More than Social and Emotional Learning: Developing a Brain Aware SEL Curriculum for a Kindergarten Classroom

Research has shown that stress, negative emotions, and trauma all affect a students’ ability to learn and achieve in school. Thus, there has been a worthwhile movement to incorporate structured social and emotional learning programs into elementary schools. The goal of these programs are to help students develop critical social and emotion regulation skills that are required to adapt to school environments and achieve academically. The curriculum designed for this project focuses on teaching kindergarten students emotion regulation skills as well as make them aware of their own brain development. The content of the curriculum was influenced by by these books: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist\u27s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (Perry & Szalavitz, 2017) and The Yes Brain (Siegel & Bryson, 2018). Both of these works stressed the importance of teaching children about their own brain development in order to help them better adapt socially and emotionally at home and in school. The goal of this curriculum is to give students the knowledge to identify and cope with their emotions and educate them on how the brain grows and learns. The curriculum will also help them advocate for themselves and prioritize their mental well-being, as well as help them develop skills that are critical to achieve academically