School officials are considering expanding a social and emotional learning program districtwide as part of safety and security efforts.
Incorporating the Choose Love Enrichment Program in every school is one of many recommendations made by the Fayetteville Safety and Security Task Force to the School Board last month.
Scarlett Lewis founded the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation and has worked with educators, researchers and others to create the program. She began her work after her 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. She said she realized school shootings were a societal problem
The program focuses on four values -- courage, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion in action -- which cultivate optimism, resilience and personal responsibility through positive psychology, mindfulness, neuroscience and other elements, Lewis said.
Social and emotional learning and the research to back it up have been around for more than 30 years, Lewis said.
Many studies found how character skills formed in early childhood lead to necessary social and emotional skills for success in school and beyond. For example, a 20-year study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2015 evaluated the character skills of 800 kindergartners and followed them until age 25. For every one-point increase in children's character skills scores in kindergarten, they were 54 percent more likely to graduate from high school, twice as likely to earn a college degree and 46 percent more likely to have a full-time job at age 25.
To read more of Ashton Eley's article, visit: http://www.arkansasonline.com/...ool-program-pitched/
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