COLLABORATION FOR A CURRICULUM OF CARING: THE ZEITGEIST IS RIGHT

Abstract

Recent catastrophic school shootings have drawn worldwide attention to issues of gun control and mental health. In the wake of these tragedies, more and more schools have begun to adopt school‐wide social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. However, we have few examples of what it looks like to integrate SEL skills into content curricula. What's more, teachers and support professionals are ill‐equipped to engage in the collaborative work necessary to effectively integrate the teaching of SEL into academic content. The collaboration described herein highlights an interdisciplinary collaboration among university faculty and graduate students from school psychology and English education to collaboratively design and evaluate standards‐based secondary English curricula that foreground SEL and themes of care.