Addressing Students’ Emotions: The Puente Alto High School Socio-Emotional Education Project

“To educate the mind without educating the heart is no education at all,” Aristotle once said, and it is also the premise of what is now called emotional education, a type of teaching in which questions abound such as: could one claim that a boy or girl learn something new when experiencing violence or violence in the home Do you live in a complex family situation? How could he assume he could pay attention in class when hunger prevented him from thinking? Or do we believe that we are teaching beings isolated from all influence?

Earlier this year, six high schools in the Puente Alto district were the scene of a program to integrate this type of education into their classrooms. It is CAP Foundation E-Motiva , which aims to strengthen the socio-emotional skills of students in grades 7 to 4. “We believe that educational communities can be spaces of interaction, belonging and support, which promote the integral development and well-being of their students”, says Magdalena Sánchez, director of the program.

Especially after the pandemic, where the number of violence and harassment in schools is alarming : an increase of nearly 30% in complaints. According to data published by the INDH, at the Superintendence of Education -in the first six months of 2022-, 2,968 complaints recorded within schools, 6% more than the same period in 2019.

The program is designed to be implemented over a three-year period and is based on cfour essential components: provide tools that allow direction for a culture of socio-emotional learning; support the planning and pedagogical management of teachers, so that they can carry out the good work of social and emotional skills with your students; transfer to educational agents the relevant tools for the development of their own skills socio-emotional; and train drivers of change, i.e. train a group of student volunteers driving officers of these positive changes.

One of them is Marlon Salazar, a 3rd B student at Puente Alto high school. He says that this initiative allowed them Learn to work together, socializing with people they didn’t know and strengthening and acquiring certain traits they didn’t have. “It’s a very good thing because The school has improved a lot. since his arrival. There is also more chemistry with the teachers,” he says.

Paula Sanhueza is one of his teachers. Do you agree with Marlon? in the results during these months of implementation . “It’s that we work with tools that allow children to function in the environment and in society in general; What do not act individually but that they are aware that there is an environment where there are others and that the way I live with them is important,” he says.

“Today, the socio-emotional should be part of every lesson , let’s not only talk about it at the time of orientation, but also in mathematics, languages, sciences. Starting from the principle that if the child is sad, what is the point of teaching him content if he will not acquire it? In this state they they won’t make ties, we are not going to generate meaningful learning. This is why the socio-emotional aspect is necessary, but I believe that today, in the Chilean reality, it is left to the discretion of each teacher”, he adds.

A series of actions are carried out, include workshops, training and even a deck of cards that allow them to open the conversation about emotions. But beyond the structural, the program is designed in such a way that all actors are protagonists and thus succeed in “changing the switch”; that they are attentive at all times to the emotional needs of the pupils, to what is happening inside the class and the school. “Understand, understand and observe many things,” they say.

All this with the aim that students feel welcomed and accepted at all times . Something that is essential for them. “It’s good to know that there is people concerned about what is happening to us. And it’s also less difficult to learn. When you don’t really feel like studying, it’s good to be motivated by comments or a hug. It helps to get out of trouble. They make you want to do things,” says Johan Muñoz, a 4th year student at San Gerónimo High School.

His teacher, Juan Pablo Bustamante, recognizes that even for them as teachers, it it was a learning experience. “Personally, it was difficult for me because I’m a little closed, it’s difficult for me to talk about emotions. Then for everyone has been a process ; If we want to talk about emotions with children, we have to start with ourselves. It was a different learning from what we usually did. understand that what i feel has an impact in the school community, in the course and how that also relates to learning, that’s a turn that we didn’t give him. Talking about how we feel here was not very common,” he said.

“It reaffirms some of the things you did as a teacher, we become more aware . I used to ask my students how they were doing, but I didn’t have a great awareness of what this question can mean something very important to them; knowing that someone cares about what’s happening to them,” he adds.

The same thing Paula saw. “Changes were also seen among the students because when there is a conflict, we can go where everyone is involved and offer them mediation or a conversation. I can bet you that without socio-emotional tools this cannot be achieved, because they don’t know what to do ; If they don’t have socio-emotional tools, they seek to defend themselves, not resolve. Now they see there are other ways,” he says.

Here is how Marlon describes it: “Having teachers who care about our emotions and not just our learning is very good, it feels like home. A lot of us have problems at home and we come to school and they give us a lot of paper to write on and then we don’t feel like writing. But if they see you discouraged and ask what is going on, they touch your heart. It happens to me that sometimes I arrive and I don’t want to see anyone and if it’s a teacher he asks me if I need anything, I feel supported, it’s like having a dad at school “.