Social & Emotional Learning for Middle School Students

EVERFI by Blackbaud

According to the Issue Brief, The Importance of Peer Relationships for Social-Emotional Development, “All children experience occasional social stressors and peer conflicts, and 10 to 15 percent experience serious and chronic peer difficulties, including rejection, social exclusion, and victimization.” Dealing with peer group dynamics and making and keeping friends requires the ability to understand one’s own emotions, communicate effectively, and problem solve through situations.

Welcome to the Character Playbook, a course focused on five core competencies required for building healthy relationships.

• Self-Awareness – Students learn how to recognize and analyze their internal motivations, social identities, and external influences to better understand who they are.

• Self-Management – Students learn how to recognize complex emotions, how to regulate/manage their emotions, and how to set goals and take actions to manage themselves.

• Social Awareness – Students learn how to become more socially aware in different situations and how to respect others especially when there are disagreements or differences.

• Relationship Skills – Students learn how to navigate positive/negative peer pressure, how to develop effective communication skills, and how to (help) resolve conflicts constructively.

• Responsible Decision-Making – Students learn what’s important in the decision-making process and how to make responsible decisions that are aligned to their personal values.

In Character Playbook, students make decisions based on real-life scenarios such as navigating social media, reflecting on their emotions, and intentionally building positive relationships.

Although each module covers a different topic, each follows a similar flow:

1. Course introduction: Learners are introduced to the module topic and how the topic can apply to them personally
2. A Pre-assessment
3. A series of interactive pages and activities that allow learners to explore concepts related to metacognition, social-emotional learning, and building healthy peer relationships.
4. Conclusion and Post-assessment

If the students don’t pass their post-assessment the first time, they have the opportunity to retake it on the course home page.

While learners are encouraged to complete each module in sequential order, each module is standalone and can be completed in any order. Online modules can also be extended with additional remote/in-person learning resources, discussion prompts, and individual/group activities.

This course encourages learners to interact with true-to-life scenarios where characters need some help in navigating challenging situations (e.g., dilemmas, online and in-person communication, peer pressure, etc.). While learners get to follow how characters initiate, interact, or respond, they are asked to make choices as they see fit for some situations, resulting in increased social and emotional learning skills.

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