Emotional Compass: From an orange blanket to a systematic approach to social and emotional learning in Slovakia
It all started with an orange blanket.
When I started as a third grade Teach For Slovakia teacher in Rokycany, I quickly realised that before we started tackling maths or science, we needed to tackle an entirely different set of challenges with my students. Coming from a low-income, segregated community, my students were thus affected by many of the issues associated with generational poverty and outbursts of anger, violent behaviour, and name-calling were everyday occurrences. In Slovakia, such segregation often occurs along both socio-economic and ethnic lines, particularly affecting marginalized Roma communities who face systemic barriers to inclusion. Along with googling activities for addition and subtraction, I found myself spending even more time researching activities on emotional regulation, dealing with anger, cooperation, kindness to self and others, and conflict resolution. Every day, we sat on an orange blanket and formed a circle. We talked about ways to calm ourselves down that are safe for us and safe for others, drew our hands on a piece of paper and let others write what they value and appreciate about us, talked about the problems and issues within our classroom team and what we can do to solve them in order to all feel safe and welcome.
Little by little, we managed to create an environment which was by no means perfect, but where the children felt safe and valued, and where they could express kindness to one another and were able to name and tackle difficult emotions. I was proud and happy, but I was also exhausted. I spent hours and hours every week trying to research the activities I could use and preparing lesson plans, with no systematic resource I could use.
Then, after my two years as a Teach For Slovakia participant were over, I found myself struggling with anxiety during my maternity leave. Although I come from a much more economically stable background than the children in my class, I learned that what I was feeling has a name—anxiety—and how to cope with it, when I was 26 years old. If the learning of crucial social and emotional skills bypassed not only my students from underprivileged backgrounds, but also bypassed me, was there a deeper issue here?
I subsequently partnered with Lenka Svoradova, who I connected with through the Teach For Slovakia network, who also had a passion for addressing social and emotional learning in Slovak schools. We spent hours and hours researching social and emotional skills programs in other countries, metastudies, and best practices in the field. Based on our findings, we partnered with Slovak experts in the fields of psychology, trauma-informed approaches, and experiential learning to create the first systematic and long-term social and emotional learning (SEL) program tailored to the needs and realities of Slovak schools—Emocionálny Kompas (Emotional Compass).
The first pilot of the program, started with 10 teachers at three schools in September 2021 with a third grade teacher book. We had a number of fears and reservations and weren’t sure if teachers would be interested given that the general learning environment is characterised by the importance of academics over anything else.
As of this September we now have 610 teachers from 130 schools and more than 12,000 children from kindergarten to 9th grade participating in the program. Also, for the past three years, our impact measurement and testimonies from classrooms continue to suggest that more and more classrooms across Slovakia are realising the importance of SEL and are incorporating it into their daily life with Emotional Compass.
Teachers tell us stories about success implementing strategies such as those related to anger management: "One of the children with special needs couldn't control their anger. A child who had been through Compass confidently approached them, used one of the techniques, and remarkably calmly managed the situation and helped,” shared one teacher. Others have also reported moving stories of how the program has helped their students with processing difficult feelings like grief and sadness, sharing testimonies like the following: "Children have diaries where they can write and draw, which leads them to write specific situations and emotions. A student whose father passed away wrote messages to him through her diary every time she thought of him, helping her cope with grief. Children look forward to sharing their experiences in the community circle, receiving appreciation, planning their day together, and solving more complex situations."
Our current work entails developing teacher books and a learning platform with ready-made materials and activities for every grade to support the highest number of teachers possible, however our vision does not stop there. With Emotional Compass, we hope to gather and present enough evidence to prove that social and emotional learning can no longer be treated as a luxury offered by a few private schools or very active teachers risking burnout. In a country that is rated the third lowest by the OECD based on children’s happiness and satisfaction at school and where, according to a HBSC study, over half of children aged 15 have problems with emotions, concentration or behaviour, it is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
We hope to continue providing easy-to use, ready-made materials and workshops to support teachers on this journey, work on developing a holistic, whole-school approach system, and also, importantly, continue to measure our impact to advocate policy change to ensure SEL is not taught in Slovak schools based on luck, but by default. With this vision in mind, we decided to make the program free to use for every teacher and every school, which is only possible thanks to our partnership with Teach For Slovakia and UniCredit Foundation, and our other partners. The strategic partnership between UniCredit Foundation and the Teach For All network partnership has allowed us to gain stability in the first two years of program development, and meant not having to choose between organisation development and continuing to build a quality, scalable SEL solution. But not only that—staff from both Teach For All and UniCredit also offered their insights, feedback, support, and belief in our mission and vision that are invaluable for an emerging NGO.
In the upcoming years, thanks to the support we received, we will continue working together with our partners to ensure that every child in every school across Slovakia has an opportunity to develop their social and emotional skills along with their academic subjects. We will do our best to ensure that more and more classrooms have their symbolic “orange blanket”—the feeling of safety and belonging that is essential for the mental health of children, teachers, and for every one of us.
