The Power of Social-Emotional Learning: A Generational Impact
In a compelling video interview, Dr. Valerie Shapiro, Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Public Health at UC Berkeley, shares groundbreaking insights into the long-term effects of social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions. Her words paint a vivid picture of how seemingly small investments in children's social skills and teacher training can ripple through generations, fundamentally altering life trajectories.
Dr. Shapiro highlights a three-pronged approach that has shown remarkable results:
Teacher Support: Providing educators with meaningful training on managing classroom behavior and fostering community.
Student Skills: Equipping children with essential social skills.
Parent Engagement: Offering complementary workshops for parents.
This holistic strategy doesn't just address the child in isolation but creates a supportive ecosystem around them. By aligning the efforts of teachers, students, and parents, the intervention creates a powerful synergy that amplifies its impact.
The true magic of this approach reveals itself in the long-term outcomes. Dr. Shapiro's research team has been following a cohort of individuals who participated in SEL interventions in the 1980s. Now in their 40s, these participants show striking differences compared to their peers who didn't receive the intervention:
Mental Health: Improved well-being four decades later.
Economic Status: Higher likelihood of homeownership.
Physical Health: Lower blood pressure.
Perhaps most astonishingly, the effects extend beyond the participants themselves. The behavior of their children—the next generation—shows measurable differences based on whether their parents were in the intervention or control group.
The implications of these findings are profound. By investing in SEL during the critical elementary school years, we're not just improving individual lives—we're potentially breaking cycles of poverty and poor health that can persist across generations. This aligns with other research showing that early childhood interventions can have substantial long-term effects on adult outcomes, including earnings, education, and health.
Dr. Shapiro's anecdote about the Washington State Legislature's decision to reallocate funds from prison construction to SEL programs in schools is a powerful example of evidence-based policymaking. This decision reflects a growing recognition among policymakers that investing in children's social-emotional development can yield significant societal benefits and cost savings in the long run.
While the evidence for SEL is compelling, implementing these programs at scale remains a challenge. Factors such as teacher burnout, inconsistent implementation, and varying levels of administrative support can impact the effectiveness of SEL initiatives. However, the potential benefits—as illustrated by Dr. Shapiro's research—suggest that overcoming these hurdles is well worth the effort.
Dr. Shapiro's research provides a clarion call for educators, policymakers, and parents alike. The power to shape not just individual lives, but entire generations, lies within our grasp. By investing in comprehensive SEL programs, we're not just teaching kids how to manage their emotions or get along with others—we're potentially altering the course of their lives and the lives of their future children.
As we face increasingly complex social challenges, from mental health crises to economic inequality, SEL emerges as a powerful tool in our arsenal. It's a reminder that sometimes, the most profound changes start in the most unexpected places—like a fifth-grade classroom.
The question now is not whether we can afford to implement comprehensive SEL programs, but whether we can afford not to. The evidence suggests that the dividends of this investment will be paid for generations to come.
Transcript:
Research Speaks: The Real Impact of SEL
"You've asked what it would look like if 80% of teachers were really relationally engaged with kids. And I think, as a scientist, to say, I don't know, because I don't think we've observed that.
But I can tell you a lot about, you know, what happens , which, you know, now we often think about SEL, which is, is broader than social skills, and what happens when the teachers are supported. They're given very, you know, meaningful training in how to, you know, work through kids' behavior as it shows up in a classroom and what it means to foster a community.
Then, parents are given workshops that are all complimentary. Right? And,
and I've been fortunate to work on teams that have done amazing research that shows when you do those three things, we've been studying a cohort of kids that had that in the eighties, and they're in their forties now. And this is a little bit mind-blowing. Some of these kids were in the intervention condition, some of them were in the control condition, and there are no other differences between these kids, right?
And 40 years after the teachers got some training, the parents had some workshops and the kids had some social skills. You can see differences in these kids' mental health, these, these adult mental health when they're 40 years old, you can see differences. Um, and it's not only in their well-being, but you can also see differences in their economic status. I mean, you can look at these groups of kids, some that, some that got SEL interventions when they were in elementary school, some that didn't. And you can predict whether they own a house. And it was just this one year, just this, it, that's the power of these things. Their blood pressure is different as a 40-year-old because of what happens to them in fifth grade. And, um, that's some of the most amazing evidence that we have that supporting adults and giving kids skills at the same time can produce that kind of effect.
And if you really want me to blow your mind, um, they're 40, so they have kids, you can see differences in the behavior of their offspring based on whether they showed, based on which condition they were in. So it's so exciting that that evidence is there, that what you do in fifth grade, what you do with the adults and the kids, shows up in 40-year-olds and shows up in the next generation of kids doing things like changing health status, breaking cycles of poverty. And we can do it right now when the Washington State Legislature got some of this information about if they could do this in their schools, they decided not to build a prison. They decided to reallocate their budget and said, we can do this in the middle school years in elementary schools. It's gonna cost some money, but the return on investment means we won't start building a prison. And that's the evidence-based decision-making, but to think about that trade-off in the lives of humans, it's even more meaningful. So I wish we all made decisions like that."
-Valerie Shapiro, PhD