Corey Waters
Elon M.Ed. Alumni Voices
Read about how our Elon M.Ed. graduates are reimagining education. To read stories from other graduates and learn more about the Elon M.Ed. program click here.
Social Emotional Learning
Corey Waters G’23
For some students a degree is just a degree. For Corey Waters it was a transformative experience. When he enrolled in Elon’s Master of Education in Innovation program, he embarked on an adventure, an exploration of how to meet the academic and social needs of his students, students who had been severely affected by learning loss due to a global pandemic. “When we talk about students’ learning, we’re talking about the overall well-being of students” Waters says. In fact he calibrates his approach to teaching based on how he thinks his students are functioning emotionally, mentally and socially. “I’ll do SEL (Social Emotional Learning) check-ins with my students” Waters says, “I’ll say ok on a scale of 1-5 raise your hand to let me know how you’re feeling. If I know that a student or the class as a whole isn’t feeling up to par, I may take a break for that day, and may just do activities related to getting them in a positive state of mind.”
This genuine concern for his students’ well-being transcends the classroom. Waters’ passion for their social and emotional health gave birth to a podcast on Social Emotional Learning, an integral part of his M.Ed. capstone project. “We know that COVID had a tremendous impact on our students in terms of learning loss” Waters says, a challenge that educators are still facing “in terms of students not really being at grade level as they should be. I wanted to talk to folks that I felt were experts in the field, who could present expertise and suggestions on how to best redirect those students back to a better social, emotional and psychological state of being while at school.” The podcast serves as a resource and a beacon for educators who are concerned with improving SEL outcomes in the wake of COVID.
Waters didn’t just complete the M.Ed., he excelled, receiving the Phillips-Perry Black Excellence Award for Academic Achievement. This award recognizes a Black student who has excelled in their academic excellence and possesses the highest grade-point-average. He was also selected to be a member of his district’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Cohort, a role he says the M.Ed. prepared him for. Waters credits the M.Ed. program with helping him meet his students’ needs more effectively.
Elon’s M.Ed. program has changed the way I teach by having me focus more on illuminating the need for systemic change as well as learning to adapt to a changing society of diverse learning communities. The program has taught me how to sharpen my cultural lens in order to provide my students with the tools they need, and to help me in my advocacy for promoting social justice action both in and outside my classroom.
For Waters sharpening his cultural lens means presenting students with materials that are relevant to them, and fostering conversations that make students feel seen, appreciated and connected to the past: “A lot of times students may come into a classroom and say ‘this looks like a museum, I don’t see anything that I can relate to’. Making it culturally relevant is ideal for me, making the students feel comfortable and appreciative of their own history, of their people, of their culture, their traditions.”
Listen to Corey’s SEL podcast on Spotify.
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