When most people think of an education curriculum, the traditional “reading, writing, and arithmetic” quickly come to mind. Social-emotional learning, or SEL, may only be considered as an afterthought, or overlooked entirely. But decades of research show that social-emotional curriculum supports academic gains. For more than 20 years, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, has been exploring and measuring the many benefits of SEL on student growth and learning. For example, SEL curriculum that meet quality standards have been shown to increase students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points, along with better classroom behavior, stress management and attitudes about themselves and others.
At a time when student need for mental and behavioral health services continues to increase, EmpowerU offers a turnkey social-emotional curriculum that works quickly and affordably to help students, staff and schools.
The Curriculum:
Our Tier 1 social-emotional curriculum is easy for schools to adopt — and fast to implement. Offered as a universal approach for all students, the turnkey program fits into the unique daily rhythms of elementary and middle school schedules. Following a brief online training, teachers use the EmpowerU platform to deliver each lesson, and students use EmpowerU’s journaling prompts for individual reflection to internalize learning.
With minimal training for the teachers, the approach helps schools expand mental health services and counseling capacity, without the need to roll out a new curriculum, hire new staff, train teachers or implement a school-wide program. The data-driven tool that equips students of any age with the skills they need to take charge of their emotions, thoughts and learning. The individual coaching helps students in the process of self-improvement and enables them to overcome obstacles, now and in the future.
How it Works:
The elementary curriculum features Charge™, a stuffed character that represents a person’s internal locus of control. Getting to know this control center helps students use healthy, positive skills when school life becomes stressful or difficult. It includes turnkey classroom lessons, videos featuring “Charge™” for whole-class activities, booklets and journals for student reflection, daily skill-building exercises and calming tools for morning meetings.
The middle school social emotional curriculum was developed to work inside the natural school day routines for grades 6-8. Learning activities are delivered through the EmpowerU platform and are designed to engage and support students in early adolescence.
Increasing a student’s access to licensed professional mental health support is at the heart of everything EmpowerU does. The social-emotional curriculum combines technology, relationships and brain science to help students master and retain core SEL concepts and skills.
