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Naysayers may throw up all sorts of roadblocks to starting social and emotional learning programs, but advice from those who have already gone down that road can make the going easier.
Introducing a new program to a school or district often inspires both anticipation and hesitation. For some educators, implementing programs in social and emotional learning (SEL) brings about added concerns. To address these concerns realistically, we draw from a series of ethnographic site visits we made from September through December 1996 as part of a team at Rutgers University. We visited established social and emotional learning programs in public and private schools in all parts of the United States. The schools are in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and the programs have been operating from 3 to nearly 20 years. In addition, all of us have been involved in implementing and evaluating award-winning Social Decision Making and Problem Solving Programs in school districts around the United States.
Here we present information to help educators get SEL programs started. Specifically, we address the attitudinal and logistical roadblocks that educators initiating these programs have facedand have overcome.
Attitudinal Roadblocks
Is it a fad? Some educators may dismiss social and emotional learning as the latest fad, claiming that teachers already address these needs every day. They would like to keep doing things the same way, hoping that the new interest in social and emotional learning will fade away.
It is true that many educators address students, social and emotional learning on a daily basis, and many teachers and schools are already involved in excellent practices that promote social and emotional development. That does not mean, however, that there is nothing new to consider.
The past decade has produced tremendous gains in our knowledge of what skills are most predictive of academic and life success and, more important, what it takes to develop these skills in a way that results in longterm behavior change and positive life outcomes. The skills must be taught as incrementally as reading is taught. Further, at the successful sites we visited, educators had rethought their own individualized methods of teaching these skills in favor of larger organizational plans that allow for shared language, consistency, and the sequential building of skills across...