A love of learning. It’s what we want for all of our students, in every classroom, every day. We want them to thrive. But we know this is not the experience for all of our students. Today’s students are experiencing a turbulent and demanding world which they bring with them into the classroom, making it more challenging than ever for education leaders to create the positive learning environments critical to student success. Challenging or not, schools are recognizing the need to embrace positive learning environments – many from a place of “what is the right thing to do” for their students and communities.
Fortunately, research is beginning to illuminate powerful solutions to this challenge, and education policy is starting to reflect this new knowledge with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which acknowledges the critical role of school climate and social and emotional learning in student success. Scientists and educators are working together to set non-cognitive skills within the framework of school success. Starting this year California’s CORE Districts will begin publicly reporting measures of social emotional skills across grades 3-12. Attaching the measures to school performance ratings is likely to follow, even if in only the most modest way. Recent analysis Should non-cognitive skills be included in school accountability systems? citing the CORE field test “provides a broadly encouraging view of the potential for self-reports of social-emotional skills as an input into its system for evaluating school performance.”
At Mayerson Academy we have embraced the use of research, not guesswork, in developing the curriculum surrounding the core components of our social and emotional learning (SEL) offerings. In our Thriving Learning Communities students use a strengths lens to ground their understanding of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building and responsible decision-making. But for many schools the integration of an SEL program is a recognized necessity but not achievable without dedicated resources. This summer, Mayerson Academy, with generous support from The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation and an anonymous donor of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, is offering a grant opportunity worth $10,000 of Thriving Learning Communities products and services to schools who acknowledge the need and are ready to create an integrated program. Deadline for the application is April 29th. Identify your school champions and apply today!
