Sandy Hook mom’s school program pitched for expansion in state’s NW

FAYETTEVILLE — School officials are considering expanding a social and emotional learning program districtwide as part of safety and security efforts.

Incorporating the Choose Love Enrichment Program in every school is one of many recommendations made by the Fayetteville Safety and Security Task Force to the School Board last month.

If the board approves changes, Superintendent John L. Colbert said the program likely will be implemented next school year after faculty training is completed.

Scarlett Lewis founded the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation and has worked with educators, researchers and others to create the program. She began her work after her 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. She said she realized school shootings were a societal problem.

“Everything I do, I do as much for my son and other victims as I do for the perpetrators, because there is no mass-murder gene,” Lewis said. “People like to think it’s a snap, because that takes us off the hook. ‘How can you prevent a snap?’ But it’s never a snap; it’s a slow, steady burn of pain, neglect, abuse, anxiety, disconnection, lack of resilience, lack of ability to manage emotion.”

The pre-K through 12thgrade program began in 2016 in schools around the country, including George Elementary School in Springdale and Washington Elementary School in Fayetteville. Other schools in both districts adopted the program last school year.

The program focuses on four values — courage, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion in action — which cultivate optimism, resilience and personal responsibility through positive psychology, mindfulness, neuroscience and other elements, Lewis said.

The one thing everyone can control is how they react to a situation, she said, and that’s a very empowering thing to teach a child.

The goal is to effectively learn and apply the character skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals,

feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions.

Anxiety in children can begin by the time a child is 6 years old, and anxiety can lead to emotional and mental health problems, substance abuse and violence, Lewis said. The Sandy Hook Advisory Report, released after the shootings, recommended three areas for prevention: gun safety, increased access to mental health treatment, and social and emotional learning.

Social and emotional learning and the research to back it up have been around for more than 30 years, Lewis said.

Many studies found how character skills formed in early childhood lead to necessary social and emotional skills for success in school and beyond. For example, a 20-year study published in the American

Journal of Public Health in 2015 evaluated the character skills of 800 kindergartners and followed them until age 25. For every one-point increase in children’s character skills scores in kindergarten, they were 54 percent more likely to graduate from high school, twice as likely to earn a college degree and 46 percent more likely to have a fulltime job at age 25.

One of the positive impacts of the program is that it creates a common language with which teachers, students and parents can talk about emotions, said Tara Lechtenberger, a counselor at Washington Elementary School.

“Not only are we using the curriculum, but we are creating a Choose Love culture,” she said. “Parents have told me they are using the skills because the students are teaching the parents to breathe when they are angry, for example, which I love.”

Lechtenberger said she thinks the program will continue to expand at Washington to where teachers are using the program more. She’s excited at the possibility of it being used districtwide.

“It’s really essential these kids learn these skills so when they find themselves in difficult situations, they know what to do. That’s what I love: It’s very practical. These are real skills,” she said. “The Choose Love culture and curriculum is a component of school safety. It’s not the answer; it’s part of the answer.”

Teachers do a great job of connecting with the students, but kids don’t always connect with kids, said Janelle Harp, school counselor at Sonora Elementary School in Springdale. She has seen a positive change since implementing the Choose Love program into her guidance lessons last year.

“Through this program, I think the biggest thing is that they are learning to connect with each other in positive ways,” she said. “They are not going to feel as isolated and disconnected. It is going to take some time, but I have definitely seen a shift and change in kids — not that they are all best friends, but they have been nicer and kinder to each other.”

The program complements a conscious discipline teachers at her school have been trained in, Harp said. Conscious discipline teaches classroom management and uses similar language and concepts of self-regulation as Choose Love, she said.

“For me, Choose Love and conscious discipline are so powerful to have together,” Harp said.

In school districts in Northwest Arkansas, social and emotional learning and similar programs are implemented school-to-school based on the culture of that school, counselors said.

Tucker Elementary School in Lowell is considering the Choose Love Program, counselor Amanda Scoggin said, because of its focus on how students struggle with anxiety and how they can better relate to each other.

Bentonville Public Schools also uses a couple of different social-emotional learning programs, communications director Leslee Wright said.

“We’re currently in the process of evaluating a number of others, including Choose Love, that we will implement across the district at the right time,” Wright said.

The program is free, and the materials are accessible online.

“There are a lot of programs out there. They are all great. They all teach the important skills kids need to know, but I was, first, intrigued at the story behind why Scarlett started the program, and then I looked at the curriculum,” Lechtenberger said. “I thought it had a mindfulness component that I felt was current and fresh. I thought the kids would really respond to the way this curriculum teaches these skills.”

The program has been downloaded in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and 55 countries by 3,300 educators. The foundation estimates these educators reach about 500,000 students, according to its website.