Second Annual Social and Emotional Learning Symposium

The increasing need to include structures and supports within the school day to address continues to heighten. With the demand to include social and emotional learning in state standards by the Department of Education, and the need to provide a safe space for learning, schools find their resources stretched even more than in years past. Project Adventure has been using experiential education for nearly 50 years to enhance the social and emotional learning of all its students, and after last year’s successful SEL Symposium, they wanted to continue bringing community resources together to show the web of support that surrounds school districts on the North Shore.

Project Adventure’s Social and Emotional Learning Program Coordinator, Josie Martin, aligned workshops for this day that would help support administrators, classroom teachers, support staff, after-school program coordinators, and community –based organizations. Her vision was to showcase the ways students and adults can experience the development of SEL skills and connect local schools and youth-serving organizations with the supports they need to make their programs successful. “I think the Symposium is an opportunity for educators from different communities to come together and share their experiences implementing SEL all while learning new skills and strategies to more effectively bring their schools and communities together.”

The day will consist of a keynote speech given by Dr. Eric Conti, Superintendent of the Burlington School District, President of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, and Massachusetts Superintendent of the Year, and his team of educators. Their remarks will be followed by workshops on relationship building in advisories, relational trust in schools, mindfulness, whole-school initiatives, and supporting gender identity and then a panel discussion on whole-school implementation and community engagement of SEL programs at the state, community, and school levels. Participants will then engage in another workshop before departing with new ideas and resources to bring back to their learning communities.

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.