Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) - and Healing - and Safety - is really becoming a hot topic!  There is a movement going on, called the Emotion Revolution.  The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation teamed up in 2015 for the Emotion Revolution Summit at Yale!  22,000 high-school-age young people responded to a survey, the results of which are reported here, along with plenty of other beautiful material:  http://ei.yale.edu/what-we-do/emotion-revolution/.  

 

Social and Emotional Safety (SES) is the brain-child of Brain-based Learning and Emotional Intelligence.  Safety in general is necessary for the brain to learn - did you ever try some higher-order thinking while your limbs were quivering in terror? The neo-cortex, home of higher-order thinking, just short-circuits and shuts down when the body is processing too much fear.  The over-stress-ometer takes over instead, shooting off cortisol and falling back to the autonomic nervous system until the body feels safe again.  Therefore, we can extrapolate:  not only do children need to be safe in school; they also need to feel safe in order to learn properly.  We can further extrapolate to say that all people need to feel safe in all ways in order for the brain to work and think and learn optimally!  SES is WeBelong School's specialty.

 

You already saw the Introduction to Social and Emotional Learning

movie from Edutopia magazine and YouTube in the About section.  

Here are more offerings about SEL, the basis of so much of the

program at WeBS.  Brain-based Learning and Emotional Intelligence

(Barton, 2007; Edutopia; Goleman, 1995) got married and produced

social-emotional learning.  SEL or its fruits (often referred to as 

evidence-based or scientific) can now be found in many indices of

Departments of Ed websites around the country and in classrooms

around the world.  Social and emotional learning is exactly what it

says it is:  learning about the social and emotional aspects of our

beings.  Here is an 11-minute Ted Talk by Trisha Shaffer which goes

more in-depth about SEL.  

 

This is Edutopia's Parents' Resource Guide to Social and Emotional

Learning.  And since spirituality is an essential aspect of WeBS, here is an Edutopia blog on SEL and spirituality with especial regard to adolescence.

 

Below are two more Edutopia and YouTube videos on SEL.  The first is the excellent 5 Keys to Social and Emotional Learning Success (6 mins.); the second is a 5-minute film by Daniel Goleman, who literally wrote the book on Emotional Intelligence (1995) below: