Integrating SEL Into Online Learning for Lower Elementary Learners in an International School Context: Stories From the Online Classroom

Introduction

In the early days of the year 2020, the entire world was shaken by the introduction of the COVID-19 pandemic. This illness swept the globe and, as millions were suffering and dying from the very contagious disease, governments and systems were forced to respond with measures that restricted the movement and interaction of their citizens. Many countries went into lockdown and enforced mandatory quarantines, either for those infected or in close contact with the disease, or sometimes for entire communities. A massive effect from these lockdowns was that schools began to close all over the globe.

This global shutdown of course had reverberating consequences not only for the health sector, but the way society operates in general. With so much uncertainty and high levels of people in lockdown, workplaces and schools began moving toward using online platforms to conduct their business. Before the pandemic, technology use and e-learning (taking courses completely online) was already on the rise globally. In the United States in 2018, there were about 16.6% of college students enrolled in fully distance education courses (US Department of Education, 2019). In elementary and secondary schools, however, only 0.6% of students were attending school fully virtually in the 2018-2019 school year (US Department of Education, n.d.). As soon as the pandemic arrived, 1.5 billion students from pre-primary to tertiary education were affected by school closures (UNESCO, 2020). All of these students had to either attend school through some form of e-learning, or not attend at all.

During the beginning and height of the pandemic, I was an early elementary school teacher at a private, English-medium international school in Indonesia. Indonesia reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 2, 2020 and beginning the following week, schools were closed by government mandate and remained completely closed until October of 2021 (Widikasih et al., 2021). The remainder of the 2019/2020 school year was completed in a mostly asynchronous format, with teachers sending videos to children and having them respond digitally. In 2020/2021, students and teachers at the international school conducted their learning in an online synchronous format, using the Zoom platform to meet in the online classroom for the length of the school day.

The quick pivot to this new modality caused stress around the world and my school was no exception. Teachers and students alike had to deal with multiple barriers to online learning, beginning with an unfamiliarity with new technologies and often intermittent WiFi throughout the city. At the beginning of the 2020/2021 school year, many teachers (including myself) were filled with fear and anxiety surrounding how they would be able to provide a program that addressed the needs of the whole child in a format that seemed foreign and sterile, especially in the midst of a global, ongoing trauma.

In many typical physical classrooms, social-emotional learning frameworks guide the holistic development of children. This personal narrative intends to shine a light on some of the ways that social-emotional learning (SEL) was integrated into the online synchronous classroom, with stories from my own experience as a second-grade teacher and those from other early elementary colleagues within the school. It will discuss some of the major concerns teachers had about SEL in an online format, particularly the question of how to build a classroom community in a format and external reality where many may feel very isolated. Consideration will also be placed on the multicultural and multilingual demographic that makes up this particular context. It addresses the need for unstructured time and social play as integral to the development of young children, and provides some examples of how these needs were creatively met when children were not in the same room together. There will be a discussion of some of the possibilities that arose out of this format for greater connection and collaboration between home and school. Lastly, the importance of ensuring educator well-being will be highlighted. The hope is that these stories may serve as a roadmap for others in the future who find themselves, either intentionally or as a surprise, supporting young children in synchronous online learning environments.