Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Innovative Approaches to Fostering Social and Emotional Learning

(Education)

High-poverty schools have come to realize that social and emotional learning can prevent dropouts and promote academic success, creating a need to identify partners who can deliver on boosting students’ social and emotional skills. In this panel, representatives of two organizations with approaches to foster social and emotional learning—City Year and Communities in Schools—will describe the challenges they face working in high-poverty schools and the ways in which they seek to address them. They will be joined by two leading researchers of social and emotional learning, who will discuss the evidence base on social and emotional learning in high-poverty schools, including rigorous evaluations of these two interventions.

City Year recruits and places diverse teams of trained, near peer AmeriCorps members in schools serving low income students to help create a safe and supportive school climate where students feel capable of and committed to their academic goals. The AmeriCorps members provide social-emotional and academic supports in classrooms; build student community during common social times such as lunch and recess; and organize and promote participation in school events, community service projects, and afterschool programs. They also provide individualized services, including mentoring, attendance coaching, and academic tutoring, to students who exhibit early warning signs for not graduating on time.

Communities In Schools (CIS) aims to empower success for all students by removing barriers for vulnerable students at risk of dropping out, keeping kids in schools and on the path to graduation. CIS does this by placing a trained professional in schools to work closely with school leadership, teachers, guidance counselors and other providers to develop a comprehensive plan that identifies and aligns community supports and resources with the needs and challenges of the whole school and individual students and families.  Through its model of integrated student supports, CIS connects schools and student to social, emotional, and academic supports designed to achieve results.