Kelli Martin, Spanish Teacher, Licking Heights

With students showing alarming rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health concerns, courses that focus on communication skills are increasingly important.  Isolation is a well-known contributor to the blues and classroom language practice requests – no, requires – collaboration with others.   In fact, state standards for both intercultural and interpersonal communication begin with the weighty word “interact.”  The students who enter our classrooms are sometimes still slowly emerging from their pandemic cocoons.  Others are battling with mental health issues or healing from trauma and have difficulties with social interactions.  Whatever the reason, many students need to be coached and coaxed through uncomfortable or unfamiliar territory.  In the current era of education, the social skills we endeavor to sharpen are of utmost importance.

As we conduct classes, our students are acquiring language and life skills side by side.  Our lower language levels are doing much more than memorizing phrases; they are also learning how to voice their opinions and make friends with people who are different from them.  And our upper level students are doing much more than spouting impressive vocabulary in a debate; they are learning how to manage conflict and respectfully disagree with diverse opinions.  Especially as we enter another election year, we cannot underestimate the value of those skills and how they can benefit our students outside our classroom walls.

In 2019, Ohio adopted Social and Emotional Learning Standards that put emphasis on five competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, Responsible Decision-making.  These skills, a mirror of CASEL’s Social and Emotional Learning, are being built in language classrooms around the state as a byproduct of our common practices as language instructors.  Consider the following table that highlights a few specific examples that could be observed in any language classroom.