Dive Brief:

• The Brzycki Group and The Center for the Self in Schools has released a Well-Being in School workshop series to train educators, health care providers and policymakers in requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, social-emotional learning measurements and research-based best practices.
• The Brzycki Group is a human development and learning research and education organization co-founded by Henry and Elaine Brzycki, who also run The Center for the Self, and it was a vocal advocate of ‘whole child’ education requirements in ESSA, now calling on governors to focus on prevention of serious well-being problems through education rather than solely funding treatment.
• The best practices the organizations plan to highlight in the series are teaching resiliency and self-awareness through the Integrated Self Model, incorporating well-being and mental health factors into the everyday classroom through Self Across the Curriculum, and helping children learn self-agency by identifying their dreams for life through The Success Predictor.

Dive Insight:

The Every Student Succeeds Act has been lauded for its attention to extra-academic factors like social-emotional learning. The No Child Left Behind era was marked by a laser focus on standardized test scores, and many educators criticized the lack of time spent building these other important skillsets in students. Social-emotional skill-building has been tied directly to academic progress, and ESSA is expected to encourage schools to approach it head-on.

In Chicago, several schools are participating in a pilot about mindfulness education, and districts in Illinois, Texas and California have all experimented with various tools and measurement strategies to identify how well SEL programs are going and how they can be improved. By identifying key data points, administrators can track progress toward clear, strategic goals.