Schools spend hours of professional learning time on pedagogy, the theory and practice of teaching. Typically, this time is spent on best practices for teaching academic standards. However, as adults we can see that success in the world around us is grounded in skills like time management, work habits, help-seeking behaviors, or metacognitive strategies. How can we support the learning of noncognitive skills in students through the PLC framework used widely in education? Recently, I have been working with a team in my district to dig deeper into noncognitive factors and how we support students in social emotional learning. I am extremely proud of this work.
Noncogntive Skills: sets of behaviors, skills, attitudes, and strategies that are crucial to academic performance in their classes, but that may not be reflected in their scores on cognitive tests.
~ University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research
Professional Learning Communities
Professional learning communities are groups of educators that work together to not only to ensure good teaching is taking place but that students are learning. The PLC is founded in four questions:
- What do we want students to learn?
- How will we know they are learning?
- How will we respond when they don't learn?
- How will we respond if they already know it?
What noncognitive skills are embedded in this lesson or unit?
The first core question of the PLC is "what do we want students to learn?" Often we see noncognitive skills as separate from core academic learning. However, all learning requires noncognitive skills. Instead of thinking of social emotional learning as separate, let's ask ourselves which noncognitive skills are embedded in a unit or lesson. For instance, if a class is working on creating math video tutorials, which skills will they need to be successful? The ASCA mindsets and behaviors are a great place to look for skills necessary to successfully complete this work.
How will we know students are learning?
Right now, behavior, specifically office discipline referrals are the most frequent indicator that students are not learning the noncognitive skills needed to be successful. However, by the time an office referral happens, the time for learning has passed. Looking at the ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors, we see observable behaviors that could be assessed. In the PLC, we can look at the noncognitve skills we planned for students to use and learn and then determine if they effectively learned this skill. In our math tutorial example, we would make a plan to see that students were able to:
- Demonstrate creativity,
- Apply media and technology skills,
- Demonstrate ability to manage transitions and ability to adapt to changing situations,
- Use effective oral and written communication skills and listening skills,
- Use effective collaboration and cooperation skills,
- Use leadership and teamwork skills to work effectively in diverse teams.
How will we respond if they don't learn?
Here is the key, the moment of change for all the work that school counselors do. Right now, when students lack noncognitve skills we typically wait for them to fail and then proceed to an intervention to "fix them." What if, instead, we were talking about students and their social emotional learning along the way, using the skills that we had defined as embedded in the academic lessons being taught. If students needed additional support in learning these skills, the intervention could be put in place before the lack of noncognitive skills caused them to be sent to the office, lack friends, or fail a grade.
How will we respond if they already know it?
Hint- the answer isn't to make them take care of the other kids. Let's face it, typically our students with robust noncognitive skills are tasked with helping others around them. While this works in small doses, it can be frustrating for both students. What if students who had developed noncogntive skills were given more choices and independence in their learning. If they were able to self manage, were self aware with social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making then the classroom is open to them to explore in depth and create their own learning. Thinking back to the video tutorial example, this might mean that students with robust noncognitive skills were able to create tutorials independently or to learn a video editing software not originally introduced to the entire class. It's both a reward (increased freedom) and a chance to expand their skillset.
Role of the School Counselor
School counselors aren't in the classroom daily to implement many of these ideas but we play a large role in collaborating and consulting with teachers, interventionists, and administration. One of the simple strategies that I have used is to align my lessons with noncognitive skills that support the academic content currently happening in the classroom. For isntance, I taught a lesson on cooperation while my first grade classes were learning about job sharing. If I were to do it again, I would take it one step further and have the first graders create a cooperation rubric for job sharing in the classroom. If you're interested in learning more, ASCA has a great page of resources on Using Noncognitive Skills to Improve Student Success. How do you support noncognitive skill development in your school?
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