By Linda Conner Lambeck
WESTPORT — Social and emotional learning as a strategic direction for the school district won cautious endorsement Monday by the Board of Education, but a second goal to focus on collaborative problem-solving needs more flesh on the bone, as one board member put it.
“We need more information,” board member Neil Phillips said after a three-hour presentation, a question-and-answer period and public comments both supporting and opposing the plan.
The hard-fought-for consensus gives Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice the green light to devote more staff time and effort toward moving beyond broad ideas and target opportunities for growth across the system in social emotional wellness and, perhaps, collaborative problem solving.
“The next step is to look at, ‘What does this mean in Westport?’ ” Assistant Supt. Michael Rizzo told the board.
“Social Emotional Learning” a major part of strategic planning
A new strategic plan has been discussed since Scarice was hired more than 18 months ago.
After months of brainstorming, committee meetings, surveys, guest speakers and an inordinate number of Post-it notes, the two ideas — social emotional learning and problem solving — emerged as the best way to help the high-performing district reach its overarching aim to have well-adjusted students who can solve complex problems that matter to them.
The ideas have attracted many questions and some suspicion.
Scarice acknowledged that in some quarters, social emotional learning, or SEL, has become the “next fight in education,” right up there with Common Core and Critical Race Theory.
As such, much of the presentation Monday was spent debunking the narrative that SEL is a left-wing ideology, but instead is essential to academic learning. The critical thinking component of the plan was mentioned only in passing.
The board was told 20 states have adopted K-12 SEL competencies.
It is part of Connecticut’s Common Core rubric.
The Westport school district, Scarice said, employs social emotional learning now, but in “pockets of excellence,” not systematically.
“We are looking to get to next level,” Scarice said, to guarantee that all students will get the benefit of social emotional wellness, K-12.
His point was perhaps best illustrated by Grace Horton, a Staples High School senior, who spoke to the board during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Horton said she is in total support of social emotional learning, crediting it with keeping her in school.
“I see where some upset parents are coming from, but I don’t sympathize with them,” Horton said. “When I am having a bad day, focusing on classwork is out of the picture.”
SEL, Horton said, provided some comfort. “For some students it is a saving grace,” she said.
Rizzo said the district will have to decide where to direct SEL efforts. The idea is that SEL will become something all students experience.
Board members’ reaction
Board member Kevin Christie said he supports both areas of the strategic plan.
“I like the approach,” Christie said. “This builds on who we are.”
Vice Chairwoman Liz Heyer called the presentation helpful, but hoped for more information about where critical and collaborative learning components fit in.
Board member Christina Torres said social emotional learning has her full support.
“Wouldn’t we want this for all of our kids?” asked board member Neil Phillips.
Still, he also said the administration needs to flesh out its collaborative learning initiative.
Dorie Hordon said she supports social emotional learning, but questioned how it is being applied at the secondary level and how data collected from students will be used. She also wondered how the district’s ongoing equity study would fit into the planning.
Board member Robert Harrington said he is supportive of a focus on both SEL and design thinking, but to be successful he recommended the district address the fear and anxiety expressed by a segment of the community by creating a special committee to participate in the planning going forward.
A vote on creating such a committee was postponed until a meeting next week.
Proposal debated by public
Before officially weighing in, the board heard from more than a dozen members of the public.
Jackie Martin, a parent, said the district already has a committee that participated in the work to develop a strategic plan.
The new committee “seems a plea by a few dissenting voices,” Martin said.
Anne Alcyone questioned the use of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, to guide the district in implementing its plan.
She called the CASEL curriculum indoctrination.
“I don’t want my kids to be told to do that,” she said.
Scott Weiner said he supports Social Emotional Learning being responsibly implemented. It is not an indoctrination tool or trojan horse for promoting something akin to Marxism, he said.
“Stay the course and listen to real concerns,” Weiner said.
Parent Camilo Riano said the proposal is not a strategic plan at all.
“I agree with having the committee,” Riano said.
Danielle Dobin welcomed SEL, problem-solving and collaborative learning becoming universal goals. She said her older son experienced the latter when he won a coveted spot on the Staples “We the People” team.
“Few kids are getting the same opportunity,” Dobin said. “We can do a lot better.”
Parent Rosie Curtis said what the children of Westport need most right now is a future that has more unity than division.
“We as adults have huge responsibly to give them a future that protects them, not harm them … a future that encourages brave conversations,” said Curtis, calling social emotional learning important for everyone.
“Let’s make our schools even more amazing,” she said.
No “blank check”
There were no votes, but board members took turns critiquing the proposed direction for the district.
Heyer said she is cautiously willing to pursue social emotional learning as an area of exploration, depending on how it is implemented.
“To be clear I don’t see it as ablank check or foregone conclusion,” Heyer said.
She said it was hard to endorse the design thinking goal because it was not adequately defined.
Heyer said that her stance should not be read as a lack of trust in district educators, who she called wonderful.
Hordon said it is obvious all members of the school board want social and emotional wellness for students, but added that many unanswered questions remain.
Torres called the planning an ongoing process and that she trusts the professionals who will flesh it out.
It is important to understand that SEL under CASEL, which pretty much has the entire market for SEL wrapped up, has changed a lot since it began. If one looks at its tenets and the program in the early 2000’s, it was focussed on personal responsibility and self regulation (see the CASEL slide for competencies in 2000). By 2020, CASEL had changed the focus of SEL from personal emotional regulation to Transformative SEL, a social justice form of SEL based in group identity. (See the CASEL slide for competencies in SEL and compare the change from 2000.) If you leave out the identity buckets, as did the SEL of the early 2000’s, it can be very helpful for kids, but now with the focus on identity, it can actually harm kids by diminishing their history and focussing on things that divide us and that are outside the control of children. In the lower grades, SEL was taught in 30-40 minute blocks three times/week, but divisive identity issues are taking over and creating dis-ease among students. (Johnathon Haidt, the Coddling of the American Mind). In High Schools, SEL is embedded in lessons with a social justice emphasis through something CASEL calls “Radical Imaginings,” where students are asked to focus as much on the social justice activism they are asked to engage in as on the actual material itself. This does not bode will for the academic education of our kids nor for their emotional well-being.
Oh no, Social Justice being taught In The schools. The horror.
Yes! the problem is that the work force is being drained by the failure of public schools to focus on individual excellence in education. See the Bloomberg article today 2.4.22. It used to be that we could count on talented immigrants to supply our workforce with exceptional talent, but no longer. “The country needs to add a new strand to educational reform: not just giving a helping hand to the poor or average performers but also identifying and nurturing the superstars who will help the U.S. beat back the challenge from Xi Jinping’s China. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-04/2022-worker-shortage-u-s-needs-to-boost-top-talent-to-stack-up-to-china
Anne, Then you are suggesting that a foundation of social emotional wellness would be a detriment to educational learning and excellence. This is the opposite of what we heard from our educators and administrators in their well presented update on Monday. They are not mutually exclusive in fact they go together. The need to step it up and do better for our kids includes social and emotional wellness and collaborative design thinking. Let’s let the administration, the educators and the board of education continue on with this important work without these demands for oversight , special committees and false narratives about what they are “actually” doing.