What is Social and Emotional Learning? 

Social & Emotional Learning or SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, understand and manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL is a systemic approach to intentionally cultivating a caring, participatory, and equitable learning environment and evidence-based practice that actively involves all students in their social, emotional, and academic growth.  This approach infuses social and emotional learning into every part of students’ daily lives—across all of their classrooms, during all times of the school day, and when they are in their homes and communities.

Waxahachie ISD uses the following counseling curriculums to incorporate Social and Emotional Learning into classroom guidance and small group lessons:

• Harmony -Harmony is an instructional program for PreK-5th grade educators to help their students develop social and emotional skills. Harmony provides educators with the tools to foster and support student connections, collaborations, and learning. 
• Kelso’s Choice - Kelso’s Choice is for use with diverse student groups, including students experiencing physical, behavioral, learning, emotional or psychological challenges. The program has also been proven effective when teaching anger management skills and impulse control.
• Project Wisdom - Project Wisdom is a highly-respected character education and social and emotional program.  Project Wisdom encourages students to reflect upon the meaning of civic and personal values and the application of those values in their daily lives.
• Social Thinking - Social thinking is the process by which we interpret the thoughts, beliefs, intentions, emotions, knowledge, and actions of another person along with the context of the situation to understand that person’s experience.  A person’s social thinking ability has a considerable effect on his or her relationships and success in school and at work and affects the person’s social skills, perspective taking, self-awareness, self-regulation, critical thinking, social problem solving, play skills, reading comprehension, written expression, ability to learn and work in a group, organizational skills, etc.