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Disputes over SEL curriculum intensifying

Social-emotional learning is indoctrination, opponents say

BY NICK SULLIVAN nick.sullivan@gazette.com

Anxiety was rising among the sixth-graders at West Middle School.

“Do we have to do it?” asked one student, squirming in her seat.

The “Counseling Dawgs” — counselor Alec Finley and psychologist Nick Haugstad — had just delivered a presentation on anxiety management. Now, it was time to put those teachings to the test. It was time to play BeanBoozled, a game of chance in which some jellybeans are classic fruit flavors while others, indistinguishable in appearance, are rotten.

“This is Mr. H’s and I’s fifth time doing this, and I’ve never gotten a good one,” Finley said.

“So we’re pretty anxious, to say the least,” Haugstad added.

Bean in hand, students ran through the steps of anxiety management. First, they took two deep breaths to calm themselves. Then, they acknowledged the anxiety, sharing

where in their bodies it manifested and how it made them feel: like butterflies, like they had legs of Jell-o, like they wish they had no taste buds.

Next, they considered the root of their anxiety. Why did they feel this way? There was anxiety in wondering what flavor they had, they said, and whether it would make them vomit.

And finally, they challenged those worry thoughts. Together on the count of three, they popped the jelly beans into their mouths, and quickly thereafter was a frenzy to the trash can.

“I swear I got throw up or something,” one student said of his bean flavor as he spit it out.

“You just climbed that hurdle, man, and that’s a big deal,” Finley said. “It’s the same thing when trying something new, or trying anything else like tests, or tough conversations, or giving presentations or asking someone out. You can do all these things that seem really scary, but don’t let your brain force you to avoid them.”

Similar scenes are unfolding in classrooms across the country as schools lean into social-emotional learning, or SEL. The lessons have not received universal support, however.

To some, the Beanboozled lesson on anxiety is a strong case in favor of SEL, which focuses on educational equity by helping students “develop healthy identities, manage emotions, and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others,” among other objectives, according to CASEL.ORG.

To others, it’s a subtle form of indoctrination earning the ire of critics, who worry education is venturing into territory it does not belong. Lessons on emotions and values are best left to parents at home, some say, because if handled incorrectly, those lessons can serve as pathways into critical race theory or socialism concepts.

“There’s no good SEL,” said Deb Schmidt, a School District 49 taxpayer and grandparent of six who says she has done “extensive research” into SEL programming.

Schmidt’s district serves as an epicenter of SEL pushback in the Pikes Peak region, where community and board members alike have clashed over the programming in a monthslong struggle. Caught in the middle of the debate are the counselors and teachers who carry out such lessons, saying critics are misguided in cries of indoctrination.

Ivy Liu lived 60 miles from China when Mao Zedong began training Red Guards during the country’s push toward communism. She remembers stories of children being raised as soldiers to threaten and intimidate others in their own village. Those memories have stuck with her as she fights to preserve American values in education.

Now a D-49 school board member, Liu has taken the mantle of opposition against SEL, saying she fears it is used as a behavioral psychology tool to transform children’s core identities. For her and others like her, like Schmidt, the battle against SEL is a matter of preserving children’s innocence and can-do spirits.

“If they take away the individualism, make you a group, that’s the collectivism that is the signature of socialism,” Liu said. “This whole victim mentality and the intersectionality, which is, as you go through life, look for everything that works against you. Can you imagine having that attitude?”

District CEO Peter Hilts has said on numerous occasions that there has never been a parent complaint regarding SEL, which has been used in the district for about a decade. Nevertheless, the hot-button issue came to a head at a December D-49 board of education meeting, where a divided board approved SEL curricula in a contentious 3-2 vote. The vote solidified a list of 18 programs already in use.

The vote made little sense to Liu, pointing to 2022 Colorado Measures of Academic Success test scores that show less than half of district students are performing at grade level in English and language arts. In math, that percentage is less than a third. These numbers are up 2 and 4 percentage points from 2021, respectively.

“It is criminal, in my opinion, that we are focusing on anything other than academics,” Liu said. “Some claim SEL improves academics, but the CMAS scores disprove that claim.”

Schmidt outlined her concerns with each of the district’s SEL programs in a spreadsheet, highlighting excerpts from their websites and other program materials.

Second Step, one SEL program, teaches “foundational skills essential for combating racism and promoting social justice, such as perspective-taking, empathy, and social connectedness,” according to a program sheet quoted in Schmidt’s spreadsheet.

Critics like Liu draw connections between SEL programs’ admitted missions and “critical-race theory,” which teaches race is socially constructed and embedded in institutions. They’re indoctrinating kids with liberal ideology, she said.

Schmidt worries the standards set by organizations like CASEL, to which several programs being used in D-49 align, are influenced by the politics of the organizations that fund them. Some of CASEL’S biggest donors ascribe to left-leaning ideologies, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Novo Foundation.

SEL is nothing new in concept. Educators for decades have managed the emotions of their students in some form, whether that be a restorative conversation instead of punishment or encouraging kindness among peers. This approach only developed into a formal curriculum in the 1990s, when the term SEL was officially coined.

Sarah Clapham, the 2022 Colorado School Counselor of the Year, concedes that SEL lessons do sometimes tackle topics pertaining to identity or difference, but that’s not by design.

Counselors aren’t planning discussions on critical-race theory, or oppression, or social justice, Clapham said. Instead, discussions are driven by what students are asking for. Sometimes, they organically share pieces of their identity. Counselors are receptive.

“If we choose to avoid those conversations because of the controversy, then we really lose out on knowing who our students are and responding to their needs,” Clapham said. “We really dive into those conversations and try to create an environment where we can have those real, really rich conversations, and people can share their experience and feel safe enough to share those experiences.”

Despite classroom visits, Liu and Schmidt say they have not successfully witnessed problematic lessons firsthand, returning to the program descriptions as the source of their concern.

Faculty line the halls each morning at D-49’s Ridgeview Elementary School, high-fiving and hugging students to greet them as they enter the classroom. A kid who feels welcome is more likely to stretch academically, Principal Kim Moore said. Morning welcome is her favorite time.

Next, students start the day by sharing “good things” in their lives with one another during a student-led conversation, in which one student calls on their peers and asks follow-up questions to demonstrate active listening and engagement.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of noise going on about SEL within our nation and within our district, but we just do what we know is best for our kids, and that’s building strong relationships and supporting them in their growing process,” Moore said. “Not everything that a school does, whether it’s SEL or not, has an underlying agenda.”

At School District 11, where the temperature surrounding SEL programming is more tepid, schools devote a block of time in students’ daily schedules to counseling and SEL programming. The district last year swept all three levels of the statewide Colorado School Counseling Association’s “school counselor of the year” awards.

“I get a little confused on why schools would be hesitant, except maybe the argument that they need to focus on content,” said Clapham, a counselor at D-11’s West Middle School. “We’ve just learned in our school that when we’re not teaching these skills — just like a math teacher would teach the skills of math — if we’re not teaching the social-emotional skills, especially in middle school, then it’s really hard for the students to focus on that content.”

The district has made a big push to bolster its SEL programming, said Clapham, who was hired five years ago after the district secured state funding to add an additional counselor to each middle and high school.

At the same time, district elementary schools began implementing “Random Acts of Kindness” as their universal SEL program, and middle schools implemented “Second Step,” both of which abide by standards laid out by the American School Counselor Association.

School data shows that students with multiple suspensions at West Middle have decreased by more than 80% since 2018, the year Clapham was hired to help launch SEL programming. Clapham says she believes there is a direct correlation between improved behavior and the layers of social-emotional support the school adds each year.

School counselors say SEL programming has only become more important since COVID-19 sent kids home for extended periods of time, depriving them of socialization skills that typically develop at their respective stages in life.

“A lot of them came back with super-low compassion,” counselor Cassidy Bristol said, citing survey data collected from students after returning to in-person instruction. Bristol, from D-11’s Wilson Elementary School, was named the 2022 Elementary School Counselor of the Year.

Students had for more than a year been taught to avoid others. Masks further complicated matters by obscuring a person’s face, making it difficult to interpret what emotion they might be feeling.

“That was a huge developmental time where they didn’t learn, ‘Oh, you feel sad? I should probably ask how you are feeling or what’s wrong,’” Bristol said.

“It’s kind of teaching what you would think are the basics. That’s something kids just don’t know.”

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2023-02-06T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-06T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/281732683639162

The Gazette, Colorado Springs