Emotional Learning Brings Real Hope to Schools Most conversation
about our schools today seems to revolve around their
brokenness: underfunded classrooms, lagging test scores, and
harried teachers. In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, the school
district's 2010-2011 “report card” found it had failed to meet
Ohio’s education standards in 24 of 25 categories. In such
environments, raising academic test scores is seen as the Holy
Grail, and doing so while also improving students’ attitudes and
behavior a miracle. Now, a fledgling movement to rethink what
students need to thrive is proving that miracles can happen. An
educational approach known as social and emotional learning
(SEL), being implemented in individual schools—and now, for the
first time, whole districts—has proven effective at
simultaneously improving students’ academic performance,
behavior, and well-being. SEL prescribes approaching students as
complex human beings whose learning and behavior are just as
impacted by their emotions—and their control ov