The Uncommon Core Today:

The fierce urgency of social and emotional learning now!

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Social and Emotional Learning: Yale Bowl 1995

Understanding the Relationship: What’s the Difference Between

Shape 1 and Shape 2?

Shape 1

A

Shape 2

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Teaching and Learning Is …

NOT a mechanical process of one device adding a part to

another.

Nor is it an information transaction from a repository to a

depository!4

Teaching and Learning is…

A Relationship!(or)

The constructive act of two or more people bonded by shared experience, meaning, and value

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A New Field Emerges: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

• Committed to evidence not opinion• Focused on integrating the academic, social and

emotional dimensions of learning• Dedicated to preventing the causes of poor

development by promoting positive development in comprehensive and coordinated pre K-12 school environments

• Aware that schools change only when research, practice and policy are all addressed in an integrated way

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The Best Way To Prevent

Bad

Is

To Promote Good

(Promoting healthy development is different that responding to unhealthy

development)7

What is Social and Emotional Learning?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a process through which children and adults learn to recognize and manage emotions, demonstrate care and concern for others, develop positive relationships, make good decisions, and behave ethically, respectfully, and responsibly.

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Social And Emotional Learning: The Missing Piece

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Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning

No New Wars!By Timothy P. Shriver and Roger P. Weissberg

Coming through the door at Anywhere High School, a visitor is struck by the legacy of more than two decades of school-based "prevention wars." In the main office, a bulletin board

announces the start of a new AIDS program, led by a teacher who taught classes in health and nutrition when those issues were highly visible. This year's "life issues" classes are required because they cover a new state-mandated unit on the prevention of sexually

transmitted diseases. Up in the science wing, biology teachers are introducing the substance-abuse program, which once was a full-semester class but is now a one-month

unit on what drugs and tobacco do to the body. There's only one dropout-prevention worker, where a couple of years ago there were four. He is planning meetings with the 100 or so students who have been absent more than 20 days, and is frustrated because they don't

show up. Meanwhile, social-studies teachers have begun teaching about violence in America, and the superintendent has scheduled a special meeting of the board of education

to develop a plan to combat teenage pregnancy.Need we wonder why new "prevention" initiatives are met with ambivalence in most schools, or why it may be time for policymakers to try a new approach to such programming? School

personnel see the importance of programs to enhance students' social, emotional, and physical well-being, but they also regard prevention campaigns with skepticism and

frustration, since most have been introduced as a succession of disjointed fads. Fragmentation breeds breakdown, and the school emerges as a hodgepodge of social

initiatives with...This article is available to subscribers only!!

Comprehensive Social-Emotional Learning (SEL):A Coordinated Framework Provides Synergy

Programs without a Common Framework

A Common Framework Provides Synergy

Comprehensive SEL

Health Ed

Substance

Use Prev.

Violence

Prev

Character-related EdService Learning

Sex Ed

Academic Skills

SCHOOL-FAMILY-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS

Sex Ed

Service LearningHealth Ed

Charact

er-rela

ted E

d

Violence

Prev

Substance

Use Prev.

Academic Skills Families

Community Involvement

School-Wide Efforts

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Excellent SEL Includes a Developmental Approach to 3 Domains

• Classroom Curriculum & Instruction Benchmark is a scope and sequence. Success depends on teacher training and support for high

quality instruction.

• School Climate & Culture Benchmark is SEL based policies and practices. Success depends on school wide commitment, adult modelling,

and youth leadership.

• Community & Family Benchmark is support from key family and community actors and

activities. Success depends on stakeholder engagement, meaningful

reinforcement, and parent and student agency. 12

The CDI Districts: Aiming for Comprehensive and Coordinated SEL

• Classroom– K: Classroom meetings focused on feelings awareness and

empathy; 1-2 focused on listening skills, friendship, and stress management; 3-4 focus on self awareness, help seeking and goal setting. Lessons reinforced in language arts

• Climate– Discipline strategies include mediation and dialoguing.– Student led announcements emphasize help seeking opportunities– School wide art projects focused on SEL themes such as empathy

and community

• Community– Parent Groups receive training in problem solving at home– Sports and Recreation groups emphasize team work and goal

setting– Church/Synagogue/Mosque groups are encouraged to emphasize

meditation and non violence13

Standards in Action: Illinois visits Cleveland!

How are we doing?

What about Now?

Is this our moment?

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Science Links SEL to Student Gains:

• Social-emotional skills

• Improved attitudes about self, others, and school

• Positive classroom behavior

• 11 percentile-point gain on standardized achievement tests

And Reduced Risks for Failure:

• Conduct problems

• Emotional distress

Source: Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D., & Schellinger, K. (2011) The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development: 82 (1), 405-432.

SEL Improves Student Outcomes

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More that 75% of teachers believe SEL improves students performance in the classroom and in future careers.

But the challenges can seem overwhelming…

• A Culture of blame• A Culture of enormous pressure• A Culture of narrow accountability• A Culture of disempowerment of adults and children alike• A Culture of crisis-level resource challenges

In other words…..

We have A CULTURAL PROBLEM!! We don’t just need meta-analyses of test scores. We need a meta analysis of the policy and practice of education itself.

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This our moment to respond to the academic, social and emotional needs of

children and change the face of education

• Frustration with a high stakes and punitive culture• Breakthrough insights about the effectiveness of

SEL• Increasing teacher and educator reliance on

evidence based interventions• Funders gravitating toward SEL as the missing

piece• Policy Makers hearing the need for a focus on

teaching and learning and the whole child22

Do Our Students Understand theChallenge?

Troy Daniels, Graduation 2002 23

News Flash!Cleveland Meeting Sparks A Dynamic Coalition!

Educators and Scholars Unite to demand Social and Emotional Learning!

The Heart and the Head Unite in America’s Classrooms!

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• STOP, CALM DOWN, & THINK before you act

• Say the PROBLEM and how you FEEL

• Set a POSITIVE GOAL

• THINK of lots of SOLUTIONS

• THINK ahead to the consequences the CONSEQCES

• GO ahead and TRY the BEST PlanPLAN

THINK

GO

STOP

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