Eight states will work collaboratively to create and implement plans to encourage social and emotional learning in their schools as part of the Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning.

California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington will create standards that show how social and emotional skills are demonstrated at each grade level, develop materials to infuse traditional classroom concepts with social and emotional learning concepts, build strategies for state-level support and implement professional development plans about the subject. Advocates for social and emotional learning hope the work, in particular the standards each state develops, will help answer “the whole question of how to align from the statehouse to the classroom,” said Roger Weissberg, the chief knowledge officer for the collaborative.

The work comes as an increasing number of schools explore social and emotional learning, a field that emphasizes nurturing concepts like students’ relational skills, decision-making and self-management to help foster greater life success inside and outside the classroom. It also comes as the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new federal education law, places a greater emphasis on nonacademic concepts and “whole child” issues.

Education Week, Aug. 1