Joshua M. Freedman

Anabel L. Jensen

Marsha C. Rideout

Karen Stone-McCown

Self-Science is a curriculum and a process for teaching social and emotional skills. It is a flexible framework where students do activities, or experiments, that lead to discussion and learning. The students' own experiences, concerns, and questions drive the content, so the process works with people from all kinds of backgrounds, all ages, an all levels. Self-Science fuses cognitive and affective learning: students build feeling and thinking skills at the same time.Rather than telling children what not to do, Self-Science provides multiple options of what to do. It helps children become more aware of themselves and make more conscious decisions about the ways they think, feel, and act independently and interdependently. Nationally and internationally, parents and teachers are increasingly concerned about school culture and emotional intelligence competencies. Issues of exclusion, violence, depression, and under achievement are all addressed within this preventative, comprehensive program.Self-Science -- so named because emotional intelligence grows from the study of ourselves and our relationships -- is one of the few comprehensive, developmental, and research-based curricula for creating a school-wide culture of emotional intelligence. The Self-Science program creates a fundamental shift in the structure of the school toward collaboration, inclusion, and humanism.Part of the power of Self-Science is its flexibility. Once a facilitator understands how a lesson flows, she or he can easily adapt any current topics, other exercises, and even academic subject matter into the lessons. In addition, Self-Science can be taught as a "stand-alone" class or folded into existing programs such as class meetings, advisory, life-skills, or community service.

Karen Stone-McCown

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