Our mission as educators has been changing over time, adapting to the changes and needs of children in a globalised world that seeks to achieve ever greater goals and objectives.
In this way, and today more than ever, education focuses on integral development of students, providing them with tools that enable them to be able to assertively face the various challenges they face throughout their lives. In order to achieve this goal, teaching social and emotional skills has become increasingly crucial and indispensable.
Social-emotional skills are developed continuously and permanently in the different stages of development, and it is personal experiences through living together that shape, define and strengthen them. This is where the school plays a fundamental role, being responsible for designing activities that provide the opportunity to help students to get to know themselves, to identify their feelings and emotions, to learn to express them and to self-regulate them in order to face every demand with strategies that make them feel effective and possess virtues and strengths. This is the way in which each challenge means positively facing an experience with confidence and autonomy.
On the other hand, it is essential to foster a climate of emotional well-being that allows for learning opportunities that enable students not only to acquire information, but also the skills to show care and concern for others; to collaborate and establish positive personal relationships; to make informed and responsible decisions; and to learn to handle challenging situations in a constructive and ethical manner.
Thus, the social-emotional factor becomes the basis for a quality education. School and family need to work together to develop these skills from an early age in order to help children build their personal identity and thus form valuable citizens for society.
Carla Salas Elías
CPB Head of Early Years
