Celebrating #SEL Day with The Passion Tape

So, Did You Know Today is International SEL Day?

And because we are about that life, we ended Black Future Month right. On February 28th, 2022, Oliver and The Dream Team held a live premiere for a first-of-its-kind initiative, “The Passion Tape.” The Passion Tape is a virtual social-emotional learning-based program provided to middle and high school students. Currently, in Val Verde Unified School District, this SEL-based virtual curriculum is available for any school or youth organization. As a reminder, "Social-emotional learning is how we manage and understand our emotions while responding to the world around us. This includes how we process empathy and maintain healthy relationships" (Luminex, 2021). During a two-year pandemic, one of the most highly impacted elements of the human experience was ”how we process and manage emotion while managing the world around us.” Nationally we grappled with a virus that took the lives of those around us—relegated us to our homes, along with the valid eruption and rebellion against systems of harm. These past two years+ compounded the levels of adversity and poverty that our students have faced and witnessed in the world. 

The Passion Tape was designed to mend the social-emotional needs of students that were amplified by the pandemic, along with discussing topics that the adults around them rarely explore. Designed in congruence with the California Health Education Standards, emphasizing SEL’s core competencies (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making); Oliver facilitates a powerful and vulnerable video series coupled with an Introspection Guide; students are guided through social-emotional learning-based lessons. Oliver unpacks complex issues such as positive identity, harnessing adversity, and mental, emotional, and social health. The Passion Tape specializes in channeling any level of adversity by teaching students how to turn their challenges into triumphs, which is what we adamantly stand by. 

Let’s Unpack SEL…

Remember when we unpacked the definition of SEL slightly in our D4C: The Remix blog post? When analyzing the definition of social-emotional learning, we asked the following questions: Does the education system manage and understand its impact while responding to Black students? Does it effectively consider the collective impact of the world around us? Including how educational structures and curricula processes empathy and maintain healthy relationships of the various cultures within it? - If you don’t remember, it's cool, but to remind you, it doesn’t. “SEL interventions show the largest effect size when the intervention is designed with a specific context or culture in mind. This supports the idea that SEL is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ intervention” (Wiglesworth et al., 2016). So while D4C focused on race and culture specifically, The Passion Tape focuses on the student self-actualization process by focusing on students using their personal experiences to foster personal growth and development - When focused on the five core competencies, The Passion Tape focuses on the following:

1. Self-awareness is targeted by having students separate themselves from their circumstances and understanding that though circumstances may prompt feelings of inadequacy, they are not rooted in truth. 

2. Self-management is examined by goal identification and identifying the self-regulation practices necessary to achieve them.

3. Social awareness is cultivated by facilitating vulnerable conversations that require empathizing with alternative perspectives. 

4. Relationship skills are developed through evidence-based relationship education lessons.

5.  Responsible decision-making is guided by self-regulation strategies through a future-oriented mindset. 

So understand whether we provide The Passion Tape or OK2D. We provide multi-tiers of support services, which are, in essence, multi-tiers of social-emotional learning interventions provided by the #1 SEL youth speaker, Oliver North. 

In supplement, “a 2021 systematic review found that universal SEL interventions enhance young people’s social and emotional skills and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in the short term. In comparison, other approaches have produced inconsistent results (mindfulness interventions) or limited evidence of impact (positive youth development interventions).” (CASEL, 2022) So just know that what we provide is not your “typical positive youth development intervention.” We not only provide theory-based instruction, but we also live and provide cultural relevance within our instruction. 

As we celebrate International #SEL Day know that its positive impact has created avenues to unconventional but necessary learning. We specialize in SEL instruction that is not one size fits all. We target the disenfranchised, the adversity and poverty youth experts that go unnoticed, and those that are perceived to “lack respect for learning.” We understand there are strategic answers to inequity, and we will not compromise in meeting students where they are so they can surpass where we are. Their potential is far beyond what students have traditionally been given. And we are here to answer the call untraditionally. 

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” - Aristotle. 

Resources:

Luminex. (2021). What is Social-Emotional Learning? Retrieved on February 1, 2022 

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2022). What Does the Research Say? Retrieved on March 8th, 2022