Teachers' Reflections on Supporting Social and Emotional Learning: Desires, Practices, and Tensions in Fostering Family-School Ties

This study explores how schools communicated and engaged with families in online/blended learning environments to support students' social-emotional well-being. In the form of reflective learning journals and asynchronous peer discussions, documents were collected during Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 from a graduate course for experienced K-12 teachers at a 4-year comprehensive university in the Southern United States. Guided by the CASEL framework for social and emotional learning (SEL), thematic document analysis gave form to the data. The following three themes emerged: 1) teachers perceived family-school ties to be more important than ever amid remote/online learning, 2) they amended their practices by acknowledging and empathizing with parents' increased instructional responsibilities, seeking increased knowledge of students' home lives, and offering support to parents through frequent communication, and 3) deficit thinking, time demands, and mounting frustrations with some parents' unresponsiveness were obstacles to building family-school connections. Findings suggest that while experienced teachers hold parental relationships in high regard, efforts to foster two-way, reciprocal partnerships with parents of online learners may be difficult to sustain, particularly when teachers navigate multiple learning contexts simultaneously. The article concludes with implications for schools.