TPiH 50 Melissa Evans

This election season, there has been a lot of chatter about education. Much of it centered around the idea that there's a lot going on behind the imposing walls of a child's school that parents aren't aware of, or involved in. And in that general conversation, there are few buzzwords that have been more thrown about than a three-letter acronym - SEL, which stands for Social and Emotional Learning. In this episode, I sit down with Melissa Evans, who is the Assistant Principal at Hutchinson Middle School - 7th grade. Melissa takes a deep dive with me into what SEL is, how it helps students, and how it's really nothing to be worried about. You'll learn that SEL is the relatively new formal name for a concept that has been used in education for quite some time - and that it's not being taught by some sinister cabal that's hoping to indoctrinate children. In fact, its use was requested after input from the Kansas business community, which told educators that they required a workforce that was more emotionally mature, and prepared to handle the rigors of daily work. This episode ranks among my favorites. Melissa does a fantastic job of demystifying not only SEL, but the relationships between students and teachers, and teachers and parents. If you have any sort of interest in education and the students in it - or if you've been curious, worried, concerned, or even alarmed by the idea of SEL - you will not want to miss this episode.