DON’T BUY INTO SEL! As first implemented, SEL was purely therapeutic in nature. It took a very dark turn, however, in 2020 when CASEL announced an ideological shift to “Transformative SEL,” which calls for students to “critically examine root causes of inequity.” According to CASEL, the concept of transformative SEL is a “means to better articulate the potential of SEL to mitigate the educational, social, and economic inequities that derive from the interrelated legacies of racialized cultural oppression in the United States and globally.” Slicing through the verbiage, it boils down to the fact that, SEL has become the therapeutic wing of the noxious Critical Race Theory. So now, kids are being radicalized and taught to feel good about it!

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) was always a bad idea, and now that it is politicized, it’s a nightmare.

As a longtime teacher, I have seen firsthand that education is a fad-filled field. Culturally responsive education, inventive spelling, new math, experiential learning, balanced literacy, etc. are educational styles that have come and gone and come and gone and….