Social-Emotional skills are personal and interpersonal management skills. SEL teaches emotion regulation and impulse control, decision-making and problem-solving, communication and collaboration, and empathy. SEL curriculum provides children with the framework to develop these critical skills in order to cultivate into healthier and happier relationships and personal identities. SEL is also associated with improvement in academic performance (Panayiotou et al., 2019), bullying prevention and decreased aggression (Smith & Low, 2013), and positive peer relationships and school cohesion (Cipra & Hall, 2019). The skills learned in SEL curriculum are also important for the workforce (Belfield et al., 2015).

You may have been hearing a bit about SEBL lately. SEBL adds a behavioral outcomes component to traditional SEL curriculum. Although we generally refer to our curriculum as SEL, positive behavioral outcomes are the foundational goal of the Gr2IT program. Therefore, Gr2IT is truly a Social Emotional and Behavior Learning (SEBL) curriculum. We weave positive behavior and behavioral outcomes purposefully throughout the program by focusing on applying the new skills to real life situations. Each of the 10 principles (personal regulation, gratitude, resilience, identity, teamwork, responsibility, critical thinking, coping mechanisms, perspective taking & empathy, and social justice) requires action. Even our motto demonstrates our commitment to positive behavior and behavioral change. Remember: What you do is who you are. Who you are is what you do!

As with many skills and behavioral patterns, children learn from watching. They model the behavior of adults and others in their lives. Children spend much of their day at school with teachers. Teaching an SEL curriculum in the classroom is an effective way to reinforce positive behaviors from the home and community while moderating negative influences.

Many SEL curriculums create lessons between 30 and 45 minutes. Research indicates that shorter lesson are more effective, as young students become increasingly distracted and retain less when lessons exceed 10 minutes (Godwin et al., 2016). Although attention span does increase with age, middle school through college-aged students show the most focused attention in 10-15 minute blocks (Benjamin, 2002; Davis, 2005; Svinicki & McKeachie, 2013; Wankat, 2002). Many factors influence attention, including motivation (Bradbury, 2016) and format of instruction. Attention can be maintained and increased by changing instructional formats and bringing the students into the lesson (Bradbury, 2016). Our lessons are designed to do just that.

Not only was GR2IT developed from concepts supported by research, the founders have experience in creating, training, and teaching other SEL programs. They realized the gaps in most other programs and actively worked to fill those missing pieces when creating the GR2IT curriculum. GR2IT is a holistic program that teaches children to apply the knowledge and skills learned in the curriculum to other parts of their lives. In addition, unlike other SEL programs, GR2IT emphasizes the importance of understanding and developing a positive and healthy identity. Children are explicitly taught about identity development and character-building as a reinforcing model of habits. This systemic approach demonstrates that changes made in one area of a child’s life promote changes in other areas. This is not a one-way process, though. When the child learns to respond differently to others, others respond differently to them. This ripple effect can change lives and communities.

While the GR2IT SEL curriculum is unique, the differences don’t stop there. GR2IT has several options to fit your needs. GR2IT SEL contains our research-informed SEL curriculum for the classroom. GR2IT Plus includes the SEL curriculum plus your choice of 3 physical training components to accompany and reinforce the SEL curriculum and the brain-body connection that is so important for learning. Choose from GR2IT Plus Tae Kwon Do, GR2IT Plus Yoga/Meditation, or GR2IT Plus Mixed Athletics, a more traditional physical regimen. The GR2IT Community option includes School Resource Officers in coordination with classroom teachers to instruct whichever curriculum pack you choose.

Gratitude, Resilience, Responsibility, Identity, & Teamwork are 5 of the principles that define our program and make up the name. Gr2IT focuses on 10 core principles that we believe are essential to child and adolescent development, problem solving, building resilience, and an overall more comprehensive SEL curriculum.

PERSONAL REGULATION: This unit teaches children strategies to physically calm down when faced with difficult situations that could lead to anger, aggression, or anxiety.

GRATITUDE: This principle helps children have a realistic view of their lives. We recognize and appreciate the positive aspects while seeking out lessons to be learned from negative life circumstances.

RESILIENCE: This principle helps children approach difficulties as temporary obstacles to overcome rather than insurmountable roadblocks. Resilience is a skill that can be taught and must be practiced.

IDENTITY: This principle teaches children about the developmental steps of identity formation and the importance of building a positive and healthy identity. This principle also helps children understand the bidirectional relationship between habits and identity.

TEAMWORK: This principle helps children understand the importance of cooperating with others in daily life, inside and outside of school. Children learn how crucial interpersonal relationships are in life.

RESPONSIBILITY: This principle teaches children about the importance of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. Children also learn how to cultivate responsibility in other aspects of their lives with daily habits.

CRITICAL THINKING: This principle emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and reasoning in an info-tech world. Children will learn how to be critical consumers of information, particularly online information.

COPING MECHANISMS: This principle teaches children about emotion-centered and problem-centered coping and is closely tied to decision-making which will teach children strategies that can be applied in a variety of situations throughout their lives.

PERSPECTIVE TAKING & EMPATHY: This principle helps children understand the importance of listening to and learning from the perspectives of others. Empathy requires identifying and understanding the emotions of others. To do this, we must learn to accept the experiences of others as true, especially when they differ from our own experiences.

SOCIAL JUSTICE: This principle helps children reflect on their role in promoting well-being in various contexts including personal, familial, school, and community with the foundation of equity for all.

No, this curriculum is designed to be the most interactive and engaging SEL curriculum in the field. Teachers will be provided with all necessary materials - no need to create new lessons. However, each unit will contain a few choices of applications of the program principles. In this way teachers can personalize and choose the materials to suit their needs and teaching style.

The curriculum fits into any school schedule. With SEL lessons between 10 and 15 minutes, GRIT can be taught during weekly advisory or homeroom periods. Schools who choose to add the physical training component will find fun exercise options for children that seamlessly weave into any P.E. class period. The GR2IT physical options are also set up as short activities. These can be added to the regular P.E. curriculum or repeated and modified to fill the entire class period. Research demonstrates that the brain-body connection is strong and particularly important for developing children. Why not provide children with an opportunity to integrate, focus, and practice the GR2IT concepts they are learning in the SEL component? With three physical program options, you’re sure to find the one that best fits your needs.

Belfield, C., Bowden, B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., & Zander, S. (2015). The economic value of social and emotional learning. New York: Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Bradbury, N. A. (2016). Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more? Advances in Physiology Education. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00109.2016

Cipra, A., & Hall, L. COREMatters: A bullying intervention pilot study. Research in Middle Level Education, 42(4), 1-13. Doi:10.1080/19404476.2019.1599244

Davis, B. G. (1993). Tools for teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Godwin, K. E., Almeda, M. A., Seltman, H., Kai, S., Skerbetz, M. D., Baker, R. S., & Fisher, A. V. (2016). Off-task behavior in elementary school children. Learning and Instruction, 44, 128-143.

Panayiotou, M., Humphrey, N., & Wigelsworth, M. (2019). An empirical basis for linking social and emotional learning to academic performance. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 56, 193-204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.01.009

Smith, B. H., & Low, S. (2013). The role of social emotional learning in bullying prevention efforts. Theory Into Practice, 52(4), 280-287. Doi:10.1080/00405841.2013.829731

Svinicki, M. D., & McKeachie W. J. (2013). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies, research and theory for college and university teachers. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.

Wankat, P. C. (2002). The effective efficient professor: Scholarship and service. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.