Social-Emotional Learning Workshops for Teachers-Educators.

Advocating the need to practice Emotional Intelligence (Social- Emotional Learning) in low income communities and classrooms in India.

For children belonging to low-income households, the situation at home is often marked by recurring instances of domestic abuse and violence, substance abuse and in some cases, sexual harassment. In addition to issues at home, bullying, body shaming and gender-based harassment are rampant in poorly funded public schools. All these issues are, to some extent, rooted in macro-level socio-economic problems in India - i.e. economic and social inequality, unjust social hierarchies and lack of education and employment avenues. This has ultimately led to the normalization of emotional, mental and physical abuse. As per the National Mental Health Survey of India, nearly 9.8 million young Indians in the age group 13-17 are in need of active intervention. A key, often overlooked, issue here is the fact that teachers in government schools do not have the adequate training or expertise to deal with mental health or problematic behavioural issues. The prevalence of mental health issues amongst children from this demographic must therefore be reframed as an educational challenge, requiring a solution that actively engages teachers and educators. Owing to the lack of SEL Teacher training and exposure to the connection between SEL skills and students’ academic and life success in schools, the situation in this area of children’s growth is abysmal, primarily due to absence and inferior quality of emotional learning initiatives.

Understanding the need of the hour, we are trying to step up our operations to solve the social-emotional gap in current teaching methodologies in government schools through training teachers to incorporate Social Emotional Learning (SEL) instruction in the mainstream education curriculum. We believe that Social-Emotional Learning is a ground-breaking solution to the many mental health challenges faced by children from low socio-economic backgrounds, and the failure of teachers to adequately address these endemic problems. SEL is the process through which children and adults (teachers and educators) acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and build resilience. 

Our solution uses technology to support teachers in promoting SEL in 3 key ways. First, teachers need to know what SEL is – the science behind it, its value and how to use structure SEL lessons in classrooms. The next step of our solution involves low-cost professional-development and training, for teachers, using online modules, techniques and methodologies focusing on SEL instruction for teachers and students. The final step of our solution relates to delivering the content and assessing growth in teachers and students. The transformative potential of SEL lies not only in its ability to improve mental health outcomes at an individual level, but to promote community wellbeing. We have empirical evidence to establish that utilizing social-emotional skills as coping strategies during challenging situations will decrease the probability of developing mental illnesses and maladaptive behaviour. Emotional Intelligence is therefore an integral part of the human development agenda more broadly, and one, which we believe, has been overlooked by traditional development solutions.

In socially and economically weaker sections of Indian society, emotional and mental health is considered secondary to matters of physical well-being, academic achievement, or even social reputation. Our theory of change is innovative because it reimagines traditional educational paradigms and incorporates life skills, emotional awareness and relationships into the mainstream curriculum. This equips students with the tools to navigate life’s challenges and build leadership skills in ways that traditional information-based education models do not allow. Furthermore, the uniqueness of our solution lies in its holistic approach to EI education by involving teachers as active and primary agents in delivering SEL.  

We will use technology in the form an ‘Emotional Intelligence SEL Dashboard Tool’ to facilitate communication between teachers and students, to create digital records to track student growth and development from grade to grade and measure collective impact. Our inhouse dashboard would include embedded SEL resources, teacher training modules and would allow teachers to record and assess answers by students through psychometric tests (ACES , SSI etc) created using Google forms and VassarStas. These tools will provide a powerful supplement to existing SEL instruction and allow teachers to adopt and integrate SEL learning with ease while balancing academic instructions. 

Our goal for the next 12 months is to expand our program by including more on-ground interventions to impact 3000 lives. This will enable us to create a universal SEL programme that is adaptable to the varying needs of our diverse target groups. We also intend to work with experts who can strengthen our theory of change and curriculum, while supporting us in promoting the established correlation between SEL and education-based preventive solutions to behavioural and mental health issues. Lastly, we aim to integrate technology by creating an internal dashboard to make our teacher training and evaluation processes more effective.

Light Up wants to impact approximately 15-20,000 lives over the next 3-5 years. In order to reach a wider audience, we will partner with NGOs, communities and government schools across India. We will integrate technology through our inhouse dashboard to train teachers and community stakeholders more efficiently and strengthen evaluation and execution of SEL programs. This will allow us to integrate SEL in schools, upscale our outreach and impact. Additionally, our focus will be on creating a step-up approach to develop and diversify our curricula with expert intervention, to cater to students from 3rd Grade to 12th grade. 

We work with partner organisations like Teach for India, Paramjyoti Schools etc. to identify schools where our workshops can be of value. We will continue to draw on our strong relationships with NGOs and government bodies to expand our operations. Feedback from teachers and students about our workshops has allowed us to ensure that our product fits seamlessly within the local educational ecosystem. This context-responsive approach has helped us retain our beneficiaries by promoting a culture of collaboration and trust. With the help of Solve, we aim to strengthen our implementation by harnessing the potential of technology in training teachers.

We have impacted over 1500 beneficiaries through our workshops in 1 year. As we have a holistic approach, our beneficiaries include teachers, students and community champions. As a result of consistent SEL interventions, teachers have been able to develop the skills to address problematic behavioural and mental health challenges more effectively.  We have seen our teachers successfully and creatively use SEL techniques, leading to a positive culture of active sharing and listening amongst students. The benefits of the program for both teachers and students have been resoundingly affirmed through the feedback we have received from teachers and students. 

Our team consists of academics, educators, techies and youth activists from psychology, education, legal, tech and management fields. We also work with a tech professional in San Jose who helps us develop technology-based solutions. Our diverse skill-set has allowed us to use innovative alternative teaching mediums, develop evidence and research backed curriculum, adapt our curriculum to context and adopt a humanistic approach to solving on-ground issues in collaboration with stakeholders. Our collective passion, grit and perseverance motivates us to not give up on the ongoing challenges and keep moving forward to advance our solution with a critical problem-solving lens.

Light Up focusses on facilitating change through nurturing Emotional Intelligence and strengthening child-parent-teacher relationships. We are convinced that the impact of our SEL workshops is a gamechanger in the prevention of behavioural and mental health challenges. To maximise our potential and fulfil the promise of SEL, we are determined to develop a robust curriculum and an inhouse SEL dashboard consisting of our content, training modules and impact assessment measures. We are applying to Solve since we believe that MIT’s research and technology expertise would help us achieve this and maximise the transformative potential of our work. 

The key barrier we have faced is the lack of awareness, understanding and acceptance of the relevance of our work. There exists a scientifically established correlation between our work and improved mental health and educational outcomes. We want to incorporate SEL workshops in the national mainstream educational curriculum. For this, we require institutional backing, funds, cross-cultural networks, and expertise to bring recognition and generate support from stakeholders in the Indian education sector, government and civil society. Solve can support us with the technological expertise to create an inhouse dashboard tool to scale up our operations and achieve our broader vision.