Social and Emotional Learning: Best Practices and Promising Programs

Recommended Resources

What is Social and Emotional Learning?

Learn more from the following multimedia resources, which include video, reports, and ideas from the classroom to the district level.

• Social Emotional Learning: It Starts with Teachers (Education Week report)
• Social and Emotional Learning (Edutopia)
• Social and Emotional Learning (KQED)
• Social and Emotional Learning (American Institutes for Research)
• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
• Larry Ferlazzo's Favorite Resources About Social and Emotional Learning

What role does culture play?

Research

• The Effects of a Culturally-Adapted Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum on Social-Emotional and Academic Outcomes of Latino Immigrant High School Students
• Promoting Social-Emotional Learning in Adolescent Latino ELLs: A Study of the Culturally Adapted Strong Teens Program

Dena Simmons

Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In these articles and a related TED Talk based on her own experiences, she shares some considerations for implementing Social and Emotional Learning initiatives with diverse student groups.

• 'Is Social-Emotional Learning Really Going to Work for Students of Color?'
• Do Messages About Social-Emotional Learning Harm Students of Color?
• How to Change the Story about Students of Color
• How students of color confront imposter syndrome (TED Talk)

Teaching Empathy

• Teach Empathy With Digital Immigration Stories (Edutopia)
• Teaching Empathy: Are We Teaching Content or Students? (Edutopia)
• Developing Empathy with Students of All Ages (Teaching Tolerance)

Featured Programs and Projects

Academia Cuauhtli (Austin, TX)

Academia Cuauhtli (a Nahuatl word that means "eagle") is a grassroots program that the National Education Association describes as "part ethnic studies, part language revitalization, and part professional development."  One of the program's founders, Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas at Austin, writes, "Conceptualized as a cultural arts and literacy project that seeks to revitalize young children's heritage language and culture, Academia Cuauhtli offers a highly collaborative, research-based, co-constructed Mexican American Studies curriculum in the areas of migration history, civil rights, cultural arts, Indigenous heritage, and local history — including the Tejano Monument located on capitol grounds, Mexi-Carte, La Peña, Alma de Mujer at Lake Travis, and the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas."  The project has made its materials available to Austin schools as well. To learn more about Academia Cuauhtli, see the following:

• Academia Cuauhtli and the Eagle: Danza Mexica and the Epistemology of the Circle (Annenberg Institute)
• Academia Cuauhtli Works to Bridge History with Language (KLRU / PBS NewsHour)

Social and Emotional Learning in the News

• The Psychological Approach to Educating Kids (The Atlantic)

• When Mindfulness Meets the Classroom (The Atlantic)

• When Schools Meet Trauma With Understanding, Not Discipline (NPR)
• All-Girls Group at D.C. High School Aims to Build Confidence (The Washington Post)