"Our teachers and children are showing more concern for each other. Students are using the skills they've learned to resolve issues that come up. And parents tell us that they're seeing a palpable effect on their children."
- Manhattan principal
Media Coverage
Teaching Social and Emotional Skills in Schools
September 20, 2012
This article originally appeared on MindShift an NPR blog
The programs that CASEL evaluates in the report are designed for preschool through elementary school-aged kids. For example, one program called 4Rs (Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution) provides materials for teachers to read aloud and discuss with their students. There are then specific, sequential, interactive lessons to help students develop creative problem solving, acceptance of diversity, management of feelings and the ability to stand up to teasing or bullying. The lessons are interspersed throughout the year, about one per week. The stories come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and the program is offered from pre-k through eighth grade. Additionally, there are homework assignments that require the student to bring their social and emotional learning home to guide parents and caregivers.
This program was evaluated in the third and fourth grades of an urban school where 62 percent of students were on free or reduced lunch and the population was largely African-American and Latino. The randomized control trial followed students over three years and discovered an improvement in academic performance for students who often act out, increased positive behavior, fewer conduct problems and less emotional distress.
CASEL sees programs like 4Rs as proof that students need explicit instruction in fundamental social and emotional lessons that will help them cope with interpersonal problems throughout life. They argue that spending a small amount of class time focusing on SEL learning saves teachers a lot of time dealing with conduct and social issues during other lessons.
View the full article at WQED or view as a PDF.
SCHOOL PROGRAM MASSACRE: Kids rip program cuts
By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Hundreds of students, parents and allies rallied at a Sunset Park school and outside City Hall on Thursday, to protest a "doomsday" budget that would eliminate child care, Head Start and after-school programs for as many as 47,000 low-income city kids...
Read the full article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle or view as a PDF
Curtailing a Service That Parents Depend On
Curtailing a Service That Parents Depend On
For Eridania Santos, a single parent of two, the program at P.S. 24 is the difference between being a $22,000-a-year legal assistant or a welfare mother. She particularly appreciates the daily homework help and the 20 minutes of independent reading. “It means when I get home from work, it’s not just, ‘Eat, do your homework, go to bed,’ ” she said. “I can have time with my kids.”
Read the full article at the New York Times or View as a PDF
EMPATHY 101: BRONX KIDS CONNECT TO THE PLIGHT OF IRAQI REFUGEES THROUGH OUR NOTHING LIKE MY HOME PROJECT
SEE THE PBS NEWSHOUR BROADCAST!
In June, the PBS NewsHour aired a moving report by producer John Tulenko featuring Lauren Fardig, a teacher at Banana Kelly High School in the South Bronx, and her ninth grade students. Through Morningside Center's NOTHING LIKE MY HOME project, Fardig brought her students "as close as she possibly could, without leaving the classroom, to the millions of people who have fled the war in Iraq and become refugees." Students responded with intense empathy. Nothing Like My Home, a powerful photo-driven curriculum developed by Morningside Center's Marieke van Woerkom with photographer Lori Grinker, has been implemented in a number of schools around the country. For more information, please contact Tala Manassah at Morningside Center.
Watch N.Y. Teacher Takes Students on a Virtual Trip to Learn Realities of Refugee Life on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
PBS NewsHour features Morningside Center's Work
See the PBS NewsHour's story about our work at PS 24 in Brooklyn. The piece highlights our classroom-based 4Rs Program (Reading, Writing, Respect & Resolution), an innovative, research-based approach for fostering students' social and emotional learning. Learning Matters, which produced the NewsHour segment, also produced a great bonus video interview with Tom Roderick, Morningside Center's executive director.
See the Edutopia VIDEO about PS 24!
Edutopia, the website of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, features Morningside Center's work at this stellar public school.