First Annual Social and Emotional Learning Symposium

With the recent mandate by the Department of Education to include social and emotional learning in state standards, school districts are asked to add one more item in their daily agenda. The need to have programs with enhanced areas for SEL enrichment is apparent and since Project Adventure has been using experiential education for over 45 years to enhance the social and emotional learning of all its students, they saw the need to bring community resources together to show the web of support that surrounds school districts on the North Shore.

Project Adventure’s Director of Social and Emotional Learning, Jen Dirga, saw an opportunity to unite with neighboring partners and create their first annual SEL Symposium to show how existing services from multiple organizations can be implemented in school districts to offer wrap around support systems. “We understand how every minute of the day is used to its fullest, so to alleviate the pressures administrators and classroom teachers face to add one more thing, we sought to create a curriculum that can be easily implemented and show connections between assessment data and research as well as behavioral organizations.”

The day will consist of remarks made by Jim Vetter, the Executive Director of Social-Emotional Learning Alliance for Massachusetts about the current legislation surrounding SEL, followed by workshops on relational trust in schools, mindfulness, empathy and bullying, substance abuse in teens, whole-school initiatives, advisories, and sports team culture. The afternoon will include a panel discussion consisting of administrators from neighboring school districts such as Danvers, North Andover, Lawrence, and the Crest Collaborative and conclude with a presentation from Panorama Education about how they provide services to districts to measure the effectiveness of SEL programming using measurable data.

Guests at the symposium will be Pamela Seigle, Executive Director, Courage and Renewal Northeast, Lea Forster, LMHC, from Lahey Health Behavioral Services, Manager of Grant and State Funded Youth Initiatives, Jeff Frigon from the Browne Center at the University of New Hampshire, and John Grund, MSW, LCSW.

ABOUT PROJECT ADVENTURE

Project Adventure is an innovative non-profit teaching organization and a respected leader in adventure-based experiential programming offering a wide range of programming as well as challenge course design and installation. Since 1971, Project Adventure has been committed to its mission of producing life-changing outcomes by facilitating transformative group experiences. For more information, visit www.pa.org.