Smart Hearts: Social and Emotional Learning Overview

>>Male Newscaster: The video was posted on MySpace by [inaudible].
This assault occurred in North Babylon, New York.
The victim apparently just twelve years old.
Her attackers are fourteen year old ninth graders...
>>Male caller: A student with a gun at the [inaudible] Academy.
>>Female 911 Operator: Okay, where's the student at?
>>Female Newscaster: He was picked on,
bullied and that may have been part of what pushed him
to the school shooting here.
>>Narrator: While schools across the country grapple
with the behavior problems of their troubled students,
thousands of individuals are stepping
up to help meet those students' social and emotional needs.
>>Michael: And no matter what we teach your brains,
love is more important than knowledge.
>>Narrator: One of them is Michael Pritchard, a comedian
and former probation officer who tours the country listening
to the hearts of young people.
>>Michael: How many of you know a boy or girl here at school
who gets picked on and left out and never included
and laughed at al the time?
Raise your hands high, high.
Look around the room please.
Hands down.
>>Marilyn: At one point, Michael asks kids to come forward
and share how they've been hurt, or maybe to apologize to others,
and when he asks them to do that, I thought, "They're not gonna do this.
I mean, in front of all these kids, they're not gonna come forward."
I have to tell you, I was amazed at how free they were to come forward
and really share their experience.
>>Boy: When I first moved here a year ago, and no one really wanted to play
with me, and all the fifth graders called me names.
>>Michael: What was it doing to your heart?
>>Boy: It just made me feel really bad.
>>Michael: We get sick if we try to hold all that pain in.
And then the unaddressed grief turns to anger, and the anger to rage,
and it has two directions, out to the community,
or inwards towards the self, and self destructiveness.
>>Girl: My main thing that's gotten me through all this is empathy.
When I was being bullied, I tried to feel how they were feeling,
and that's why there were bullying me.
>>Marilyn: Creating an environment in which kids feel comfortable,
in which they are productive,
in which they treated one another well, is not a one shot thing.
So our responsibility as adults that work with kids is
to reiterate that lesson.
And in my experience, it takes three to five years
to really change a school culture and it's a learning process.
>>Teacher: What people say to us
and how other people treat us kinda shapes what we think about ourselves.
And I wanna share with you a story.
One day, Maria woke up--
>>Narrator: With curriculum material from programs
like Resolving Conflict Creatively,
students can learn social emotional skills in any classroom.
>>Teacher: And so her sister came into the room and said,
"Are you gonna wear those old rags to school?"
>>Linda: We are talking about a whole new vision of education that says
that educating the heart is as important as educating the mind.
And so it's about equipping young people with the kinds
of skills they need to both identify and manage their emotions,
to communicate those emotions effectively
and to resolve conflict non violently.
>>Teacher: So that was Maria's day.
How do you think Maria's feeling now, if this is what's left of her heart?
>>Daniel: Emotional intelligence,
which refers to how you handle your own feelings, how well you empathize
and get along with other people is just a key human skill
but it also turns out that kids who are better able
to manage their emotions, for example,
actually can pay attention better,
can take in information better, can remember better.
In other words, it helps you learn better.
>>Student: Let's say if me and Gabriela had a problem,
then we're gonna go inside the peace corner and express our feelings
with a peace helper, and I think everybody knows what a peace
helper is.
>>Narrator: At PS twenty-four in Brooklyn, students learn
to take an active role in solving classroom disputes.
>>Student: So you had a book first, and a girl snatched it from you?
>>Yeah.
>>How do you feel?
>>I feel mad.
>>Alexus: I like doing it, 'cause I like helping other kids
and it's very fun for me because I get to have fun
and then be serious at the same time.
>>Do you need my help?
>>Yeah.
>>What happened?
>>Alexus: When I do stuff like the mini lesson, I have to stay focused,
and especially when I'm working like with first graders
or kindergarten [inaudible].
>>When the peace helpers were helping solve the conflict,
what did you see the peace helpers do?
>>I'm still learning, because if I go into sixth grade next year,
I need to learn how to control my anger,
'cause I have a serious temper problem.
>>Teacher: Running game or having game is pressuring somebody,
'cause you trying to slick 'em, right?
>>Narrator: In nineteen ninety, New Haven,
Connecticut pioneered a comprehensive, district wide approach
to teaching social emotional skills.
>>Teacher: Focus in on your dot, nothing else.
Deep breaths.
>>Karol: In our middle schools and high schools,
the social development curriculum is taught as a separate class.
A student might go to English first period
and social development second period and chemistry third period.
So the student is taking the skills that he or she is learning
in that second period social development class
and using those skills wherever else in his or her life is needed.
>>Teacher: One possible solution is saying no or walking away.
Is that real?
>>Karol: Just like you take the reading skills that you learn
in fourth period class and apply them throughout your life,
it doesn't matter if other people
in your life have the same reading skills or not.
You have the skills.
>>If you've been hurt by someone saying or doing something mean
or thoughtless, move into the circle.
>>Narrator: The success
of New Haven's efforts inspired other districts, like Anchorage, Alaska,
to take on ambitious programs.
>>Falling.
>>Fall away.
>>Narrator: This daylong series of games, trust exercises
and truth telling sessions, called a Change of Heart,
is designed to forge a caring community from the diverse group
of twenty-four hundred students and staff at East Anchorage High School.
>>Yes, I trust you guys.
>>What's your name?
>>Narrator: It's just part of a concerted effort
to address the social and emotional needs of every student
in the district, an effort that began with schools
in turmoil just a few years ago.
>>Alivia: You know, you hear those horror stories about like, you know,
like thugs showing up at school, like you having
to look behind your shoulder, and that's how it was.
There was a lockdown at lunch.
>>Carol: Alaska, unfortunately, has the highest rate
of domestic violence, sexual and child abuse,
in the nation per capita.
And so a lot of our kids, they're watching violence in their homes.
Sometimes they're the ones being attacked and abused,
and for them to be able to come into school, which is frankly,
for many of them, their safe haven, and to automatically switch that off
and say, "Oh yes, I'm gonna really focus
on algebra," it isn't even realistic.
And so we've got a lot of young people in very great distress.
>>Narrator: After nearly a decade of studying best practices
from around the country, the district adopted comprehensive social
and emotional standards, with concrete benchmarks
for appropriate behavior at every grade level.
They designed classes to teach specific skills
and developed guidelines for assessment.
>>Vickie: I'm a curriculum coordinator,
so I am seen in the same office
as the language arts coordinator the math coordinator,
the health coordinator, et cetera to show just visually, politically,
everything else, that we are gonna value this
like we value any of our other curricula.
A lot of my job is to look at the already adopted curriculum and say,
"Okay, here's a place where, if I was teaching this reading lesson,
I could also hit this social emotional learning center
at the same time."
>>Teacher: "Two roads diverged in a wood
and I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference."
What do you think he's saying there?
>>Student: I think that he took the one that not everybody was doing,
like maybe everybody was doing a different thing and he thought
that it was wrong, so he did the other thing, and maybe he was right?
>>Teacher: Doesn't even have to be right or wrong.
Just follow your heart, be true to yourself.
>>Student: So Mike has eight dollars.
Is this Mike?
>>Narrator: In this fifth grade math glass,
solving problems is a social activity.
>>Student: Mike started with eight.
Kelly had twice as much as Mike, and Joe had half
as much as Kelly, which is--
>>Chris: Every teacher out there has probably said at some point in time,
"Turn to your neighbor and talk about this idea.
Look at your teammates and talk about this idea."
>>Student: Why did you do those shapes there?
>>Student: 'Cause it looked cool.
>>Chris: And really watch if they are talking about the topic
that you've asked them to talk about, if they're actually listening
to each other, and using that language and those social skills.
Then all of a sudden, you have an environment
where thirty kids are all learning at the same time.
>>Teacher: Today Lucia intentionally bumps into Jackson in the lunch room
and makes him spill his food.
>>Narrator: The aggressors, victims and bystanders, or AVB curriculum,
has been adopted by all of the middle schools in the district.
>>Teacher: What are some of the cool headed thoughts he could have?
>>Student: He might think that she likes him
and that's why she's being so mean to him.
>>Teacher: Exactly.
I hate to say it, but sometimes at middle school,
kids do some really weird things to the kids they like.
>>Teacher: Today you're going to be interviewing one person,
and that one person is also going to be interviewing you.
>>Narrator: Freshman English teacher Trudy Keller incorporates social
emotional learning standards in her daily lessons.
>>Trudy: "Scrutinize" is a word that'll be on your next quiz.
I want you to really scrutinize them and think
about your impressions beyond just what they say.
>>One of the students wrote about his partner that he interviewed
because this student's parent was a drug addict,
and actually caused a great deal of turmoil in the family,
and was actually a student that he had sort of looked
down on, I think, before.
And then he wrote, "I have a great deal of respect
for what this student has been through."
>>Student: Do you have a job or what's your home-- ?
>>Student: Well, I have a disabled brother
and I usually take care of him and stuff.
>>Trudy: I just think that you need to be in touch
with their feelings, their emotions.
When I know what's going on, and I acknowledge that and we deal with it,
then we can get on to the job of learning.
>>Teacher: Two, three.
>>All: [singing] The world is full of all kinds of people.
Inside our blood flows the same.
>>Michael: We're all under the gun to improve our test results,
the academics, but I'll tell you what, it's a whole lot more fun
to start focusing on that connection with kids
and helping people feel good about where they are.
The other will follow.
Our teachers, I think, are much happier.
They like their kids.
>>Pat: Good job, kiddo, excellent.
Practice being cool headed this weekend.
>>Corey: Since my freshman year, the amount of suspensions
that have happened at East has gone down dramatically.
The amount of fights has gone down dramatically.
East as a whole, it's so much better than before.
>>The goal is to hit the ball in the air as many times--
>>Vickie: The advantage of spending time doing this is the payoff
in academics.
There's research out now that shows that kids involved
in intentional social emotional learning programs like we're trying
to do right here scored on average ten percent higher
on their standardized tests.
So what are we giving up?
We're giving up, you know, higher referrals.
We're giving up violence in our schools.
What are we getting?
Kids who come to school because they wanna come to school,
and kids who know how to act when they get into the schools,
and hopefully, kids who will go into their futures
with a better chance at success.
>>Michael: How should we treat each other?
>>Boy: Very well, because if we treat each other really bad,
we won't like get along or be friends,
or like be part of one big family.
>>Michael: You know what, you go home and you tell your mom-- look at me.
You have [speaking Spanish.]
>>Boy: [speaking Spanish].
>>Michael: I love you.
All right, [speaking Spanish].
>>Narrator: For more information on what works
in public education, go to Edutopia.org