(bright music) - Social awareness is being able to look at others around you, understand how others feel, and to be able to interact and engage with people from different backgrounds.

We don't live in isolation.

- Social awareness is understanding that there are others outside of yourself, so really being able to look at perspectives from others' point of view, empathizing with others, and connecting with how others may feel.

- What we're really doing now is moving away from the self and looking at others.

So it is about the child learning again who they are in relationship to others and building those very important, critical skills at young age about empathy.

So they're learning that they are not identical to every other little girl or boy that they see, but that they actually do have an identity and it's shared, it's in relationship.

- We're all interconnected, so everything that we do impacts the people around us.

Children are naturally self-centered.

That's their sphere of experience.

But it's important as adults to help connect them to everything that's happening around them and help them find their place in this great, big world.

- Now, relationship skills are what we typically think of in early childhood as sort of the pivotal set of skills.

And so this is how the child learns to establish and maintain healthy relationships with a diverse group of people.

And so it is the ability to communicate wants and needs, learning to listen and to cooperate, and really ultimately then, this set of skills leads to the ability to resolve conflicts with other people.

- For middle schoolers and high schoolers, it's important that they learn social awareness and relationship skills, learning that there are different cultures, that people have different viewpoints, which means that they'll learn how to compromise, how to assert themselves, but also to be respectful to each other.

- When we talk about relationship skills, it means how to build relationships, how to keep relationships, how to manage conflict in relationships, how to be a good friend, I think.

And even we have relationships with people that we may disagree with or not get along with, but we still have to learn to work together.

(bright music) - In the classroom, we might work on developing relationship skills by creating group projects where you have to work with others and create those working relationships.

And through other social activities, we might partner up and talk about someone and why they're a friend and what does it mean to be a friend and learn the components of being a good friend and being part of a relationship.

So for families to support developing good relationships, the first thing you can do is model good relationships, having those positive relationships within your life.

- I think doing activities as a family that require teamwork and working through that how to win and how to lose, how to be on a team, how to support people, how to lead, I think that that is key as a family.

- Employers are looking for employees that are able to collaborate, especially in the time that we're living in.

So those skills that students learn in team sports, those actually translate to the workforce where you're working together as a team, where you're learning to exhibit positive work ethic and strong work ethic.

So those skills that are learned in the high school and middle grades are actually imperative, and that's what employers are looking for.

- At home, I think families could use discussion a lot to share their understanding of what's happening in our own family with each family member and then our neighborhood, our school, the world at large.

And because we live in the age of social media and in the information age where children have access to so much information, I think children are more aware than ever of what's happening in the big world around them.

Capitalizing on opportunities to talk about those things and how children are processing what they're seeing or experiencing, what they're learning, what they're hearing, I think that's a golden opportunity.

And I think understanding that informs our ability to show up for each other in ways that feel helpful and meaningful and loving and kind.

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