What if a whole school community grows SEL?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

What’s going on within you this spring day? Anything new growing in your garden? Any new dreams, hopes, desires springing up for you this season?

I love this season. It surprises me every year how inspired and hopeful I feel to look around and see new growth and life bursting forth everywhere. Also, this feels super duper vulnerable for me to write. I have spent so much of life in my head, buried in work, paying no attention to the natural world around me. I’m serious. I’m smart. I can’t be bothered with trivial matters such as the seasons. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I’m trying to shift my awareness from what I’m doing to who I am being. Part of that has involved tuning in more to where I am, like literally, physically. I used to distract myself with excessive busyness to avoid landing in the present moment and facing reality. Now I crave being in the present moment. Taking a deep breath, calming my nervous system, and landing here, feels wonderful. When I can stop rushing, hustling, barrelling forward, and be where I am right now, I’m much happier, much healthier.

I show up much better for myself and those who depend on me when I am in this grounded, present state. I had no idea the effect my dysregulated nervous system had on me, those around me, and my life. I remember early on in therapy (the first place with enough space for me to tell the truth about what was happening within me) my therapist said, “You’ve built this perfect life, and you can’t enjoy it.” It was so true. I was so hypervigilant that no matter how much I achieved or got right, I could never relax and enjoy all I had worked so hard to build.

But I can now. I can regulate my nervous system now. I can land here and enjoy myself, those around me, my life. It’s made all the difference.

I think what was confusing for me at the start of my emotional work was I looked good on paper. I was in a lot of ways a healthy, functional adult. Everything in my life looked good and was good. There were some important boundaries I needed to set. But even once I did that, I still couldn’t convince my nervous system that it was safe to calm down–that it didn’t have to be on high alert all the time. My body was still sure that I was just one small misstep from everything falling apart.

I was gripping the steering wheel of my life so tightly that my knuckles turned white and my shoulders ached with tension.

I’m learning now to grip the steering wheel firmly (but not in a death grip) with one hand and let the other hand relax, open palm, ready to receive all the goodness that is here too. I can be responsible and safe without being hypervigilant. I can be conscientious while also being playful and relaxed.

I just needed some space to grow, some space to face my weeds, my restrictions, clear them out and start nourishing the soil to grow what I want to grow, be who I want to be.

I am rereading the end of The EQ Intervention because I get to do a final book club session with an awesome school next week. I feel bittersweet about it because this school is doing such powerful work, and I’m going to miss getting to work with them.

The book ends on a garden metaphor about the school environment. Like in gardening, you don’t feed the plants, you feed the soil. If students are the plants, the SEL skills of the adults in the school feed the soil:

“What I’m talking about is a district full of Life Givers...The Life Giver School District is not life giving because there are no acts of aggression or because there are no acts of noncompliance, or because there is no illogical standardized testing. It is life giving because the adults in the district have committed to living emotionally intelligent lives, thereby making it a safe place of learning with the richest of soils.”

— The EQ Intervention

A life giving school isn’t perfect. It’s still human so it’s inherently messy. However, it’s safe for kids to grow because they’re allowed to be themselves, to feel their true feelings. They have had the privilege of learning with life giving teachers who have prepared the soil for them.

What is the power of a school that EQuips its teachers? What could an environment like this provide for its students? How could schools like that shift our world?