Social-Emotional Learning

According to Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, and Schellinger (2011):

A key challenge for 21st-century schools involves serving culturally
diverse students with varied abilities and motivations for
learning…Unfortunately, many students lack social-emotional competencies
and become less connected to school as they progress from elementary to
middle school to high school, and this lack of connection negatively
affects their academic performance, behavior, and health (p. 405). 

In other words, schools have an important role to play in raising
healthy children by fostering not only their cognitive development, but
also fostering their social and emotional development. Yet schools have
limited resources to address all of these areas and are experiencing
intense pressures to enhance academic performance.

For this discussion, imagine you are a classroom teacher and your school
has just adopted a new social-emotional learning curriculum. The
parents of your students are concerned that this will take valuable time
away from academic subjects and that this is something parents should
teach at home. Your job is to write an explanation of this curriculum
for your classroom website. In this description, define what
social-emotional learning is and what it isn’t. Provide links for
parents to find out more about it and what the research says about it. 
Describe how social emotional learning will enhance learning in other
content areas and the benefits their children will experience.

For more information, refer to the following articles:

• Beyond book learning: Schools teach social and emotional skills
• Benefits of SEL
• Office of Academics, Social Emotional Learning
• The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions
• Why it Matters