My True SELF: Social-Emotional Learning for All

Two years ago, The Well was approached with the opportunity to partner with Imagine Bella Academy of Excellence, a Cleveland, Ohio, school, to pilot a program designed to meet the growing academic and social-emotional needs of the students they serve. Schools, like Imagine Bella, are acutely aware of the fact that we as a culture are more dysregulated than ever. Since the pandemic, this dysregulation is affecting the children in our communities at an even higher level and is greatly affecting their general sense of well-being as well as their capacity to learn.

My True SELF (Social-Emotional Learning Fun) was born of this collaboration with Imagine Bella. What sets this curriculum apart from others in the industry is that it has been built on the foundations of the True Body Project, our award winning, experiential program centered on addressing chronic stress and trauma through the use of mindful, somatic, and expressive and healing arts practices. It has been structured to fit the CASEL framework for social-emotional learning which is the industry standard for applying evidence–based SEL strategies.

Our work with Imagine Bella began with two full-time educators providing explicit social-emotional learning curriculum for students in grades K through six through the mindfulness classroom specials. It has now grown to become a comprehensive, whole-student/whole-school program that includes consulting, coaching, and education in addition to the curriculum. All of this is done to support the social-emotional needs of the students and the adults who serve them as we understand that a systemic approach to social-emotional learning is needed to shift the culture and climate of a learning community to better support the needs of all of its members.

Taking what we learned in the first year of piloting MTS in Cleveland, we entered our partnership with Kennedy Heights Arts Center in the summer of 2022 as they prepared to pilot Cr8 Club, an afterschool program for grades K through sixth centered on arts education that concurrently enhances students reading, writing, and social-emotional skills. This program got its start at Woodford Academy in the Cincinnati Public School District in the fall of 2022. We then shifted to John P Parker School in January of 2023 where we now serve sixty students through enrichment experiences that include dance, visual arts, photography, African drumming, puppeteering, and more and are led by some of Cincinnati’s most renowned arts educators.

Successes, challenges, informative research, and interactions with other thought leaders in the world of social-emotional learning are guiding us as we move forward. On the horizon are new avenues of supporting social-emotional learning at the personal, relational, and public levels of engagement for students and adults alike. We commit to continued deep listening and collaborating to further enhance My True SELF to meet the needs of our community at large.