Social Emotional Learning, Cognitive Development, and Language Acquisition

This blog post will tackle the fourth guiding principle in working with Multilingual Learners (MLs). This content has been adapted for this blog from the WIDA ELD Standards Framework.

When I was an undergrad, I had a professor (Dr. Mickey Kolis—this link will bring you to a cool interview with him) who taught me that as teachers we teach people first, then content. He meant that when we’re working with students, we are engaging them as human beings before engaging them in our content and that this is beneficial in growing them as a whole. This has always stuck with me especially when working with multilingual learners. Everything that students are doing in school: social-emotional learning, building relationships, and academics build foundations for success for these students.

All our students need opportunities to build language, and social-emotional competency, as well as cognitively rigorous learning opportunities to continue to grow and develop. There is so much good “stuff” going on in your classrooms that do just that and I’m interested to hear how you and your class foster language, social-emotional, and cognitive development throughout your day.

"Multilingual learners' language, social-emotional, and cognitive development are interrelated processes that contribute to their success in school and beyond." (WIDA 2020).

Photo and Content Credit To Aldana & Mayer 2014, Barac & Bialystok 2012, Gandara 2015, Sanchez-Lopez & Young 2018