Tucked away on the stage at Wright City West Elementary, containers full of thousands of bottle caps sit, waiting for the day they can help young students learn to show kindness to one another.

School Principal Patrick Wallace said the bottle caps will one day be recycled and transformed into plastic benches for an initiative called “buddy benches” — places where students could sit when they’re feeling lonely or left out, and other students would be encouraged to go befriend them.

The buddy benches project is part of Wright City West’s focus on social-emotional education. And it might already have been done, Wallace said, if COVID-19 hadn’t swooped in and put the project on hold. It’s just one of several ways the virus has changed how the school planned to teach lessons about care and empathy.

Wallace describes this learning focus, addressing emotional growth along with academics, as “educating the whole child.”

“Students with high levels of trauma, students who don’t feel connected or have relationships, they’re not going to learn academics,” Wallace explained. “We need to ground them in these trauma-informed approaches, this social-emotional learning, with the goal then being they can access and learn at higher levels.”

The buddy benches were one approach to that goal, aimed at helping students learn to express empathy and support for one another. Wallace said West Elementary’s student Kindness Club had been collecting, cleaning and sorting bottle caps donated by the community, while the Wright City Kiwanis Club offered to pay for the caps to be recycled into benches. But before they could finish their buddy bench preparations last spring, COVID-19 shut down schools.

Since classes resumed in fall, Kindness Club and other extracurriculars that build relations at the school haven’t resumed. Rules for reduced contact have made it hard to have large-scale programs fostering those positive engagements, Wallace said.

Rather than being discouraged, Wallace said being able to help students through these anxious times has affirmed the importance of the social-emotional curriculum. Teachers now are focused on how they can continue that effort in their classrooms.

For example, at the start of each day, teachers used to sit in a circle with students to discuss troubles they might be having. Because of COVID this year, students are kept spread out, but those morning discussions still happen.

Wallace said it has amazed him to see students showing what they’ve learned when teachers express their own blues.

“When the teachers are vulnerable, and they share how they’re feeling, the students respond to that with, ‘Hey, how can I help you,” Wallace commented. “That’s the part when I think, ‘It’s working.’”

Another way the school has adjusted social-emotional learning during COVID has been to add a class with the school counselor to the weekly class rotation. That gives them a time to explicitly explore and understand the emotions they might be facing.

Wallace said staff are also discussing virtual options for other social-emotional programs to start in the second semester.

“We’re all looking forward to getting back to normal, but I’ve been really impressed with how everyone has rallied,” Wallace said.