At NorthBay, students are encouraged to discover how what they experience in nature aligns with personal growth and social emotional learning (SEL). For families, it’s helpful to understand what themes students talk about on the trip, so they can continue the conversation at home:
- How does this idea impact me? (Self-Awareness)
- What should I do about that? (Self-Management)
- How does this idea impact my community? (Social Awareness)
- What should we do about that? (Relationship Skills)
- Knowing this, what kind of decisions should we make? (Responsible Decision-Making)
Below you will find questions that help students to make connections between NorthBay Character Themes and SEL. In bold are the theme(s) that more closely align(s) with a particular characteristic of the natural world.
Niche: The role of an organism in a community
- Self-Awareness: You have a niche! What is it?
- Self-Management: How can you grow in your niche?
- Social Awareness: What are the niches of people around you? How can you appreciate the diversity of niches in your community?
- Relationship Skills: How can you help people grow in their niches? How can you understand how other people function in their niche?
- Responsible Decision Making: How can you use your niche, as well as the niches of those around you, to make responsible decisions?
Invasive Species: A non-native species that spreads into a healthy ecosystem and takes over the resources needed by native organisms
- Self-Awareness: What invasive species could be harmful to you?
- Self-Management: How can you keep safe from invasive species in your community? (stay away from negative influences, etc…)
- Social Awareness: What has been the impact of invasive species on your community?
- Relationship Skills: How can you keep friends, siblings, etc…from getting overwhelmed by invasive species?
- Responsible Decision Making: How can you remove invasive species from your community? What steps can you take to promote diversity in your community, your life, etc… What kind of decisions should you make to incorporate your knowledge of invasive species in your community?
Degraded Conditions: A reduction of quality or value
- Self-Awareness: Where are there degraded conditions in your community? How are degraded conditions impacting you personally?
- Self-Management: How should you respond to these degraded conditions?
- Social Awareness: Have you seen degraded conditions impact your classmates/siblings/friends?
- Relationship Skills: How can you help your friends overcome these degraded conditions? If your relationships are degraded, how can you make them stronger?
- Responsible Decision Making: Knowing about these degraded conditions in your life and in your community, are there things you can do to stay safe? Are there things you can do to improve the degraded conditions?
Filter: Something that removes impurities. The process of filtering cleans and protects the natural environment, a community, and individuals
- Self-Awareness: Who is a filter in your life?
- Self-Management: How can you reach out to filters when things get tough?
- Social Awareness: Are you a filter for anyone else? Who?
- Relationship Skills: How can you be a good filter for these people?
- Responsible Decision Making: How can a filter help you with tough decisions?
Action: Working; functioning; taking part in; doing something. The choices I make
- Self-Awareness: What can you influence in your life? How do your actions affect your future, community, and environment?
- Self-Management: What kinds of actions do you want to take to impact your future, community, and environment?
- Social Awareness: Do your actions affect the people around you? How so?
- Relationship Skills: What kinds of actions can you take to build better relationships?
- Responsible Decision Making: Can we make an action plan to impact our future, community, and environment in a positive way?
Transformation: a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance
- Self-Awareness: How have you changed?
- Self-Management: How would you like to change?
- Social Awareness: Are other people changing around you?
- Relationship Skills: As you grow and change, how might this change your relationship with caregivers, teachers, siblings, friends, etc…?
- Responsible Decision Making: Everything in nature changes. You get to decide how you change and what you grow into. What kind of changes do you want to make?