Playing Nicely With Others: Why Schools Teach Social Emotional Learning

The New York Times:

If your children’s school seems to suddenly be devoting its time and resources to something called SEL, it may be leaving you wondering what happened to good old reading, writing and arithmetic (or even that new darling, coding). You’re not alone. SEL stands for social emotional learning, and it’s a hot topic at the moment among educators with good reason.

While you may not have heard the acronym SEL before, you have probably seen social emotional learning sprinkled throughout schools’ mission statements, behavioral expectations and curricula, under the varying monikers of character, resilience, personal responsibility, self-control, “grit,” emotional or social intelligence, among others.

The Collaborative for Social Emotional and Academic Learningdefines social emotional learning as: “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”

Read the whole story: The New York Times