Sheila McGraw 6th grade teacher, North Kinsgtown Sheila McGraw is a sixth grade teacher at the Davisville Middle School. When Mrs. McGraw started weaving social emotional learning into her class curriculum, she noticed that “the tone of the classroom changed and that kept me wanting to learn more about how to infuse the principles of personalized learning into my teaching.”

She introduced the Circle of Power and Respect into her classroom whereby students begin each day by greeting one another by name, sharing news and thoughts, joining in a short group activity, and learning about the activities planned for the day. “Social emotional learning is not an add-on but is incorporated into classroom activities.”

Mrs. McGraw also uses instructional materials to provoke discussion and make connections between social emotional literacy skills and academic areas. Instructional strategies such as “Round Robin” in which students sit in small groups and share opinions about a course related problem or passage foster development of character traits such as respect and responsibility. The key for Mrs. McGraw is that social emotional learning is not an add-on but is incorporated into classroom activities and academics.

“The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you…We are in charge of our attitudes.”
- Charles Swindoll