Google Forms are now being used in the classroom to help teachers execute successful personalized social-emotional learning lessons. These easily accessible forms help teachers address students' needs based on their daily emotional state.

“I ‘personalized’ by getting to know my students deeply--beyond just their academic strengths and weaknesses,” says Greg Callaham, Assistant Principal at Alpha: Blanca Alvarado Middle School.

“By knowing what was going on at home, their emotional triggers and what motivated them, I was able to make sure their needs were met beyond my classroom - which led to much greater academic success within it.”

Upon the realization that he could better steer his students in the right direction for academic success, Callaham worked to find a way to leverage technology as a way to make it easier for him and his faculty to “understand human needs and struggles” of every student.

“As part of our PLT curriculum, students fill in a ‘Digital Check-in’ first thing in the morning once a week,” says Callaham.

“The Digital Check-in is a simple Google Form that has a variety of fields that students fill out to give staff a basic ‘snapshot’ of their current social-emotional world. I should say here that by no means are our Digital Check-Ins perfect or ‘finished,’ but they are working in their current form, and thus, worth sharing.”

Students are able to use these forms to give the following information: their specific mood, general emotional state, why they feel that way (optional), a check-in question and whether or not they need immediate help.

Specific moods can be shown using one of the 20 emoticons provided, as well as a color-coded chart with red, purple, yellow and green being the primary colors used.

“We have been faster to get help for students suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts, and able to intervene with and “pep-talk” students who were otherwise about to have behavior issues based on external situations,” says Callaham on his schools approach.

“All with just an additional 5 minutes of student time per week, and about 10 minutes per week (for teachers) or 10 minutes a day (for me).”

Callaham’s experiment shows that understanding the emotional state of a student not only helps a teacher understand their behavior, but it also helps that teacher make the necessary adjustments in the way they help that student cop academically and emotionally.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor