Amanda Santos Valenzuela is a wellness educator at the Winsor School who incorporates SEL into her department’s daily practices. With the continued adoption and recognition of the impact of SEL on both academic and personal success, IFSEL invited Valenzuela to share her insights on how she uses SEL practices with a counter stories framework to boost student voice, belonging, and advocacy.

What are counter stories?

Valenzuela first learned about counter stories while doing violence prevention work in college around challenging traditional ideas about masculinity in order to reduce gender violence. Counter storytelling is a way to hear marginalized voices and to challenge dominant cultural narratives that are generally accepted as a common experience. Working in independent schools, Valenzuela recognized that counter-storytelling was an important tool for engaging in conversations about social justice and also for connecting with students about everyday academic pressures and narrow societal definitions of success. Valenzuela believes that “You can be well and have balance in your life and find things that really create meaning, and that’s success.” Below are some of Valenzuela’s tips on how to help students listen for counter stories within your school community.

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1. Start with Check-Ins

Check-Ins are one of IFSEL’s social-emotional learning methods that offer students a way to access their current emotions and share with a group when comfortable. This practice helps students build their social awareness and learn how to be supportive of the emotions of their peers. This method ties into counter storytelling as students are exposed to a range of authentic emotions and gain comfort in knowing that they may not be alone in their feelings after possibly hearing similar things from their peers. To learn more about our Check-Ins and to view our Check-In Library visit our website!

2. Launch Open Session

Open Session is a keystone IFSEL practice where students anonymously write down a notecard with a worry dilemma or joy that they have, and then those notecards are collected to be read out loud. In hearing their peers’ stories, students expand their own understanding of the world. Stories may reinforce narratives or offer counter stories, which encourages expansive thinking. Just like with Check-Ins, the benefit of Open Session is twofold: for the writer to share their story, and for the listener to potentially connect across difference or similarity.  This practice helps show empathy as they are actively hearing counter stories. It helps students feel less alone and learn that often what they believe would be a counter story, is actually the dominant narrative. Additionally, they are able to gain comfort in knowing that others are going through the same thing, which helps in encouraging them to show their own vulnerability.

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2. Practice "Ask Three"

The “Ask Three” practice is when students have to go talk to three other people about their opinions and experiences regarding a situation. This practice encourages students to be reflective with their listening and gives them the opportunity to listen to a wide variety of opinions/experiences. It also reminds students that their voices are not only important, but necessary. “Ask Three” organically surfaces counter stories, allowing them to realize there is not just one dominant narrative that is “correct.”

4. Success Visualization

Success Visualization asks students to share what success looks like in the past tense as if it’s already happened. Not just “I got an A on that test!,” but how are you proud of the steps you took to get here? How do you feel? What do you say to yourself? Who are you celebrating with? This not only helps students focus on outcomes over obstacles, but it allows them to redefine success and how they’ll know they got there.

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5. Encourage Students to be Change Makers

Valenzuela explains this simple method of pushing students to think like change makers. She encourages parents and educators to motivate their kids/students with the mentality that they can become change makers. She also emphasizes that it's important for students to know that there is not just one pathway to success. Though a student’s path may be different, it does not make that path any less valuable. Valenzuela highlights that “Students can be change makers through their own vulnerability and storytelling; that’s empowering!”

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6. Make Space to Connect and Reflect

Once students are familiar with the concept of counter stories, build in pauses in your lessons. Ask students explicitly whose voice is represented and whose voice is missing. When wrapping up our interview, Valenzuela explained that she sees the positive impacts that looking for counter stories has on her students. Students want to engage with others and inclusion becomes a priority. Students begin to actively choose to connect and reflect on their own, without any guidance. All in all Valenzuela states that, “Students are making change in the classroom and they’ll be well prepared to challenge dominant narratives for life.”

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Conclusion

In the day and age that we are in, incorporating SEL into our school systems is extremely necessary and beneficial. Valenzuela’s experiences as an educator have given her a lot of valuable insight, which we were able to share with you today! If you want to learn about more strategies to create sustainable SEL in your school, check out our other articles on our website, instituteforsel.net!

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