Resource Hub

Social Emotional Health

• Building Blocks paper

• A good paper by Stephanie Jones and Suzanne Bouffard about that fact that SEL has to be more than a program/curriculum.

• A meta-analysis demonstrating the impact that SEL programs have on academic achievement

• Important for policy folks - ROI and SEL 

• Article about the connection between SEL and behavior management - really thinking about it from a developmental perspective. 

• For other resources, Transforming Education has a weekly newsletter that shares new research, press and other SEL related work. 

• As for in-school resources, it depends on what kind of SEL skills/mindsets you want to develop. For school wide culture/climate, I think Mindful Schools does good work. Restorative Practices  are another school culture approach that is more focused on student development over behavior like PBIS. With PBIS you don’t necessary build skills in students that they transfer out of the environment .You can also look at Quiet Time  which involves 15 minutes of meditation at the beginning and end of the school day. For specific programs/curriciula (important but not sufficient), RULER is great for younger students - it focuses on emotional awareness and regulation, and take a look at Ripple Effects by Alice Ray- for older students because they engage directly with a device and not through teachers - we’ve found that in some cases some of these skills aren’t developed as well via teachers for a number of reasons (trust, teachers’ own SEL skills or mindsets). Also CASEL publishes a guide of evidence based programs for elementary and secondary schools.

• This 2-pager describes how social emotional learning benefits students (not native-specific but still helpful): http://bit.ly/25BJ83y

• Healthier Students are Better Learners: http://www.equitycampaign.org/i/a/document/12557_EquityMattersVol6_Web03082010.pdf

• Power, T. J., Shapiro, E. S., & DuPaul, G. J. : Preparing psychologists to link the health and educational systems in managing and preventing children’s health problems. Journal of Pediatric Psychology 28: 147-155, 2003.

• This is a specific study on social-emotional learning as it relates to outcomes for Aboriginal youth in Canada: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1151&context=iipj

• Five inter-connected themes emerged: cultural wellness, emotional wellness, mental wellness, social wellness, and strong identity, with strong identity described as central and foundational to the other themes. This study strengthens the assertion that Aboriginal children require an additional set of social-emotional skills to successfully navigate different cultural contexts during development. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

• Hallett D, Chandler MJ & Lalonde CE 2007. Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide. Cognitive Development 22(3):392–9.

• Wexler L 2009. The importance of identity, history and culture in the wellbeing of Indigenous youth. Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2(2):267–76.

• International studies have consistently found that cultural affiliation and engagement by Indigenous young people are positively associated with their resilience and wellbeing (Wexler 2009). Aboriginal communities in British Columbia (Canada) in which at least half of the members reported a conversational knowledge of their own language experienced no or very low numbers of youth suicides over the period for which data were available (Hallett et al. 2007).

• This is a school in Alaska that measures SEL. They’re students demonstrate high levels of these skills: http://arisepartnership.org/data/outcomes/social-emotional-learning-skills/

• This Presents both the neg/challenges in social/emotional health for native students, but also mentions the positive things that communities offer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567901/