity because the
next few grades require these students to rely more on themselves to regulate their emotions and
social needs (Kim et al., 2021). Even though the classroom setup was supposed to mimic a
kindergarten classroom, the goal was to seamlessly move the students into first grade by
providing them with skills that prepare them to learn and interact with others in a different
setting.
Few published articles about transitional programs exist, let alone the SEL aspect that
occurs in transitional programs. There is little research that supports the efficacy of transitional
programs, which also explains the controversy around the program (Mantzicopoulos &
Neuharth-Pritchett, 1998). Peer-reviewed studies show very limited research on the effectiveness
of this kind of retention program, but there are non-peer-reviewed studies that seem to indicate
that these children tend to “reestablish their academic delays within two to three years of
placement” (Ferguson, 1996, p. 5). Transitional classrooms are not commonly used; therefore,
little is known about how these classrooms vary from other retention programs. There is also a
lack of research about SEL in transitional programs. With this being said, this research would
support and contribute to the use of SEL with young learners in a transitional program who may
be experiencing some developmental delays.
Methods
The next section explains how I collected my data for this study. The data for this study
was largely qualitative, using observational notes and data from the interviews to determine what
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exactly would happen if SEL opportunities were used in a classroom where these skills may be
lacking.
Participant Selection
The class size of transitional classrooms is usually smaller due to the level of ability of
each student and the attention that these students need to receive. I co-taught in a transitional
first-grade classroom that consisted of 11 students. The participants of this study included 11
students, seven boys and four girls, and the classroom teacher. I sent home the parent permission
slip along with a consent form, and then the students who were given permission were asked to
sign an assent form. The students were read the assent form and clearly told that participation in
this study would not affect their grades in any way. Of the 11 students in the class, seven
students were Caucasian, three were Hispanic, and one was Asian. The classroom teacher was a
Caucasian female.
Data Collection
The study was created with the class schedule in mind; if the students were too confused
about a new schedule or routine, we thought the study would prove to do more harm than good.
With this being said, the four-week study began with the use of a mood board. In the morning,
the students would move a clip to the emotion that showed what they felt, serving as a morning
check-in. The clips did not have the students’ names on them to give the students an option to
share later in the morning. During morning meeting, the students were led into a discussion
about these feelings. They had the option to talk about these feelings or to just listen to their
peers. The students also interacted with different social-emotional centers, meant to help the
students reflect on their own emotions or help others around them who were experiencing some
big feelings. Each week, there was a different center for the students to interact with. The centers
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were as follows: SEL Jenga, sand and water tables, emotion blocks with a board game, and
scribble art. They rotated in and out of the centers each day and got an equal amount of time at
each center. One center during each week of the study was about SEL, whether it was about
themselves or others. The social-emotional centers changed each week, but they shared the
similar goal of providing them an opportunity to understand what it means to understand their
emotions and have more control over their own.
I used a variety of inquiry data from the transitional first-grade class to learn about their
emotions and emotional needs during these activities (Hendricks, 2017). I observed and recorded
data regarding the students’ conversations, actions, and behaviors during the centers and the
mood board conversation. I took field notes and anecdotal notes during morning meetings and
whole-group discussions about emotive language and certain social interactions that called for
social-emotional skills to be used (Hubbard & Power, 2003). The field notes and anecdotal notes
included the students' reactions, questions, and answers during morning meetings. Along with
this, notes during conversations about misbehaviors were also taken. Because notes are “meant
to serve as a jog to the memory,” I set time aside to flesh out my field notes once a week
(Hubbard & Power, 2003, p. 40). These fleshed-out notes turned into full reflections, giving me a
total of four reflections for each week of the study.
After two weeks of using the mood board and interacting with several SEL centers, the
students were given a survey (see Appendix A). The survey questions included concepts about
how well they believed they could deal with conflict and were able to express their emotions.
The purpose of waiting two weeks was to give the students time to learn about SEL and the
classroom teacher time to change or add to the centers based on what the students expressed in
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the survey. I used the data from the observations and the surveys to select six students to
interview who could benefit from SEL.
The student interviews took place during the second half of the study. The students
selected, which varied from those who did and did not enjoy the centers and/or the mood board,
were chosen randomly. The student interviews were 10 to 15 minutes long. The interview asked
the students questions about how they dealt with their emotions when it came to themselves or
interacting with others. The questions were similar to the survey questions and were meant to
reflect each other, but the interviews allowed the students to expound on their answers more
meaningfully. The student interviews were all done individually. Lastly, there was one teacher
interview that lasted 10 to 15 minutes long. Those questions varied from asking how the teacher
believed the students received the learning to how probable it was for the teacher to use these
strategies again in their future classroom. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed.
Data Analysis
The data was analyzed using the constant comparative method, with initial coding
followed by creating hierarchies of categories and supporting codes (Hubbard & Power, 2003). I
coded the student and teacher interviews along with the observational field notes from each week
for level 1 and level 2 codes, finding similarities and themes in the answers given by each
person. I began by coding the first 20% of the data for level 1 codes, which are the main phrases
or words that answer my research question (Tracy, 2013). At the end of the primary-cycle coding
process, I had 20 parent codes related to my initial coding process. These codes were then used
to code the remaining 80% of the data. I looked for level 2 codes that served to “explain,
theorize, and synthesize the data,” leaving me with five overarching codes (Tracy, 2013, p. 202).
I indexed the data that supported my level 2 codes to keep track of which themes and phrases
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belonged under which level 2 code. I then used this information to create a codebook (see
Appendix B) with references to all my level 1 and level 2 codes. The codebook included
definitions and examples of each code. Finally, I created memos to remind myself of important
themes, quotes, and main ideas related to my level 2 codes and research questions.
I then used the data from the interviews and notes from different conversations to observe
the ways the students were able to reflect on their behaviors. I then summarized the findings in
the students’ behaviors after the study was completed. Descriptive statistical procedures were
used to analyze data from the surveys (Mertler, 2009).
Findings
Early in the school year, I could tell that the students in T-1 were different from the
students down the hall. The other teachers talked about their students sharing deep, personal
stories with each other or relating to books in such powerful and meaningful ways; our students
were not doing that. Other teachers and staff described the T-1 students as a “nice group of
students” or students who generally always complied but nothing that indicated any personality
or individuality like the other children. Although I was aware these students were different from
their peers, they did not seem comfortable expressing themselves in any manner, whether that be
negatively or positively, which is still something students this age should be able to do at a very
basic level. My findings in answering the question about “what would happen” address the large
themes noticed when trying to get these “generally complying” children to do something outside
their comfort zones. Again, the study was done to answer these research questions:
Research Question #1: What happens when a mood board and social-emotional centers are
implemented in a transitional classroom?
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Sub-Question: What are the student and teacher perceptions of the implementation of a
mood board and SEL centers in a remediation classroom?
Research Question #2: In what ways are the students able to reflect upon their reasons for their
misbehavior or emotions when social-emotional centers and mood boards are implemented?
Boy Heavy Classroom
From the beginning of the year, my cooperating teacher and I noticed that our classroom
was predominantly male. We joked around about having such a boy-heavy classroom because
some days, it was easier to tell that the boys brought some life and excitement to the room.
However, besides some minor incidents or misbehaviors during class, this did not really affect
any of us much until the study began. We started with the mood board and a conversation on the
carpet on the first day. The students came in and moved a bright-colored token to show how they
felt. Later, they joined me on the carpet to talk. The first day, I started the conversation and
shared about how I felt and why. When I opened the floor for anyone to talk, I quickly saw the
first two themes emerge: feelings about sharing on the carpet and the mood board. Most of the
boys were hesitant to share on the carpet at first and made jokes while others were trying to listen
and participate with their peers. I reminded the unserious boys that we only wanted real answers
and that it was a time used for learning. There was one student who was not getting comfortable
with carpet time and made it known to all of his peers day after day. Honey, who only shared a
handful of times during those four weeks, would always shout “NO!” when I asked if anyone
else wanted to share. He later shared with me that he wanted to share more on the carpet but did
not know what to say.
As the study progressed, more of the boys were open to sharing, but they were largely not
using the time as originally planned. Wyatt, another student who commonly emerged in these
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codes, raised his hand to share one quiet February morning. Thinking that he finally had
something profound to say, I called on him, and he said, “This has nothing to do with the board,
but I had a bad dream last night.” During the interviews that occurred after the study was over, I
found that the boys did like to share and listen to others on the carpet but felt embarrassed or
nervous at times. They also did not like to share when feeling a negative emotion themselves.
Jackson stated that he liked to share, then followed that up by saying, “If I’m ever going to get
sad or angry, I don’t want to share it.” The boys apparently felt that negative emotions were
something that they should not share, even though those were the moments intended to help the
students learn from and about each other.
What Did They Share About?
While they were not all comfortable sharing at first, the stories and emotions they shared
developed and intensified as the study came to an end. Some of the students even became
comfortable sharing truly heartbreaking stories about how they felt at home and school. Their
stories fit into two main categories: feelings at and about school and feelings about their personal
lives. The feelings shared about school included moments that occurred with other classmates or
activities that specifically involved being in school, like the 100th day of school activities or the
Valentine’s Day party. The category about feelings in their personal lives included stories and
feelings that occurred at home with parents, siblings, etc. These categories were then split into
smaller themes like positive emotions (happiness, excitement, eagerness, etc.) and negative
emotions (anger, sadness, nervousness, confusion, etc.) along with other related topics. This was
done to understand just how they categorized their feelings after using the mood board
themselves and then being guided through a conversation about these emotions. Figure 1 depicts
the students’ different moods one morning of the study.
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Figure 1
Example of Mood Board After Morning Meeting
Note. This figure shows the mood board after one of the morning meetings during the study. The
students each chose their own feelings one by one.
Personal Feelings
The majority of all the conversations from these four weeks came from the students
talking about their personal lives. It was easy for them to come in and share the things that
happened at home, but not everything was uplifting or sweet. There were over 30 conversations
about the students feeling sad, angry, tired, etc., because of things happening at home. There
were many times when the students were tired because they stayed up too late or slept over at
someone’s house and did not sleep well. A few students, like Gunner, only shared negative
feelings when it concerned another family member but never themselves. For example, Gunner
was sad for a while when his sister had a black eye. He did not like how it looked on her and
shared that it made him feel “bad” even though he did not cause it. There were then more serious
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incidents, like with Mia and Ria, that raised concern for their mental health at school and at
home.
Ria’s home life changed the year prior when one of her parents passed away. Since then,
she had to learn how to live without her mother as a young girl whose friends talk about being
with their mothers. During the time of this study, her grandparents were leaving to go back to
their home since they came to help with her immediate family, and she was dealing with that big
change, as well. During the mornings, she would share hard conversations that her siblings had
with her grandparents, which made the students and I truly shocked and sympathetic to her
situation. The students would sometimes ask if what she was talking about was real because the
conversations were so sad, but we just comforted her and offered her an ear whenever she
wanted to talk. There were many times when her feelings about her evolving home dynamic
made her extremely sad to the point where she would just cry at random times of the day. When
she was crying, and someone would ask her if she was okay, she always shook her head no. We
then asked her if she wanted to talk about it, and she usually shook her head no. The timing of
the study truly had nothing to do with her situation, but it did highlight how she was able to
express these feelings and how the other students were able to be sympathetic towards her
situation. Ria’s situation had less to do with finding coping strategies or building up her
emotional intelligence but with providing her the space to talk about the serious changes
happening at home.
Mia, on the other hand, had problems with being in school. She would talk about being
sad and tired for many of the days she shared. In other conversations away from the group, she
would talk about wanting to go home and be with her mom. While many teachers would not
necessarily think too much about this, Mia looked sad more days than happy in this classroom;
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her happiness never seemed to last very long, and she had missed many days in the school year
due to just wanting to be home. On the days that she was present, we often saw her isolating
herself after friends asked her if she wanted to play with them. She moved her feelings to sad just
about as long as Ria during these few weeks. The mood board served as more of a time for Mia
to reflect on how she was feeling about missing home.
When any of the students did end up describing their home lives as positive, happy was
their go-to word. Happy was used nearly 20 times while just talking about their families and pets.
During the first week, the students were comfortable only sharing about positive events. Many
students here talked about watching TV or playing games the night before, playing with their
pets, or receiving some sort of gift from their parents. Things like money from the tooth fairy or
their parents giving them donuts or other treats in the morning always started many joyful
conversations. Jackson always felt happy when he got to watch his animal shows on his tablet,
and Wyatt was happy when he got money from his parents. Although these are not intense,
heartfelt feelings, this theme still showed the ways that the students are able to reflect on their
emotions.
The next theme is unique in the sense that one of my students gave it its name: normal
family. Brock shared with the class one day that he had gotten angry at his sister before. He must
have felt like people were judging him because he then followed with, “We just got in a fight.
We have a normal family. We have a mom, dad, brother, and sister” (meaning he was the
brother). He then birthed the category where students shared that their anger, which is usually
very well hidden in the classroom, comes out while spending time with their siblings. Students
who I would have never guessed to be violent shared stories about yelling and hitting their
siblings when things go wrong at home. Children are only expected to have so much self-control
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because they are learning and growing as people, but there was a major disconnect between what
they said they should do when they got angry and what they did behind closed doors. The
students continued to answer the first research questions as they were led into conversations
about why they used the mood board as they did.
School Feelings
It was the end of the day in the middle of February, which is a grueling time for all
teachers, when I heard a disturbing comment from one of my children. We were finishing up our
work from the day, looking at a fun activity about locating things using a map. The students were
talking and coloring on their maps while following along with me on the board. Suddenly, the
energy shifted. Wyatt stopped working and said, “I’m tired of working!” He then got in trouble
with Mrs. Price for interrupting and being rude. Wyatt continued to cry, without ceasing, for the
last 40 minutes of the day.
The feelings in this category mainly discussed different behaviors and situations that
occurred day-to-day, like the one mentioned above with Wyatt. There were many instances
where a student would make a small mistake in their work, cry, and decide that they were not
comfortable talking about why they were upset until later in the day. Wyatt, Matthew, and Brock
were serious offenders in the theme of negative feelings at school. Certain art projects, math
lessons, and just overall “hard works,” as stated by Honey, made the students feel sad and angry
often. Whenever they had to go back and fix something on their work, it often upset them to the
point of tears. When asked what they were feeling down about, the boys would say that they did
not know or were just “tired.” I would tell them that they were not the only ones who had to
correct their work or try something again, and they usually seemed to feel better even though
they only expressed being tired.
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Some major themes about behavior came to the surface during conversations about
punishment in school. Whenever the children “moved their color” or received a consequence, we
talked to them about what they did wrong and why they got a consequence for that action. Many
students, though, shared that they do not get punished at home often and only act how they do in
school for fear of getting in trouble. They also shared that they think crying is a bad thing to do
because they get in trouble for doing so in school. We later came to the conclusion that it is
usually the action that led to crying that got them in trouble, not necessarily the crying itself.
Along with this, my students were very externally motivated and ended up tying their behavior
with receiving privileges to our treasure box, which happened once a week. Matthew made this
very clear when we had a conversation about him picking up his classmates in the middle of
class. We talked about how this was not a safe choice because he could drop them, and one of
our rules was about keeping our hands to ourselves. Because he had repeatedly not followed this
rule, he had to move his color. He responded with, “But I lost treasure box!” He did not care that
his actions were unsafe to others or that he broke the rules; he was just upset about losing a prize
at the end of the week.
Let Them Eat Candy?
A few times a week, I guided my students into conversations about how we could
possibly cope with certain feelings. I would ask them how they would help a friend who was
feeling sad, angry, etc., or how they would deal with those emotions themselves. Their
suggestions were never wrong but were either very vague or not very practical. Lily and Mia
suggested things like “try to cheer them up” or just “make them happy again.” Wyatt then
recommended to just “give them candy.” While that would possibly make someone feel better, it
was not a solution I wanted them to put in their tool belts when a situation arose that they
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seriously needed to calm themselves down. As the study progressed, the students were able to
describe ways in which they calmed themselves down in school. Many of them said that they
like to “take deep breaths” or leave and come back after taking some time to themselves. Some
of them even threw in ideas from the centers, like going to play with sand or writing down their
feelings on a sheet of paper.
During the interviews, the students were asked how they felt about having big feelings,
such as sadness, anger, nervousness, etc. Mia and Ria, the only two girls interviewed, thought
that big feelings were not bad unless you harmed someone else. All the students agreed that
being angry and hitting someone was never something they should do in school, but they might
have to resort to that solution at home with their siblings. The boys, on the other hand, believed
that regardless of harming someone else, being sad and angry was not okay to experience. When
asked why they felt that was the case, they said they did not know why, just that it was not okay.
Paxton even followed up his response by saying that he thought crying was an annoying thing to
do, which was why he tried to avoid it.
Sometimes… Well, Kind Of
The student interviews were interesting in that the answers were never consistent with
what they shared about themselves at any other point in the study. During their brief 10-minute
interviews, they used the words “sometimes” and “kind of” almost 200 times. Feelings are
inconsistent for children as much as they are for adults, so it makes sense why they could never
give clear answers as to how they usually feel their feelings because not many of them shared the
same answers between their surveys and interviews. The surveys showed interesting results
about what they thought they could and could not do when experiencing anger or sadness. In
Table 1, the results of each question are shown for all eleven students. Most students believed
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that they knew what to do to make themselves feel better when feeling down, according to
question three on the survey (see Appendix A), but the interviews and conversations on the
carpet showed otherwise. Many of the students also said they tried to ignore their feelings, as
seen with half of the students on question two of the survey, which they never mentioned having
done when asked about this during one-on-one conversations. The majority rule was also that
crying and feeling sad are not bad things to do, but their opinions seemed to drastically change
by the end of the study. During the interviews, the boys said they thought these were unpleasant
things to engage in even though both classroom teachers reminded the students consistently that
it was okay to be sad and cry; we just needed to work on ways not to let these feelings overcome
us completely.
Table 1
Feelings Survey Results
Note. This table exhibits the results of the survey asking the students how they felt they could
control or gauge their own emotions.
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The interview with Mrs. Price, the T-1 classroom teacher, was interesting in that she
expressed that she was in tune with SEL. She first shared that she would not usually have
stopped her students to ask how they were feeling but did gauge their mental health through
more informal conversations during the day. Later, Mrs. Price stated that she was just getting
into SEL with me through the study. She later expressed her thoughts that at least half of the
students did not understand the concept of talking about our feelings, so she did not think there
was a very big impact on the students. She also thought that while some students, like Mia and
Ria, benefitted from getting time to talk about their feelings, others used it as simple “share
time.” Wyatt and Paxton were known for moving their token to sad or confused just to get a
chance to have something to say, but Mrs. Price never thought they were ever sad, but “maybe
just disappointed.” She also believed that the class was split between students who just needed
the year to mature and students who genuinely needed explicit instruction on their SEL skills,
referring to students like Mia and Ria. She stated that these conversations were useful, though,
because we all still needed to “work through” some barriers keeping them from being totally
successful in their next year of schooling. She did not have a lot of expertise in SEL, but she still
shared advice about how to improve the study. Mrs. Price believed that they would have
benefitted from showing their emotion once in the morning and once during the afternoon for a
better gauge of how they were feeling.
SEL Centers
As mentioned earlier, the centers were a major part of the study because they reflected
the theme talked about on the carpet each week. The first week was SEL Jenga. It was played
like a traditional game of Jenga, but the pieces had emoji stickers with different faces on them.
The children were to tell their partner about a time they felt like that emoji on the block. The next
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week, sand and water tables were set up to promote calmness. The students were told when they
went to that center to remind themselves of things that kept them calm when they seemed to feel
overwhelmed. The third center was a combination of two working together: emotion blocks and
a board game. There were different cards and sets of blocks the students had to use to build the
feeling on the card they pulled. The board game was a two-person game requiring each player to
talk to get their partner through a maze without looking at the other side. This was done to work
on identifying different emotions and building social skills by focusing on intentionality with
their words. The last center was called Scribble Art, which can be seen in Figure 2. A common
way to get anger out is to write, but some of the T-1 students were not fond of writing, so it was
modified to drawing. The purpose of this center is to help the students “scribble out” their anger
in a non-violent and peaceful manner. Four to five crayons were tied together with rubber bands,
and lots of paper was supplied for them to scribble away if they wanted to go the drawing route.
The consensus of the centers was that they were fun and nothing else. The students shared that
they were excited to go to these centers each day because it made them happy and
“comfortable.”
Figure 2
Scribble Art Center
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Note. This figure shows examples of the different pieces the students created at the Scribble Art
Center.
Reflection About Behavior
The last question to be answered addresses the third research question: In what ways are
the students able to reflect on their misbehaviors after receiving SEL instruction? The answer to
this is, unfortunately, still unknown. There were a handful of times when students got in trouble
for breaking the classroom rules, but they never were in a good enough state to talk much at all. I
was able to talk through those feelings enough for them to identify how they were feeling or
what they needed to do to calm down, as mentioned in many situations above, but those were all
teacher-led discussions, except for one specific interaction.
On a particularly calm afternoon, I sent my students to the bathroom for a little break
before we finished for the day. I heard some commotion from the doorway and peeked around
the corner to see another teacher talking to two of my children in the hallway. Jackson and
Matthew were jumping and hanging on the bathroom doors, so I told them we needed to have a
talk and that they would move their colors when they finished in the bathroom. Jackson was
rushing to tell me, “I think I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I did something that I think is wrong, and
I made a mistake.” He repeatedly shared this over and over, along with what he would do
differently in the future, so we came to the conclusion that he truly was sorry and that it would
not happen again. Because he expressed himself so dearly, he did not get in trouble, and he never
did play in the bathroom again.
Implications for Teachers
This study explored what would happen when students are given explicit SEL through
the use of a mood board and centers meant to enrich their comprehension of feelings and how to
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24
deal with them. I would like to say that the results were very conclusive, and my students walked
away with a new and stronger understanding of themselves, but that simply would not be true. If
I were to do this study again or hand off my notes to another educator wanting to pursue this
study, there are many things I would recommend or do differently.
My first noticing here was about behavior. It was great to have classroom incentives for
our students to strive towards, but not to the point where they put too much value in receiving
prizes or candy. My students held their emotions about school so highly in getting treasure box
that many of them lost sight of why we followed the rules. They were so upset and distraught
about getting a mark in their folder that the rest of the week did not really matter since they
already lost that privilege. When conversations about behavior did occur, we should have
explicitly stated why we followed the rules. This also should have been made clear at the
beginning of the year when the rules were made, but the students should not have held their own
values or feelings in the chance of winning a small prize.
Another noticing I had was about feeling strong negative feelings. There were tens of
more conversations about negative things in their lives than positive ones. Although we may feel
the negative things more, it was so easy for them to focus on the negative than the positive. A lot
of the more bleak or disappointing conversations also occurred at home with their siblings. Their
negative feelings felt at home were more descriptive and happened more than they did at school.
In another related study, I would try to give my students more strategies for dealing with
emotional situations at home and just turning upsetting problems into more positive situations.
This would be done using various books and videos where the students feel like they can relate
to the characters and talk about how they are feeling. Seeing other children be able to express
themselves might encourage them to employ the same strategies or use the same words when
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encountering difficult situations. Although these situations are going to happen all throughout
their childhood and adult life, dealing with those situations is what matters the most. Educators
teach their students to be problem solvers, but children are not born with the skill to find better
solutions; they need to be taught how to overcome and self-regulate over time.
Another interesting conclusion largely addressed parents’ beliefs about feelings
depending on their children's gender. Although there were only four girls in the class, they
seemed more comfortable with the whole process of sharing and listening to others than the boys
were. Although it is believed that women are more in tune with their emotions and sensitive to
others, the students in T-1 were six years old; they were socialized into believing that females
were more or less capable of doing things, like talking about their feelings, than males. The boys
and girls alike knew that it was not okay to hit or yell at other people but thought nothing about
the root of the action itself. The boys in T-1 seemed to have grown up believing certain feelings
are bad because of what they can lead to, like being violent. Instead of being taught to work
through their emotions, they just assumed that the emotion itself was not a good thing or that
boys did not do those kinds of things. Anger is a powerful emotion that can grow and fester in
those who try to ignore their emotions. Children who grow up believing that anger, sadness,
nervousness, etc., are emotions that should be off limits lack certain skills needed for their future
professional and personal careers. To combat these stereotypes, I would explicitly tell my
students that these are important skills for all people, regardless of gender. I would also try to
replace some of the morning talks with group time, making sure that boys and girls are able to
share and learn from each other at that moment.
In reality, this study should have been much longer to see the most growth from each of
the students. The goal is not to create indestructible children who never face hardships in their
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26
lives again but for them to develop more skills in identifying and controlling their emotions
when they can. Humans are meant to be social creatures, so growing up surrounded by
community is necessary, but we also want our students to become independent so that they are
ready for more challenging things in their lives. I learned that SEL takes patience, consistency, as
well as flexibility on the teachers’ part. These children are learning to live alongside others who
are not their family members. There is a lot of growing to be done in younger classrooms, hence
the need for patience in getting children to do something outside their comfort zones.
This study did not necessarily end how I was expecting, but there were many situations
that did leave me smiling and proud. There are many memories that make me sad that my time
with these students has come to an end, but I want to leave future researchers with a conversation
between two students that makes me proud of the work that was done:
Matthew comforted Paxton, patting his back. He calmly told
him, “It’s okay. Take a deep breath. Sometimes that helps.”
