Educators have a huge responsibility to help their students become productive members of society. There are certain skills that students learn by interacting with their peers and teachers, and these skills are carried over into real-life experiences. Teachers model skills such as showing respect, giving others empathy, and modeling perseverance. Students are constantly watching how their teachers respond to certain situations to determine how they should respond to situations as well.
Manzano-Sanchez and colleagues (2021) discuss a program known as Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TSPR), which is a value-promoting program that helps students make improvements in responsibility, the self-determined motivation, satisfaction of basic psychological needs, resilience, and prosocial behavior. The research concluded that the TSPR model increased student improvements by 60 percent (Manzano-Sanchez et al., 2021). Teachers encouraging students to be responsible and giving students avenues to practice these types of behaviors helps student engagement and promotes success.
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is another program that has become increasingly popular in schools today. Educators using the SEL program help students apply the skills learned during SEL time to real-life scenarios and help build more supportive environments in schools (Elbertson et al., 2025). Teachers can also help students continue to practice these skills by integrating them within instruction during classwork or homework (Elbertson et al., 2025). SEL helps students to develop their social awareness and to help continue building social skills throughout their time in the classroom.
Through a Biblical lens, Christians have a social responsibility to show the love of Christ to others in their lives. In John 13:34-35, Jesus states, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (NIV the Woman’s Study Bible, 2018, Jn. 13:34-35). Christians must love others, so that we can spread the love of Jesus and to help others who may not know Jesus, want to know Jesus. Christians also have a responsibility to show grace and mercy to other Christians. In Ephesians 4:32, Paul instructs Christians to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (NIV the Woman’s Study Bible, 2018, Eph. 4:32). Christians are to forgive each other and show mercy to each other. By doing so, Christians can show unbelievers how to forgive each other and love others.
References:
Elbertson, N. A., Jennings, P. A., & Brackett, M. A. (2025). The role of educators in school-based social and emotional learning. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 6, 100134. doi:10.1016/j.sel.2025.100134
Manzano-Sánchez, D., González-Víllora, S., & Valero-Valenzuela, A. (2021). Application of the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility Model in the Secondary Education Curriculum: Implications in Psychological and Contextual Variables in Students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(6), 3047. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18063047
NIV the Woman’s Study Bible. (2018). Thomas Nelson.
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