Students need to develop strong social-emotional skills to thrive in school, career, and life. Test scores matter, but do your students have the SEL training they need to succeed?
The U.S. Department of Education has dedicated funds for education initiatives that support social-emotional learning programs. For information on their programs and grants, visit their Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety.
In addition, ASCD offers free resources to Support Social-Emotional Learning. These are designed to help students:
- regulate their emotions,
- manage stress,
- cooperate with others,
- set and achieve goals,
- teach self-awareness, and
- build self-confidence.
According to research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, social-emotional learning helps students to be “twice as likely to attain a college degree in early adulthood; 54% more likely to earn a high school diploma; and 46% more likely to have a full-time job at the age of 25.”*
The resources above should give you a great start on providing this important training for your staff and helping your students develop these vital skills. In addition, there are many commercial programs available (CASEL, PATHS, Second Step, etc.) to assist you should your budget allow.
UPDATE (February, 2023): Because SEL suddenly became controversial last fall (especially in Florida, Utah, and Oklahoma), ASCD has discontinued their resource section on Social Emotional Learning. While this effort to avoid political fallout is understandable, it’s unfortunate that these free resources are no longer available. However, ASCD did recently release this article that shows the relationship between SEL and bullying.
In addition, Education Week has just released a special report designed to give schools a roadmap for better communicating to their communities what SEL programs actually teach. It’s also designed to help counter the false narrative that SEL is some sort of covert attempt to reprogram children into social justice activists for causes like socialism, racism, and LGTBQ rights.
Finally, this article describes how this positive initiative that previously enjoyed wide bipartisan support suddenly became anathema. Understanding the background for this abrupt shift (and why many of your constituents may have bought into it) is essential in dealing effectively with this threat to a proven tool for supporting student mental health.
NOTE: Searching “SEL” in the BLOG search bar will show additional SEL posts with helpful links.
* Research from “Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness,” published on October 09, 2015, in American Journal of Public Health.