Our Kids are in an Experimental Teaching Framework and the Public isn’t Told the Whole Story
Never in my life did I think I’d run to be a member of the New Hanover County School Board. It wasn’t until the re-districting happened, then the COVID-related forced masking and remote “learning” that I felt the need to do something. As I’ve corresponded with other parents over the last 18 months, much has been revealed to me about what a disaster our education system is. I’ve learned that our kids’ curriculum has an anti-American slant, that school administrators are allowing kids to change their gender without parental consent or knowledge, and school staff disciplines our most vulnerable students, the disabled, with solitary confinement (aka “seclusion rooms”). It’s all disturbing for me and it’s wrong.
The public school system is hurting our children. Kids are not learning and they’re leaving the classroom with a marked bias, one of hatred, fear and a warped sense of reality. Everyone sees what the results are. It has become well-ingrained in our culture over the last 5 or 6 years. The Progressive Left is gaining serious ground in advancing their radical agenda with our children. I’m taking this cultural shift seriously. It needs to come to a halt.
How it happened on a massive scale
As a teacher and mother of two young boys in public school, I’ve had a crash course on Social Emotional Learning and its destructive impact on students. New Hanover County Schools employs an instructional system not widely known outside of the Education Industry called Social Emotional Learning, commonly known as SEL. This system was developed by Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a progressive non-profit based in Chicago, Illinois. Not only is this learning framework here in North Carolina, but it has been rolled out across the nation over the last few years.
CASEL’s description of SEL from their website:
“We define social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
SEL is primarily promoted as the management of the child’s mental well-being; concepts are infused in texts, exercises, teachers’ guides and student surveys. But, in practice, SEL is much more. One of the problems with the model is that it places educators in roles of responsibility they’re not necessarily qualified to perform and removes the parent from the conversation. We see this in the administration of surveys addressing sensitive topics such as sexual orientation, “privilege,” and emotional self-analysis. To be clear, these administrators are not qualified to manage the data being collected from the students.
The North Carolina Department of Public instruction (NCDPI) has a history of pushing SEL. They first partnered and adopted SEL for infants and toddlers in 2013. They later set out SEL standards (now removed) for teachers on their website:
SEL STANDARDS: 1) integrate personal and social identities, 2) examine prejudice and bias, 3) set and achieve collective goals, 4) demonstrate collective agency, 5) understand the influence of oppression on behavior, 6) resist inappropriate social pressure, 7) stand up for rights of others, 8) choose personal behavior based on social norms, 9) act according to collective agency, 10) collect basline data, 11) promote CRT
Contrary to whatever goodwill CASEL is attempting to promote, SEL, as a system, was developed to advance Woke Ideology.
Below are examples of student surveys and teaching tools currently used in North Carolina schools:
(click to enlarge)
Student SEL self-assessment asking about their well-being. (click to enlarge)
Questions from manual to ask children about sexual orientation. (click to enlarge)
SEL is in New Hanover County Schools
If you are a parent, I urge you to review your child’s daily schedule. Here is an example given to a local student in this current school year. Not all teachers have placed it on their class schedule, but some have. This class allocates 15 minutes per day to SEL. I’d rather see that time allocated to a lesson in cursive or individual tutoring.
Caught red-handed on video: CASEL Execs discuss the true goals of SEL
Throughout my campaign for school board, I’ve admonished SEL. It is bad for children. My critics retort that I’m wrong, that SEL is benevolent and teaches children to be well-behaved and empathetic to others of different backgrounds. I counter here with a big reveal on how dangerous SEL truly is, and that CASEL — the organization that sets SEL standards — has hidden their agenda by removing a recorded meeting from their website showing SEL’s true purpose: the radicalization of public instruction.
Watch: CASEL Met to Discuss True Intention of SEL as Indoctrination Tool
The authors of SEL promote the system as a kinder, better way of teaching or instructing children. However, it’s far from that.
Here are three videos. The first is a message from CASEL clarifying what they would like you to believe SEL to be. The second two videos, which have been scrubbed from the CASEL website, reveal what CASEL executives are actually saying about SEL behind closed doors.
Here’s what CASEL wants the public hear:
Video #1: CASEL-produced outreach promo.
Here’s what CASEL is actually saying about SEL behind closed doors:
Video #2: Highlight roll from an internal CASEL Zoom meeting. (run time: 1 min. 20 sec.)
Video #3: Complete internal CASEL Zoom meeting. (run time: 46 min.)