Social Skills

When I first started teaching social skills and conflict resolution, I heard a lot of complaints from the class. “Why do I have to take this class?”. “This is not even a class.” “I don’t need this class”. “This is just stupid” or “I am going to sleep.”

The reason why I generally encounter whining, if not outright defiance from every new batch of students, is because nobody likes to sit in a class and talk about emotions, the anger issues they have, or about real friendship vs fair-weather, or have Oprah for your teacher.

It is even harder for teachers who dare to take up the challenge to implement SEL (Social and emotional learning) in a school setting.
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There is certainly no one size fits all. However, there are a few things, that can be done to get started.

1. Break the ice with a game. Get students to get to know each other first. Interview their classmates. 
2. Introduce the basic topic, such as how to greet someone, introduce yourself, then move on to the art of conversation and listening. These are basic social skills. 
3. Ask for input from your students. What subjects do they want to discuss or learn more about.? I got everything from nuclear war, to fishing, to anime, to stamps. 
4. Only move to the next phase of advanced social skills, once you know that the class understands the basics. Ask them to write a script, draw a picture or role-play to teach them a concept. 
5. It takes a while to build trust and for your students to know that you genuinely want to help them.