A classroom that CELEBRATES MISTAKES students make

Mihalovic is coaching her students on social-emotional learning [SEL], a framework that has recently become popular in schools across the nation. It’s the process through which children are learning to manage their emotions, keep up positive relationships and make good decisions.

“It’s very proactive, it’s not reactive,” she said. “It’s getting in there before we see the behavior so we can use the things that occur after lessons to be teachable moments.”

St. Stan’s and Cotter High School use a social-emotional learning curriculum calledTop 20. Each month, the students have a new concept to think about — November’s concept is mistakes. 

How it works

Fifth-grade teacher David Skeels said the curriculum fosters more mutual respect in his classroom, especially where mistakes are concerned. He’s open with his students about the mistakes he makes every day, and in turn, they can put a more positive spin on it.

Skeels keeps some Top 20-related phrases on buttons in his room, including one that says, “Confusion rocks.” Students often get a round of applause for being confused or making a mistake, like someone during a recent math lesson.

“She grabbed the button and put it on and she was proud to be confused,” he remembered, “because she was learning.”

“Not everybody’s getting that (social-emotional learning) at home or outside of school,” said Maurella Cunningham, the district’s director of learning and teaching. “This may be a spot where you’re learning how to talk about your emotions and how to address different conflicts that you’re having as a student.”

Some critics of the framework have lamented thelack of quantitative evaluation in something that relies so heavily on qualitative outcomes. But although Mihalovic puts together a yearly binder to evaluate which lessons worked well and which didn’t, she said seeing anecdotal evidence that SEL is paying off is most rewarding.

In both school systems, the students start thinking about emotion management early. Mihalovic started bringing her Top 20 curriculum to kindergartners this year, and in the public schools, many preschool programs, like Community KIDS and Voluntary Pre- K, focus on social-emotional tools.

In the public schools, Cunningham is leading a professional development series on cultural competency. They’re examining themselves as cultural beings and how that impacts attitudes, beliefs and assumptions about students. It’s just one way to make students feel closer to the teachers they have at school.

Madeline Heim Reporter.  Madeline Heim covers K-12 & higher education in Winona. A 2018 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she previously interned at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the suburban community arm of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.