(inspiring music) - Social and emotional learning is the intentional teaching of skills that really all of us need to navigate through school and through life.

So on the social factor, we're looking at how do you connect with and interact with other people?

And then emotional skills are looking at how do we regulate mood and feelings and how do we really function to the best of our abilities?

- When we're talking about young children and social and emotional learning, we're really talking about how they develop a sense of self, how they understand who they are in relation to others, how they come to recognize their own emotions and the emotions in others.

- Social emotional learning is the ability to identify one's own emotions and feelings and to connect those to behaviors in a responsible way.

In the context of my work, I teach small children to have heightened awareness of what those feelings are and how those feelings impact their behaviors.

- Social and emotional learning, particularly in the context of adolescents and teenagers is pretty much the development phase to help them to be responsible, learning those critical decision-making skills.

(inspiring music) - The five competencies of social and emotional learning skills, they build on each other.

They're kind of like a stair step.

So first you have to be aware of yourself and what you bring to the table.

Then you have to be able to manage that awareness so that you have appropriate behavior.

Then you have to be able to recognize what is everybody else bringing to the table?

What kinds of behaviors are they demonstrating and why might they be demonstrating them so that you can have strong relationships with each other.

And then understanding those relationships with people will help you make responsible decisions.

(inspiring music) - Historically, we haven't really had a framework that helped to guide districts and schools in implementing a whole-child approach.

Ohio's whole-child framework is a system for looking at all of the tenets and factors that influence a child's experience in school.

And really it's planning to make sure that students are safe, healthy, supported, engaged, and challenged.

- A whole-child approach to education is one in which we believe that when students are healthy and they feel safe, if they are supported with caring relationships by both their peers as well as by their teachers, if they are challenged by the academic content and they're engaged in learning, they will show up to school ready, able to learn, and wanting to learn, and that will help them to achieve academic success as well as further success, both personally and in their career and in the future.

- So SEL plays a big part in the whole-child framework.

That framework is about giving a sense of understanding what each child needs to be successful where they are.

And our social and emotional development is a huge part of that.

(inspiring music)