Dr. Maurice Elias talks about the importance of Arts Education, The Unwind Webinar, and more!
The Latest from Dr. Elias!
Recently featured for faculty excellence, Dr. Maurice Elias of the SECD Lab talks to Chalkbeat about the mental strain students are under, how teachers can help and the power of arts education in this Q&A. Click to read the full story!
Highlights on SECD’s latest webinar titled “Unwind Webinar: De-stress Not Distress”
Unwind Webinar poster created by John Khalil (RU ‘21).
Above is the poster for our recent webinar, titled "Unwind Webinar: De-Stress, Not Distress” aimed to ease the stress of finals. The webinar took place on Tuesday 5/4 from 6:30-7:30 pm EST and was hosted by John Khalil (RU ‘21) and Kriti Jain (RU ‘21).
SECD Lab’s Mallika Verghese (RU’22) ran an activity to increase Self-Awareness by allowing attendees to examine their own forms of privilege. Click here to access the privilege worksheet that was used.
Got Mindfulness?
Lead by SECD lab’s Sofia Madrid (RU '21), the webinar also featured a 5 minute guided meditation to showcase the SEL skill of Self-Management!
Stay Updated with Members of the SECD Lab
Above are some highlights of Samuel Nayman’s dissertation defense titled “Beyond-the-Self Purpose in Early Adolescents From Low-Income, Racial and Ethnic Minority Backgrounds: The Role of Emotions.” Sam is a Ph.D student in the Rutgers University Clinical Psychology program, currently at the Yale School of Medicine for his clinical internship, and the former Students Taking Action Together (STAT) Project Director in the SECD Lab.
Featured in our recent “Unwind Webinar”, the above activity (Created by Charles Gravina RU‘22) aimed to teach the 5 core competencies of SEL through scenes in movies!
How to Combat Racism
Our webinar also highlighted forms of microaggressions and implicit biases, as well as how to have educational conversations about them in an empathetic manner, by using key SEL skills Social Awareness and Relationship Skills.
Click here for some anti-racism and mental health resources that were shared during the webinar!
GUEST SPEAKER
HENRY ZHANG
Henry Zhang, GSAPP school psychology doctoral student and professional self-defense trainer, was featured as a guest speaker on our Unwind Webinar to educate others on how to practice Responsible Decision Making to preemptively avoid violent situations; he also gave a brief demonstration of self-defense techniques to defend against potential attacks and threats.
Above is a screenshot from The School of Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Conference presentation featuring Saidy Cedano (RU ‘22), Simon Daniel (RU ‘22), Julia Sanowska, and Jonathan Vargese’s (RU ‘21) presentation titled “Building the STAT Curriculum: Promoting More Civic Engagement and Social Change through SEL Skills”. Their project examined the status of social justice discussions in the online/hybrid classroom, and aimed to design guidelines for STAT modules to facilitate discussion.
Also featured at the conference was Yenny Tavarez’s (RU ‘21) senior Honors Thesis titled "Classroom Instructional Studies: The Influence of Social and Emotional Learning”. Click here to learn more about the interdisciplinary honors thesis program, and here to learn about the Interdisciplinary Research Teams.
SECD Lab SEL Day - SPECIAL EDITION!
SEL Day Banner created by Burcu Vardarli (RU’21).
On March 26, 2021, the SECD Lab celebrated the second International Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Day.
The aim of each year’s annual International SEL Day is to mobilize educators, practitioners, researchers, and students to spread awareness about the benefits of SEL to people around the world, and provided the SECD Lab with an opportunity to showcase important strategies to help build positive school climate and social-emotional skills in students.
Where did International SEL Day come from?
SEL Day is an international social media campaign led by Urban Assembly and The Social Emotional Learning Alliance (SEL4US). In its first year (2020), International SEL Day raised awareness for SEL with two million people in five hundred schools, districts, and organizations across all 50 U.S. states and 35 countries. This year, #SELday did even better - reaching even more people, and was the #8 trending hashtag on Twitter!
Click the above image to check out an inspiring Youth Nation blog post by Deja Bonney (UA Bronx Academy of Letters, Class of '21), portraying a positive narrative for the graduating class of 2021!
Teamwork and Talent from the SECD Lab
This year, many members of the SECD Lab team worked together to make the 2021 #SELday a huge success, with representation from multiple projects and with many creative efforts and skillsets, including posting on social media, videography, translation into different languages, blogging, Twitter chats, and even podcast creation!
Dr. Maurice Elias joins Mallika Verghese (RU’22) and John Khalil (RU’21) from the SECD Lab social media team to promote International SEL Day by highlighting the importance of implementing SECD skills in schools. Click the picture above to listen to our SEL Day podcast!
Reaching Wider Audiences
The SECD Lab acknowledges that utilizing different forms of media increases our dissemination efforts; therefore, this year, the team created a podcast, and started a new initiative of translating posts into Spanish to reach a larger audience. However, we know that the importance of social-emotional learning does not end with SEL Day, and will continue to work hard to improve the lives of students using our platforms the other 364 days of the year (until SEL Day 2022!)
““The reason these children are ultimately going to want to learn SEL skills is because they believe they can do good in the world...””
The SECD Lab uses platforms such as TikTok (created by Charles Gravina, RU’22), to highlight important SEL skills for relationship building - such as active listening, communication, and conflict resolution through emulation!
Click the above image to view the SECD Lab 2021 SEL Day Video!
Kriti Jain (RU’21) of the SECD Lab prepared an amazing video illustrating CASEL’s 5 core SEL competencies: Self Awareness, Social Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making!
(Instagram post and Twitter chat images by Alexa Santana Ruperti, RU’22.)
In honor of SEL Day, the SECD Lab also participated in several Twitter chats. Check out some of our posts below!
2021 SEL Day Recognized by US Congress
Congressman @timryanoh and his hard working team has recognized International #SELDay in the Congressional Record!
Check out our SEL Day posts available in both English and Spanish (Created by Charles Gravina, RU’22; translated by Sofia Madrid, RU’21).