Social Emotional Learning: Relationship Skills
Social-Emotional Learning may just seem like the latest educational buzz phrase, but it's an essential component of any curriculum. Teachers tasked with incorporating more SEL into their day often feel frustrated by the lack of time and support. This is the fifth in a comprehensive blog series with practical ideas on how to easily build your students' skills without finding an extra hour in your school day.
Author, educator, and whole-life coach Nicole D. Collier continues things off this week by teaching us more about relationship skills, what this means to our students, and how we can nurture this skill.
What
Relationship skills are the abilities that allow one to establish and maintain healthy, supportive relationships. People with strong relationship skills can connect with diverse individuals and groups in a variety of settings. They are better able to resist peer pressure, stand up for themselves and others, and communicate with respect.
So What
Human beings are wired for connection, and interdependence is a fact of life. This means that without other people, we will find it difficult, if not impossible to experience fulfilment or success. Despite this, forging and maintaining meaningful connections doesn’t happen naturally. It requires effort.
Even people who prefer a measure of solitude have to interact with other humans, whether at home, at work or in the community. From brief interactions in the public sphere, to longer term professional collaborations, or lifelong friendships, we must be able to communicate with people of all kinds in a variety of circumstances.
Mistakes happen and conflicts arise. People who have developed their relationship skills can better prevent or resolve misunderstandings and make amends when needed. Most important, they can create more positive, productive and fulfilling interactions for all.
Now What
Sample Themes or Topics about Relationship Skills
| Advocacy & Activism Identity | Communication Conflict Resolution | Diversity Teamwork |
The Wheel of Choice
Create and post a Wheel of Choice as a visual reminder that students have agency and options. Divide a circle into six or eight slices. Work with students to brainstorm choices they can make when confronted with conflicts. Examples might include: Walk away, ask for help, talk it out, apologize, or offer a compromise. Decorate the wheel with the various options and post it prominently. You can reinforce the choices by referring to the Wheel when you “catch” students or fictional characters using one of the strategies.
Anatomy of an Apology
Discuss the elements of a thoughtful apology: 1) acknowledge what happened and the harm you caused (be specific), 2) apologize, and 3) state how you will make amends or note what you’ll do differently next time. You might work with the class to draft an apology on behalf of a character who has hurt someone in a shared reading. Students may also think of someone they’d like to apologize to and draft their own apology independently.
Quick Start Questions (Choose one):
• What does getting along with others mean to you?
• Have you ever stood up for a friend in need? What did you do?
• Tell about a time you got into an argument with a loved one. How did you resolve it?
• What is your communication super power? What would you like to improve about your communication?
Books to Nurture Relationship Skills
Early Readers
When Stick rescues Stone from a prickly situation with Pinecone, a friendship is born. But when Stick gets stuck, can Stone return the favor?
With simple rhyming text, subtle messages of kindness and compassion, and Tom Lichtenheld’s signature charm, this delightful story about making and helping friends will enchant readers young and old because it’s never too early—or too late—to stick up for your friends.
Eddy is a lonely goldfish stuck inside his fishbowl. He would love to have a friend to swim and play and blow bubbles with. Soon, on the other side of the glass, he spies not one but two new friends. After days of playing games together, Eddy leaps out of his bowl to be closer to them. And that’s when he realizes that his two friends are really the inquisitive eyes of A CAT! Oh, no! Luckily for Eddy, friendship can be found in unexpected places.
Bunny wants to build a cardboard city.
Bunny stacks one cardboard box on top of another and another.
Bunny doesn't want any help. Bunny doesn't need any help, either.
But what's a cardboard city without friends?
Written and illustrated with the same delightful simplicity that made Not a Box such a hit, the playtime possibilities of a stack of boxes and friendship will inspire and excite any child who has ever journeyed into the world of make-believe.
Beaver is good at making just about everything...but not friends. One winter day, Beaver sees some snowflakes in the sky and gets a great idea: he’ll make a friend. Yes! A snowman will be a great friend!
Raccoon passes by as Beaver sets to work and offers a helping hand. The two work side by side to give their snowman everything a friend needs.
But when the snowman proves to be a little cold, Beaver discovers that he may have unknowingly “made” another buddy instead.
Middle Grade
Isaiah "Ice" Abernathy has always worshiped his older brother, Seth. And as Seth starts his senior year, Ice is eager to spend as much time with his brother as he can, making memories before Seth goes to college. But when Seth announces he’s leaving much earlier than expected, and then he misses an important event, it causes a major fight.
Filled with regret, Ice plans to apologize to Seth later the next day, but later never comes, as he finds out Seth was in an accident—one that leaves him in the hospital. And the doctors say he may never recover.
Racked by fear and guilt, Ice chooses to step up, defy the experts, and help Seth recover in a way only he can—by trusting in their bond and the undying love between two brothers.
Maya is the pragmatic twin, but her secret anxiety threatens to overwhelm her.
Chaya is the outgoing twin. When she sees her beloved sister suffering, she wants to tell their parents—which makes Maya feel completely betrayed. With Maya shutting her out, Chaya makes a dramatic change to give her twin the space she seems to need. But that’s the last thing Maya wants, and the girls just drift further apart.
Would you rather blend in or stand out? Claire and Michelle used to be best friends, but now the two sisters couldn’t be more different. Michelle will do anything to fit in, even if it means denying her Taiwanese culture, whereas Claire is proud of who she is. So much so that she decides to become a junior counselor at a Taiwanese American summer camp.
Sensing a rift between the two, their parents decide to send them both off to camp, much to Michelle’s dismay. As summer continues, both sisters learn more about their culture and each other. But Michelle must eventually decide to either embrace her culture and family or assimilate into the popular group at school. Which will she choose?
Krya has always felt like she’s a bit too much. Too tall. Too loud. Too earnest. But she’s okay with that, because she’s got her mom. Ever since Mom got sober about five years ago, she and Kyra have always been there for each other—something Kyra is thankful for every week when she attends her group meetings with other kids of alcoholics. When Mom is managing her cleaning business and Kyra is taking care of things at home, maybe, she thinks, she’s not too much. Maybe, she’s just enough.
With sensitivity and candor, acclaimed author Sara Zarr tells a heartfelt, personal story about finding hope in even the most difficult places, and love in even the most complicated relationships.
Teen
Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But nothing is normal in East Oakland. Her father left her family. She’s at risk of not graduating. And Leti, her super-Catholic, nerdy-ass best friend, is pregnant—by the boyfriend she hasn’t told her parents about, because he’s Black, and her parents are racist.
From the award–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family.
Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.
When Jack's P.E. coach pairs him up with Jay Perkins for the cross-country team, neither of them is happy about it. Jack is grieving the loss of Joseph, his foster brother, and adjusting to his role as big brother to Jupiter, Joseph’s orphaned daughter. But then Jack realizes that Jay is grieving too—the loss of his cousin Maddie, Jupiter’s mom.
Jack’s past and present smash together, threatening to dissolve both his newfound confidence and his friendships.
This poignant, powerful companion to Orbiting Jupiter is Gary D. Schmidt at his best.
Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met.
Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak.
About the Author
Nicole D. Collier is a former elementary teacher turned whole-life coach and author who writes about learning to be true to yourself. She is the author of Just Right Jillian and The Many Fortunes of Maya.