Implementing Social-Emotional Learning in Schools Posted on April 10, 2008 The development of state-level standards for social-emotional learning will improve sustainability, suggests Marc Brackett (bio).

The work I’m doing abroad in England, I’ve actually gotten a district to hire an administrator who is in charge of social and emotional learning for a district. So this friend of mine, now, her title is Assistant Head of Emotional Intelligence, and she monitors three schools for the implementation of the work we’re doing there.

And that’s a full-time position that’s paid for by the district, not through our research funding. So if we can move into that model over the next ten years, I think that that might be something that would be very exciting.

The one way we’ll move into that model is by paying more attention to organizations like CASEL. Roger Weissberg and Timothy Shriver, others, who run this organization, which is called the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, who provide guidance and standards for this kind of curriculum.

And where we’re moving towards in our work with them is to develop standards for states. Because what’s going to happen, right now, we have standards for reading, for writing, for math. And guess what gets taught: reading, writing, and math. There’s no standards for art, for music.

So in most districts, that either gets dropped or it gets pushed away because they’re afraid it’s deterring from the academic success of their students. Illinois currently has, is the first state in the US to actually have standards for social and emotional learning.

So when there are standards, schools will take it more seriously. Because if there is a criteria to meet, they’ll have to have someone on board in the school district, and that’s where we really want to go. And that’s when we think our programs and our curricula will really have a tremendous impact is when we have that.

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