Julia Schwarz-January blogpost

• What is invasive curiosity and how can we hold space to best model positive curiosity while supporting classrooms where risk taking is needed and encouraged?

The word invasive is associated with the words invasion, intrusive, and offensive. Curiosity is the strong desire to know something. Therefore, I consider invasive curiosity to be the desire to know something, despite the wonderings being unwelcome/uninvited. I consider the CASEL competency of social-awareness to be particularly important in developing the skills needed to decipher whether a question is appropriate/welcome. There are lots of skills needed to master social-awareness, but those that I consider most essential in avoiding invasive curiosity are highlighted below:

Social-Awareness

• I can read and respond to social cues.
• I can show respect for others.
• I can perspective-take.
• I can have empathy for others.
• I can be kind and compassionate.
  • I can recognize the ways in which people are similar and different.
• I can identify and express gratitude. 

I believe that teaching into empathy and perspective-taking will help students to think about how their words could affect others, before speaking them. Reading and responding to social cues could give students the awareness they need to know if a conversation is going in a direction that is making their counterpart feel uncomfortable. 

All this being said, positive curiosity is essential to learning. Teaching into what subjects could be deemed personal, private information could be useful. Discussing what approach to use if you have a personal question, could also be helpful. In my experience, I might share something about myself, and give the opportunity for someone else to share about them if they’d like. 

• Reflecting on the discussions we have had in our PINE Project Workshops, how can this month’s SEL Connection about responsible decision making be integrated into classroom settings? Feel free to specifically use the picture books we read this month, but do not feel as though this is your only choice. You get to decide how to integrate these ideas into your student’s learning. 

Read aloud: The Suitcase. Name that responsible decision-making is making caring choices about social interactions. Ask: do you think the animals in the story used responsible decision-making when they opened the new animal’s suitcase? Why or why not? What could the animals have done instead?

Connection to life: Have you seen or been a part of a time when someone didn’t use responsible decision-making? How did it feel? What could have been done differently?