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Chapter I

The Problem and the Opportunity

Social-Emotional Learning and Academic Engagement

Would you like your students to behave? By which we mean:

• Be kind and supportive toward one another? Work productively with partners and in teams?

• Sustain lively and thoughtful discussions in small groups?

• Maintain focus and productivity?

• Help each other dig deep into curricular topics?

• Show classmates respect, not aggression and put-downs?

• Create a classroom climate of curiosity, focus, and fun?

• Get good test scores and be good human beings?

Us, too. Creating supportive classroom communities has been a subtext of seven books we have previously written together. Here, we bring it to the foreground.

Wherever we work in schools (twenty-three states last year) the number one question teachers ask is: “How can I get these kids to work together?” Sometimes, they say this with emphasis on the word these, accompanied by a subtle eye-roll, as in, “You have no idea what I am up against here."

Wherever we work in schools, the number one question teachers ask is: “How can I get these kids to work together?"

No matter how politely we phrase it, a perennial problem is that our kids don't all get along. They don't work together easily. Too often, they hassle, disrespect, and put each other down. When we place them with partners or in groups, they goof off, waste time, careen off task, or pick on each other. We watch this with rising levels of discomfort, trying to put a lid on the fractiousness, the negativity. After a while, we may feel compelled to abandon our dream of an interactive classroom, push the desks back into rows, and hand out some worksheets, just to calm the kids down. If we get frustrated enough, we'll cast blame upon last year's teachers, or the kids' parents, or their neighborhood. “Maybe next year,” we think to ourselves, “I'll get a class that can collaborate."

But no one is born knowing how to be a good friend, a supportive partner, or a responsible team member. These skills have to be learned. Or, to put it another way, we have to teach this stuff] It's not fair for us to complain about chaos or low morale in our classrooms before we even try to fix it.

No one is born knowing how to be a responsible team member. These skills have to be learned … we have to teach this stuff!

Now, we are not completely denying the reality of what we teachers call “good groups" and “bad groups.” Sometimes, the district computer sends us a real doozy of a class list. You start to wonder, are they punishing me for something? But mostly, good groups—classes of kids who work well together—are made, not born. That's one thing that this book is about: taking command of the interactions in our classroom, not being victims of the luck of the draw.

What's Been Missing in School Reform

After decades of academic-based reforms like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, school people are realizing that we have indeed left something crucial behind. The vital social skills of successful academic work are being neglected in today's classrooms, despite their centrality in college and career readiness. Kids are living in (and leaving) schools without acquiring the habits of effective collaboration with others. They aren't learning how to be respectful, friendly, cooperative, and empathic. They aren't growing as responsible team members, supportive partners, and reliable workers. They aren't practicing the social skills that lead to success in school, college, or anywhere else they might wind up.

Some call this overlooked domain “emotional intelligence," or “soft skills," or “interpersonal skills," or “positive behavior," or even “twenty-first century skills." Under these various banners, school districts across the country have belatedly begun addressing the issues of student emotional states, school climate, “positive behavior interventions and supports,” social skills, and collaboration. A stunningly diverse (and otherwise polarized) assortment of school people and vendors are jumping aboard.

It seems fair to say that we are enjoying a boom in “social-emotional learning,” commonly shorthanded to SEL. This diffuse movement encompasses a wide range of both commercial and nonprofit programs that teach kids how to manage their emotions, build relationships, and work effectively, both as individuals and as teammates. Early research on these models has been very promising: a major meta-analysis of 213 studies showed an average 11 percent gain in academic performance for kids receiving such instruction (Durlak et al., 2011).

Why We Must Teach Social-Academic Skills Now

A variety of factors has emerged to drive the awareness of SEL, to raise our sense of urgency, and to fuel its implementation in today's schools.

The Common Core State Standards Requirements

The CCSS standards for Speaking and Listening (2010) explicitly call for all students to develop the social skills of academic interaction. The anchor standards require students to collaborate effectively “in pairs, small group and large group discussions” from kindergarten through high school. Grade-level standards get more precise and challenging as kids move up. In kindergarten, the CCSS expects children to:

• Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups

• Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others and taking turns speaking about the topics and texts under discussion)

• Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges

• Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood

• Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood

By grade 5, kids should:

• Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly

• Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material, and explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion

• Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and carry out assigned roles

• Pose and respond to specific questions by making comments that contribute to the discussion and elaborate on the remarks of others

• Review the key ideas expressed and draw conclusions in light of information and knowledge gained from the discussions

• Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally

• Summarize the points a speaker makes and explain how each claim is supported by reasons and evidence

And, by grades 11 and 12, students are required to:

• Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 11—12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively

• Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study, and explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas

• Work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision making, set clear goals and deadlines, and establish individual roles as needed

• Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives

• Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task

• Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data

• Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric; assess the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used

Now we're talking real “college and career readiness.” While critics complain that some CCSS targets are irrelevant or archaic, these goals couldn't be more appropriate and realistic.

Now we're talking real “college and career readiness."While critics complain that some CCSS targets are irrelevant or archaic, the above goals couldn't be more appropriate and realistic. School graduates who have mastered these speaking and listening skills are going to be miles ahead in their later studies, in career achievement, and in life.

Given that forty-five states initially adopted these guidelines, the CCSS has given the explicit teaching of social-academic skills a huge push. Even though a few states never joined up or have recently parted company with the national standards, each of those states has its own set of targets that are often very similar to the CCSS. For example, the Texas standards require fifth graders to “participate in student-led discussions by eliciting and considering suggestions from other group members and by identifying points of agreement and disagreement." And in high school, to “work productively with others in teams, building on the ideas of others, contributing relevant information, developing a plan for consensus-building, and setting ground rules for decision-making” (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, 2008).

Concern About School Climate, Violence, and Bullying

The socioemotional climate of our public schools and the relationships among the people who inhabit them have populated the headlines in recent years. The horrific school shootings, like those at Columbine and Sandy Hook, remind us that our schools are too often crime scenes, not safe harbors. And while the rate of major violence in U.S. schools has actually been shrinking since 1993, there are still ample reasons to worry about kids' safely.

The Centers for Disease Control (2013) reports that in a nationally representative sample of youth in grades 9-12:

• 12 percent reported being in a physical fight on school property in the twelve months before the survey.

• 5.9 percent reported that they did not go to school on one or more days in the thirty days before the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.

• 5.4 percent reported carrying a weapon (gun, knife, or club) on school property on one or more days in the thirty days before the survey.

• 7.4 percent reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property one or more times in the twelve months before the survey.

• 20 percent reported being bullied on school property and 16 percent reported being bullied electronically during the twelve months before the survey.

• During 2010, there were about 828,000 nonfatal acts of violence at school among students ages twelve to eighteen.

• Approximately 7 percent of teachers reported that they had been threatened with injury or physically attacked by a student from their school.

• In 2009, about 20 percent of students ages twelve to eighteen reported that gangs were present at their school during the school year.

As the CDC wrapped up in its report:

Not all injuries are visible. Exposure to youth violence and school violence can lead to a wide array of negative health behaviors and outcomes, including alcohol and drug use and suicide. Depression, anxiety, and many other psychological problems, including fear, can result from school violence. (Centers for Disease Control, 2013)

Among all these issues, bullying has been prioritized as a topic of urgent action. In fact, many states now require that each public school district have a bullying prevention program in place.

Concern also is growing about teenage suicide. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), teen suicide is the third-leading cause of death for young people ages fifteen to twenty-four, surpassed only by homicide and accidents. The CDC reports that each year, 20 percent of high school students seriously consider suicide, 14 percent make a plan, and 8 percent make a suicide attempt. What pushes certain kids over the edge? The APA offers an explanation:

The risk for suicide frequently occurs in combination with external circumstances that seem to overwhelm at-risk teens who are unable to cope with the challenges of adolescence because of predisposing vulnerabilities such as mental disorders. Examples of stressors are disciplinary problems, interpersonal losses, family violence, sexual orientation confusion, physical and sexual abuse and being the victim of bullying. (American Psychological Association, 2013)

Discriminatory Discipline Practices

Many traditional school disciplinary policies have now been shown to be unfair to some groups of students. Both governmental and private research studies have shown that minority students are disproportionately excluded from school through a wide array of disciplinary practices: corporal punishment, suspension, expulsion, and even referrals to police and arrests. For example, compared to white students, black students were twice as likely to face corporal punishment; 2.5 times as likely to be suspended in or out of school or arrested in a school-related incident; three times as likely to be expelled; and four times as likely to face out-of-school suspension multiple times. Similarly, Native American students were twice as likely as white students to be suspended from school several times, expelled, referred to law enforcement or arrested, or face corporal punishment (American Institutes for Research, 2013).

All these factors combine to keep minority students out of their seats in classrooms, losing instructional time, falling behind their peers, and becoming ever more likely to drop out of schools without the skills to support themselves, and thus feeding today's accelerated, school-to-prison pipeline. In response to these accumulating reports, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went to Howard University to pledge action:

Perhaps the most alarming findings involve the topic of discipline. The sad fact is that minority students across America face much harsher discipline than nonminorities, even within the same school. Some examples—African American students, particularly males, are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their peers. (Holland, 2012)

These data are not new. Reports about inequities in school discipline policies have been circulating for decades (Skiba et al., 2002). Some cities, like Baltimore, have been revising their suspension policies to keep kids in school and learning. Since 2000, Baltimore has moved to in-school discipline approaches, and therefore lowered its suspension rate by 58 percent (Cichan, 2012). Other districts and states are finally experimenting with a variety of fairer and less exclusionary discipline approaches, including restorative justice, teen court, and peer mediation.

Best Practice Instruction Requires Social-Academic Skills

Although the term best practice is often used with vague intent, decades of thoughtful research have yielded a clear consensus on what optimal classroom instruction looks like—and it doesn't look like kids sitting in straight rows of desks with their hands folded, listening to a teacher talk. Best practice teaching can only happen in a flexible, decentralized classroom where kids take action in a variety of configurations, assume responsibility, work with pride, hold themselves accountable, and support one another. In the fourth edition of their book Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America's Schools (Zemelman, 2012), Harvey and co-authors Steve Zemelman and Art Hyde synthesize recent findings about the most effective pedagogies.

Drawing on the reports and recommendations from the whole range of education research centers, subject matter organizations, and standards-setting agencies, Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde offer a model of powerful learning that is student-centered, cognitive, and interactive. This consensus vision of best practice can be summarized by looking at the following chart, which shows development from conventional toward more student-centered teaching.

As you can see, the interlocking conditions of good instruction cannot happen under the old command-and-control models of top-down school discipline. The new paradigm both requires and creates interdependence among everyone in the classroom. The characteristic structures and activities of state-of-the-art teaching require a pervasive climate of student self-awareness, autonomy, responsibility, collaboration, and reflection.

INDICATORS OF BEST PRACTICE

This chart illustrates movement from a teacher-directed to a student-centered classroom. Growth along this continuum does not mean complete abandonment of established instructional approaches. Instead, teachers add new alternatives to a widening repertoire of choices, allowing them to move among a richer array of activities, creating a more diverse and complex balance.

Classroom Setup: Promotes Student Collaboration

• Setup for teacher-centered instruction (separate desks) ►Student-centered arrangement (tables)

• Rows of desks ► Varied learning spaces for whole-class, small-group, and independent work

• Bare, unadorned space ► Commercial decorations ► Student-made artwork, products, displays of work

• Few materials ► Textbooks and handouts ► Varied resources (books, magazines, artifacts, manipulatives, etc.)

Classroom Climate: Actively Involves Students

• Management by consequences and rewards ► Order maintained by engagement and community

• Teacher creates and enforces rules ► Students help set and enforce norms

• Students are quiet, motionless, passive, controlled ► Students are responsive, active, purposeful, autonomous

• Fixed student grouping based on ability ► Flexible grouping based on tasks and choice

• Consistent, unvarying schedule ► Predictable but flexible time usage based on activities

Voice and Responsibility: Balanced Between Teacher-and Student-Directed

• Teacher relies solely on an established curriculum ► Some themes and inquiries are built from students' own questions ("negotiated curriculum")

• Teacher chooses all activities ► Students often select inquiry topics, books, writing topics, audiences, etc.

• Teacher directs all assignments ► Students assume responsibility, take roles in decision making, help run classroom life

• Whole-class reading and writing assignments ► Independent reading (SSR, reading workshop, or book clubs) and independent writing (journals, writing workshop)

• Teacher assesses, grades, and keeps all records ► Students maintain their own records, set own goals, self-assess

Language and Communication: Deepen Learning

• Silence ► Purposeful noise and conversation

• Short responses ► Elaborated discussion ► Students' own questions and evaluations

• Teacher talk ► Student-teacher talk ► Student-student talk plus teacher conferring with students

• Talk and writing focus on: Facts ► Skills ► Concepts ► Synthesis and reflection

Activities and Assignments: Balance the Traditional and More Interactive

• Teacher presents material ► Students read, write, and talk every day ► Students actively experience concepts

• Whole-class teaching ► Small-group instruction ► Wide variety of activities, balancing individual work, small groups, and whole-class activities

• Uniform curriculum for all ► Jigsawed curriculum (different but related topics, according to kids'needs or choices)

• Light coverage of wide range of subjects ► Intensive, deep study of selected topics

• Short-term lessons, one day at a time ► Extended activities; multiday, multistep projects

• Isolated subject lessons ► Integrated, thematic, cross-disciplinary inquiries

• Focus on memorization and recall of facts ► Focus on applying knowledge and problem solving

• Short responses, fill-in-the-blank exercises ► Complex responses, evaluations, writing, performances, artwork

• Identical assignments for all ► Differentiated curriculum for all styles and abilities

Student Work and Assessment: Inform Teachers, Students, Parents

• Products created for teachers and grading ► Products created for real events and audiences

• Classroom/hallway displays: no student work posted ► “A” papers only ► All students represented

• Identical, imitative products displayed ► Varied and original products displayed

• Teacher feedback via scores and grades ► Teacher feedback and conferences are substantive and formative

• Products are seen and rated only by teachers ► Public exhibitions and performances are common

• Data kept private in teacher gradebook ► Work kept in student-maintained portfolios

• All assessment by teachers ► Student self-assessment an official element ► Parents are involved

• Standards set during grading ► Standards available in advance ► Standards codeveloped with students

Teacher Attitude and Outlook: Take Professional Initiative

Relationship with students is:

• Distant, impersonal, fearful ► Positive, warm, respectful, encouraging

• Judging ► Understanding, empathizing, inquiring, guiding

• Directive ► Consultative

Attitude toward self is:

• Powerless worker ► Risk taker/experimenter ► Creative, active professional

• Solitary adult ► Member of team with other adults in school ►Member of networks beyond school

• Staff development recipient ► Director of own professional growth

View of role is:

• Expert, presenter, gatekeeper ► Coach, mentor, model, guide

Source: Reprinted with permission from Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America's Classrooms, Fourth Edition by Steven Zemelman, Harvey “Smokey"Daniels, and Arthur Hyde. Copyright © 2012 by Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. All rights reserved.

Teachers Need Support in Teaching Social-Academic Skills

Most of us went to school under an authoritarian discipline system. Why would we feel comfortable or eager to depart from the paradigm on which we were raised?

Even as the call for social-emotional learning grows louder, teachers aren't exactly leaping forward to lead the movement. This is not just because state officials, school reformers, and publishers got a jump-start (though they did). We teachers, let's not forget, were students once too, and we didn't necessarily encounter good teaching around social skills, either. Most of us went to school (and future teachers are still attending school) under an authoritarian discipline system. We didn't have much experience with approaches other than rules, rewards, and punishments. Why would we feel comfortable or eager to depart from the paradigm on which we were raised, especially considering how well we turned out? (And it is worth recognizing that most of us eventual teachers were “good kids,” who didn't run afoul of the discipline system enough to taste its harshest lash.)

In our workshops, we often ask teachers to think back on their own experiences with collaborative, partner, or group work in school. Many simply laugh and say, “I hated it!"The most painful problem they recollect is that, when working in small groups, they always had to do the majority of the work to ensure their own good grade, carrying the slackers to the finish line on their own bent backs. We now realize that these folks, so many of today's teachers, were victims of ill-structured cooperative learning, and carry negative attitudes and misconceptions about students working together. And even if we later got some formal training in proper collaborative learning, it may have been be too brief and weak to overcome those early negative experiences. So, if we are going to be required to explicitly teach social-academic skills, we need more support, training, and materials than we've been offered so far.

But it gets even more personal. Some states—Illinois, for one—are adopting teacher assessment rubrics that assign points for classrooms that feature well-structured student collaboration, discussion, and debate. These ranking systems reward teachers who successfully incorporate such interaction into their daily teaching—and punish those who don't. For example, the widely used Charlotte Danielson teacher evaluation rubric requires kids to be working cooperatively in order for their teacher to receive the highest possible “Distinguished” ranking. In her rationale, Danielson writes:

As important as a teacher's treatment of students is, how students are treated by their classmates is arguably even more important to students. At its worst, poor treatment causes students to feel rejected by their peers. At its best, positive interactions among students are mutually supportive and create an emotionally healthy school environment. Teachers not only model and teach students how to engage in respectful interactions with one another but also acknowledge such interaction. (Danielson, 2011)

With salaries and even continued employment now depending on one-time evaluations like these, teachers better have an interactive community humming when the principal comes around to score them.

Bottom line: the world is asking teachers to run their classrooms in new ways, but it hasn't yet provided the practical tools they need to make such large and sometimes uncomfortable changes.

Emerging Research: Social-Emotional Skills Can Be Taught

There is a robust and growing body of research that validates the explicit teaching of social-academic skills. Earlier, we cited the Durlak meta-analysis, which showed remarkable academic gains for kids who had been taught key social skills. The Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning www.casel.org.

Today's most commonly used teacher evaluation rubric requires kids to be working cooperatively in order for their teacher to receive the highest possible “Distinguished” ranking.

A variety of researchers have looked closely at the relationship between school climate and student achievement. Evidence consistently ties poor socioemotional climates to low achievement and test scores. In its School Climate Research Summary, the National School Climate Center summarizes recent findings:

School climate matters. Positive and sustained school climate is associated with and/or predictive of positive child and youth development, effective risk prevention and health promotion efforts, student learning and academic achievement, increased student graduation rates, and teacher retention. (Thapa et al., 2012)

One related line of inquiry comes out of the Consortium for Chicago Schools Research at the University of Chicago. Over a series of studies, Anthony Bryk and colleagues have shown that “relational trust is the ‘glue’ or the essential element” that potentiates all the other factors leading to school improvement (Bryk et al., 2010; Bryk & Schneider, 2002). In other words, in schools that cultivate friendliness and mutual support, kids learn better.

It is important to note that in addition to general studies of social-emotional learning, investigations in separate academic disciplines cross-validate these findings. For example, the pioneering literacy researcher Richard Allington has shown that when students regularly discuss their reading with peers, gains are seen in engagement, in comprehension, and on high-stakes reading tests (2012). In the mathematics world, similar connections have been found between social-emotional skills and academic achievement. In several studies, researchers at the Yale Child Study Center found strong links between social competencies and academic achievement. As the investigators reported, “the strengths of the relationships between students' knowledge of themselves and others and their achievement in math was found to be strong” (Haynes et al., 2003).

My Kids, Right Now

There's one more reason why we need to teach social skills in our classrooms: this is our life. We are in real classrooms today, each of us with a group of kids (or five groups of kids), in some kind of relationship, for nine months. For everyone's morale, sense of safely, hunger for belonging, and need to take risks and grow, we must create a friendly, supportive place to be. We want everyone to walk through that classroom door with smiles on their faces this morning, acknowledging and savoring our differences, feeling our solidarity, and feeding off one another's energy.

We are complicated and separate people, and we'll bring some junk through that door too, but if we address our interaction forthrightly and practice sociable behavior together, we can dial down the static, put aside our baggage, and grow with our friends' support. Instead of cutting each other down, we can all stand on each other's shoulders. In the game of school, we can enjoy Home Court Advantage every day. And we would prefer this to happen right now.

How to Address These Problems and Seize the Opportunities

In this resource, we offer thirty-five classroom-ready lessons that address this whole array of problems and opportunities. These lessons

• Are all directly correlated with the Common Core standards for Speaking and Listening

• Engage students in experiences that systematically build a sense of belonging and personal significance

• Make kids feel safer and more connected, so they are less likely to put down or bully others

• Enable highly interactive, student-driven best practice instruction to succeed in your classroom

• Help you feel comfortable and ready to tackle this new teaching task—and enjoy the challenge

• Get you ready to be assessed in your own classroom, by showcasing students who work together fluidly flexibly, and with focus

• Ground you with a strong research and knowledge base in the emerging field of social-emotional learning, as well as related and longer-established fields of inquiry

• Help you grow or mend your classroom climate now, to solve management and morale problems, and develop long-term spirit and solidarity

• Make sure all your students acquire the social-academic skills they need for their future education, and in their lives as workers, community members, and citizens

All Social Skills Programs Are Not Alike

In today's crowded school marketplace, there are countless programs promising to teach social, or emotional, or behavior, or collaboration, or interpersonal skills. We deeply respect a number of them; Responsive Classroom, Facing History, the Child Development Center, Restorative Justice, and others do wonderful, pro-social work. Some other SEL programs are based on adult-dictated rules, warnings, contingent rewards, and swift punishments. Not to put too fine a point on it, obedience-driven discipline is still very much in the driver's seat in this market segment.

One of the most widely adopted SEL programs, Second Step, comes with a teacher kit of highly scripted lessons. Second Step's parent organization, the Committee for Children, identifies the core skill of its program as “self-regulation":

In a nutshell, self-regulation is the ability to monitor and manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. It's what helps students focus their attention on a lesson when they may be distracted by noisy classmates, a problem they had at recess, or excitement about an upcoming birthday party. (Committee for Children, 2011)

Researchers at the Yale Child Study Center found strong links between social competencies and academic achievement.

God forbid that a child should have an outburst of delight over a birthday!

We're not disputing the reality that in this culture, the habit of self-control and the mind-set of delayed gratification contribute to certain kinds of success. But many of the SEL programs we've studied stifle children's genuine emotions, swapping immediate gratification for immediate obedience. This movement cannot be called an innovation if social-emotional learning becomes a backdoor route to old-school discipline: shut the kids up, sit them down, and maintain an emotionally flat tone in school, day in and day out.

Other SEL programs trade the iron fist of self-regulation for the velvet glove of psychobabble. A long and balanced piece on the SEL movement in the New York Times reports from one kindergarten classroom (Kahn, 2013). The teacher invites kids to tell about problems with their parents. When one boy admits that his mother yelled at him, the teacher imitates a screaming parent and encourages the child to think up an answer to his angry mother. Finally, the kid manages, “Mommy, I don't like it when you scream at me."The teacher approvingly predicts, “And maybe your Mommy will say, 'I'm sorry.'” But then again, maybe Mommy won't appreciate such backtalk, and things at home could escalate.

Education Week ran another generally admiring piece on social-emotional learning (Heitlin, 2013). In one lesson, fifth graders are asked to use markers and paper to draw pictures of their own faces. Then, the teacher reads aloud a story full of anger and put-downs. At each negative turn in the story, she instructs kids to tear off a part of their own face from the pictures they have created. Before the story is done, much of the class is in tears.

We mention these worrisome examples not to condemn the whole SEL movement, of which we are a part, but to caution against uncritical adoption of programs with foreseeably damaging consequences. And also to say: this is not what we do. Though we are definitely psychological in our outlook, we do not promote (or condone) classroom group therapy, behavior modification, psychodrama, or emotional blackmail.

What is vanishingly rare today is a program that actually shows kids what good behavior looks like, explicitly teaches it, and provides closely guided practice so that young people can actually acquire new ways of acting and interacting. That's what this resource aims to do.

We are living in a world of standards. So let us propose one: every student in your classroom works with every other kid, regularly, cheerfully, and supportively, all year long. No one says, “I won't work with her."That's a standard we want to help you meet.

Our Theory of Action

So what is our own theoretical background, what are our assumptions and our research base? The next short chapter gives you that information in more detail.

Here's a preview: We come out of the worlds of social psychology, group dynamics, and collaborative learning. We grow kids' social-academic skills not by limiting, coercing, or controlling them, but by offering them more responsibility, control, and choice. We treat them like the people they want to become. We take it as our responsibility to model the behaviors that we want kids to practice. We provide explicit demonstrations, guided practice, close coaching, feedback, and systematic reflection. Our theory of action is this: acquaintance leads to friendship, which in turn leads to supportive behavior. In the classroom community that you can create, kids predictably acquire individual and collaborative social strategies that become automatic, that serve them today in school and onward through their lives.

And one other thing: these lessons are fun. Kids love them.