Proposal: Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. Social and emotional skills learned in childhood play a central role in determining one’s mental health, social functioning, and life quality. Efforts to develop social and emotional skills during the preschool years have demonstrated potential to benefit children’s overall development and school-readiness (Jones & Bouffard, 2012; McClelland et al., 2017). In a longitudinal study by Izard et al. (2001), emotion knowledge in 5 year-olds predicted positive and negative social behavior and academic competence when assessed later at the age of 9, after controlling for verbal ability and temperament (Izard et al., 2001). Another study by Althoff et al. (2010) found that children who exhibit ineffective self-regulation skills were at increased risk of physical and mental health disorders as adults at a 14-year follow-up (Althoff et al., 2010). Higher levels of self-regulation in children, on the other hand, are associated with enhanced well-being including better mental health, the ability to maintain effective social relationships and global adaptive functioning in home and school life (Buckner et al., 2009; Checa et al., 2008; Graziano et al., 2007).

One critical avenue for promoting children’s social and emotional development is through relevant educational programming. In their meta-analytic review of preschool social and emotional learning interventions, Murano et al. (2020) highlighted that both teacher- and parent-delivered programs positively affect the development of social and emotional skills and the reduction of problem behaviors in preschoolers (Murano et al., 2020). The goal for this program was to introduce children and teenagers at SOS Children's Villages in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to key social-emotional skills and areas of competence proposed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in an engaging, age-appropriate way. To do this, I designed and led 18 interactive SEL lessons using picture books, animated cartoons, collaborative and individual activities, and group discussions (see attached poster for lesson topics).

Reflection: While doing my research on emotional awareness and psychopathology, I became interested in how social-emotional skills and competences can be fostered throughout child development. Taking from my experience taking a Philosophy for Children class, during which we led weekly workshops on different philosophical topics to children aged 4-6 in small groups, I adapted the format to a social-emotional learning curriculum. Designing this program was both one of the most challenging and rewarding professional experiences I’ve had. At first, I didn’t know how to make sure I did everything “right”. I was overthinking every sentence in a lesson plan and kept asking myself: “What topics matter more? What should I prioritize? How do I make sure the children understand me?”. Even though I’d worked with small groups of children before, it was never in a setting where I was the only person leading the lesson, let alone designing an entire program. Once I got to teaching, however, I realized that the original lesson plan was only a tentative plan, shifting around based on what came up during class discussions and how the students were feeling the day of (for example, sometimes they would tell me they didn’t want to draw). Regardless of what my intention for a particular class may have been, addressing any pressing conflicts, feelings, and worries always came first. I also found for myself that investing time into building a relationship with the students and answering any of their questions about non-class topics played an important role in building a safe space in the class and fostering their confidence to openly speak and share their experiences during class.

Some of the challenges I encountered included getting the children to remember they have class (sometimes I had to go pick them up and my supervisor had to call their caregivers) and getting the teenagers to participate in class activities (as teens do, they tended to prefer looking at the phone). It also took a lot of improvisation to address issues that came up during class, such as the students not wanting to participate in roleplay activities or misunderstanding instructions, so flexibility and ability to come up with alternatives were crucial to ensure class flow and relevance. For around half of the program's duration, the organization's psychologist supervising my work had her vacation time, so I had to navigate some nuances of the teaching process alone, which was not made easier by the fact that the children took the absence of another adult as a sign to not follow instructions. However, I did receive good support from the supervisor remotely, so the program ran relatively smoothly despite periodical setbacks.

Working at a children's organization in Bishkek provided me with a better understanding of how NGOs function in my home country, allowing me to bridge the theory I learned in psychology and child development classes to real-world practice in a context that is meaningful to me. In the future, I am confident that this experience will help inform my research and practice as an aspiring clinical psychologist and mental health advocate.