What is Social Emotional Learning (SEL)?
CASEL, the leading organization in Social Emotional Learning,
defines SEL as:
“...the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
This lays a foundation for academic success, fulfilling careers, and healthy relationships. To learn more about SEL, please visit CASEL’s website.
Why is SEL important?
We live in an interconnected and complex world that is increasingly diverse. Throughout our lifetime we are exposed to people, cultures, and viewpoints that can be different from our own personal lived experiences. Social-emotional learning is an important part of the school curriculum because it supports the overall well-being of ALL students, enhances academic success, and prepares youth for a more emotionally intelligent and competent future. It sets a strong foundation for a healthy and productive life by providing the skills that are necessary to navigate a complex world in which the ability to understand and work with people from different backgrounds and perspectives is essential.
The long term benefits of teaching SEL in and outside of schools is that the skills learned can lead to better mental health, more successful relationships, and increased resilience to deal with challenges in life. It is a means of fortifying character development and virtues such as wisdom, justice, humanity, and courage.
Our SEL Partners
Here are some of the SEL Partners and Tools we use to support our High School and College Students.
We keep adding Partners as we are growing our Programs.
Changing Perspectives
Changing Perspectives’s goal is to educate, empower and inspire students from PreK through High School to become the change makers for tomorrow and to build a more inclusive, just and equitable society.
Changing Perspectives partners with schools and school districts across the country to promote social-emotional learning and cultivate inclusive and equitable learning communities for all students.
Changing Perspectives supports schools in four ways: curriculum resources, individual coaching, professional development training, and resources for families.
Wayfinder
For too many decades our students have suffered — school does not answer the calls of the 21st century. Instead, schooling is locked in an ineffectual, centuries-old model. Our students and teachers deserve better. To answer this call, Wayfinder has designed the world’s preeminent SEL and human development tools for educational settings from middle school to college and beyond.
We have worked with Wayfinder since 2018 with a group of Students from Burlingame High School. They are all successfully pursuing their College Undergraduate.
VIA Institute on Character
Character strengths are the positive parts of your personality that make you feel authentic and engaged. You possess all 24 character strengths in different degrees, giving you a unique character strengths profile. Research shows that understanding and applying your strengths can help:
Boost Confidence
Increase Happiness
Strengthen Relationships
Manage Problems
Reduce Stress
Accomplish Goals
Build Meaning and Purpose
Improve Work Performance
Happi
HAPPI: Helping Awesome People Prosper Intentionally
HAPPI’s mission is to cultivate healthy communities and cultures that help people and planet prosper.
Essentially, we work to support individuals in cultivating their unique gifts while also helping communities in creating culture and cohesion; this approach is designed to create positive feedback loops in which individuals are feeding the communities they belong to while communities are feeding the individuals they care for.
Mindful Schools
Our mission is to empower educators to spark change from the inside out by cultivating awareness, resilience, and compassionate action in community.
For almost 15 years, Mindful Schools has worked to create mindful and heart-centered learning environments where all community members can thrive. We’ve trained over 70,000 individual educators, and we partner with over 500 schools each year.