To The Daily Sun,
I’m writing to provide a teacher-parent’s perspective on social emotional learning.
I’ve taught high school English since 2006, and I have two elementary-age children. Recently, I’ve heard that SEL is communist, an attempt to indoctrinate students into a political worldview, to separate children from families, and to pivot schools toward federal control.
None of this is true.
The nonprofit CASEL defines SEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
In schools, this means:
- Using empathy to understand literary characters and historical events
- Collaborating with classmates on group projects
- Engaging in peer mediation to resolve bullying
- Discussing with guidance counselors what classes to take to pursue a future career
- Building strong group dynamics for sports or academic teams, band, chorus, or play ensembles
At home, I teach my kids about making good choices, understanding others’ perspectives, and persevering through challenges. SEL doesn’t take away my parental rights; instead, it provides a framework for educators to model and teach these healthy behaviors.
SEL is not partisan. But the misinformation campaign uses inflammatory language, “what if?” scenarios, and YouTube videos (that wouldn’t pass for academic research sources) to scare voters and divide communities, diminishing support for public schools when it matters more than ever.
SEL doesn’t detract from academics; instead, studies show that interventions can have a positive effect on achievement by 10+ percentile points.
Visit the website CASEL.org to read more. Contact your children’s educators about how they implement SEL. With information, compassion, and understanding, we can work together to better support our students and communities.
Ariel Maloney
Bristol
(1) comment
I have a very hard time accepting the opinions of current teachers who are educating our children and who wholeheartedly support and advocate for our schools to use and provide books in our public schools that promote sexualizing children. Several books in the Amplify Curriculum are grooming children with pornographic images and extremely sexual content and language. Perhaps if these teachers and administrators were more willing to stand against exposing our children to these books and materials our children wouldn’t be struggling with their gender identity and sexuality. Perhaps if more emphasis was placed on educating our children with academics we wouldn’t need more Government Funded Programs that give the Federal and State Governments more power and control over our children. Since when did we become so trusting that the government has our children and our families best interests first?
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.