Pulse of PBL: Cultivating Equity Through Social Emotional Learning

by Mike Kaechele, Matinga Ragatz

In a post-Covid landscape, teachers need tools to integrate Social and Emotional Learning into the daily fabric of their classrooms without losing time for academic content. If you don't plan to teach SEL skills upfront, you will lose academic time as students struggle throughout the year. Explicitly teaching Transformative SEL competencies is an unparalleled opportunity to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning environment for ALL learners. PBL generates organic situations to intentionally foster the SEL competencies daily. The Pulse of PBL offers tried and true strategies on how each of the five SEL competencies can be seamlessly taught, practiced, and assessed inside the PBL framework. Each chapter of The Pulse of PBL will demonstrate, competency by competency, how SEL can be naturally embedded into PBL. Specific examples, protocols, and stories from both elementary and secondary classrooms around the U.S. illustrate how PBL and SEL are a powerful combination. Transformative SEL changes the way students see themselves as learners, becoming active participants in their communities and the world!

How do I leverage student social and cultural identities to develop their Self-Awareness?
How do I build students' ability to Self-Manage their time, task, and teams?
How do I create student experiences that heighten empathy to sharpen their Social Awareness?
How do I strengthen students' capacity for collaboration and communication to forge productive Relationship Skills?
How do I present authentic opportunities for Responsible Decision-Making in projects to affect their communities and their lives?
How do I assess the SEL competencies to ensure ALL students apply their skills in meaningful learning?

358 pages, Paperback

Published June 5, 2022

Reviews

[Tammy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So it recommended to read this book not because it was something that would interest me because of my desire to teach it, but it would interest me because of my desire to learn why our schools are failing our kids. It seems this book is a great product to demonstrate why social justice and education do not mix. This idea of project based learning is more interested in creating activists than teaching academic subjects that will help students actually learn the skills and knowledge to be successful in functioning in the day-to-day life. I won’t use the word critical thinkers because we know that critical has been taken over by the social justice activist and knowingly being implemented in our school. I truly believe so many teachers think that this jargon actually makes sense because they use flowery words like improved SEL skills and success in the community that help bring real problem-solving opportunities for student students in school.

I’m so over how indoctrinated our kids are on this topic alone. Transformative SEL seeks to create activists coming out of schools, ready to dismantle all systems and traditional ways of doing things because it’s oppressive and does not create equity for everyone. I just wish we could actually have conversation conversations about this rather than everyone shutting us down because we’re not experts or we don’t know what we’re talking about if we don’t have a paid position through the public school system. Schools were created to academically prepare our students for the future. We don’t need social justice labs creating more chaos in our world than they’ve already done. Please can we be over this? Please can we restore the academic process to just that, academics? Sigh.

[Bree Valvano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate the ideas in the book. They make sense and are things you can try in your classroom.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the publishing isn’t great (typos weird spacing) the book is a great look at pbl and sel

[Jessica Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great ideas here. I've bookmarked a lot of group work protocols to teach more explicitly in the future!