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Date: 5/1/2019
CHICOPEE – Chicopee Public Schools have begun a district-wide implementation of a social-emotional curriculum called “Acting with Purpose.” The program, developed by Positive Learning Communities, teaches elementary school children self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, making positive choices. Chicopee is the first school district to use this curriculum in every kindergarten through grade 5 class.
“Our mission is to redefine and support social-emotional learning in schools,” said Brian Smith, co-creator of Positive Learning Communities.
There are 32 games and activities within 18 units. The first six units are community-based. This means that there is role-playing, understanding of how to own traits and qualities that we want to be honored, and recognizing traits that can be honored in others.
The second six units are what Smith calls “actors tools.” Students recognize how facial expressions, tone of voice, and posture telegraph feelings to others and how to make a habit of recognizing and responding to those nonverbal communications in those around you.
The final six units apply to the tools and skills they have learned. The pace of the games increase and the tasks are more involved.
Grades K through 2 practice these skills each year and level up to more advanced activities in grades 3 through 5.
The program has been in practice for three years, though it was in development over seven years before that. Smith is an actor, director, classroom teacher, and his wife, Teresa Dooley-Smith, is an American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)-certified Speech/Language Pathologist. Together, they began looking at social interactions with special education in mind. Their goal was to come up with an approach that was not rules-focused, but tools-based.
“We began to see that social-emotional instruction was a real need for all kids,” said Smith.
Smith said that he and his wife have interviewed teachers over the years who say students are less prepared each year for social and emotional interactions. While older generations had the ability to “run free” and feel out interpersonal relationships, Smith said, kids today lack that ability due to increased screen time and a shift in society towards safety-consciousness that limits their autonomy.
In 2012, Smith and Dooley-Smith partnered with Lynn Yanis, an educational writer and graphic designer, to develop anti-bullying, character development, school climate positive behavioral interventions and support techniques that could be used in the classroom.
“What we tried to do is capture the rough-and-tumble childhood experience,” in Acting with Purpose, said Smith.
Smith said people don’t learn social and emotional skills by sitting in a classroom or watching a video. Instead, he said it was about understanding and responding to social interactions in a low-stakes environment so that they are prepared with responses in high-stakes, real-world situations.
The program works best, Smith said, when principals provide one class period per week for social-emotional “acting with purpose.”
He said the program is teacher-friendly and designed for student engagement. The social-emotional curriculum is fundamentally different from academic subjects. Smith said in an academic subject when a child is disruptive, the teacher takes time from the lesson to deal with that student.
“The social thing that arises is the lesson,” in social-emotional learning, Smith said.
The first school to implement the learning was PS298 in Brooklyn, NY, which Smith described as “a disadvantaged community with many challenges.” He explained that the city had a goal of improving school culture and he has been told there has been a positive cultural shift since beginning the program. While most returns are anecdotal, Smith said, there are data keeping tools built into the curriculum.
“We do our due diligence as educators,” Smith said.
In practice, there is a wide range of outcomes because each child is at a different level of social-emotional growth, but it creates a means for children to develop these important life skills.