Mary
Social and emotional learning is helping children develop specific things like social awareness, self-awareness, problem solving skills inter-relationship skills, things that will help them get through life and be successful no matter where they are, whether it’s in school, on the playground, at home or in the community.

Vikki
A benefit to teaching social emotional learning in the classroom is that the children feel a responsibility for the things they are learning and they feel ownership for what’s going on. And they’re able to problem solve on their own and they don’t count on adults as much for those types of situations.

Mary
There are several ways to incorporate social emotional learning into the classroom. It can be something that you consciously imbed into your curriculum. So any curricular area can include social emotional learning because you can do something like in a literature discussion have children take perspective on a character’s actions and look at it from various ways and see how they might have solved that problem or how they might have approached things. And it can also be some specific skills instruction in social emotional learning. Helping children learn how to problem-solve, how to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner or how to interact with a person that they’re working with.

Vikki
In my opinion, if a social emotional program is being executed correctly in the schools it is a perfect complement to what is happening at home. Children start school when they’re five years old and these practices have been started whether it be social awareness or problem solving, that all starts at home and just gets carried over to school. And we are able to, in the classroom we are able to help the children take those steps forward and continue on with what the parents have continued to practice at home.

Mary
Say it out loud means taking a positive approach to mental health for all children in our schools by addressing it, specifically teaching it, intentionally approaching positive mental health in the schools makes our children happier and better learners.