Dr.Kukk with Scarlett Lewis, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Murphy, Congresswoman Esty and others at the announcement of the Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act.
The following speech was given by me on April 13, 2015 at the announcement ceremony of Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) officially introducing a bill into the United States Senate called the Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act, which mandates social and emotional learning (SEL) in all schools throughout the country. Jesse was the 6 year-old boy who saved 9 of his fellow classmates during the Sandy Hook shooting; his inner strength was beyond his years in terms of social and emotional learning. Scarlett, his mom, asked me to speak at the announcement ceremony. I am one of the original members of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation’s Board of Directors, created a SEL curriculum called the Connected Five Cs™ and I am the founding Director of the Center for Compassion, Creativity & Innovation. I started working specifically with Scarlett on SEL issues soon after Jesse’s heroics and before there was a Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation. Scarlett and I vowed to each other that we wouldn’t stop our efforts until students have had SEL be a part of their education from pre-Kindergarten through college; in essence, it was our vow to Jesse. The announcement press conference for the Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act represents only one step but imagine if the Act is the start of all of us stepping in unison…our children and society would become as strong as Jesse’s inner strength during that fateful day.
Speech for The Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act
13 April 2015
What if there was an idea that produced, at a minimum, a $7–11 return on every $1 spent and had been scientifically proven to help raise academic scores, improve dropout and school suspension rates, reduce the incidences of school violence as well as strengthen community cohesion, would you support the idea? Senator Blumenthal’s bill is about turning such an idea into reality and we are asking for your support and help in turning his bill into law. The Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act is not only named in remembrance of a boy with amazing inner strength but it also seeks to promote an idea that will strengthen our entire country: it is called social and emotional learning, also known as SEL.
Senator Blumenthal’s bill directly addresses a fundamental problem in education that has gone unaddressed for decades: a child’s education and a child’s development are out of sync. The Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act synchronizes educating with learning. It’s about time. We know, based on scientifically peer-reviewed research (specifically in the field of neuroscience), that SEL is the foundation upon which many aspects of cognitive development rest.
There have been serious consequences of not synchronizing educating with learning and our children have been the ones to feel the effects. For example, according to Northwestern University, there has been a 66% increase in ADHD diagnoses since 2000. In addition, there has been a 21% increase in reported bullying since we began statistically tracking bullying via the National Center for Education Statistics (since 2003). From the pharmaceutical counters of ADHD diagnoses to the psychological sessions of the bullying epidemic, our children have borne the brunt of the misalignment between educating and learning. However, please do not think that the effects and consequences end with our children; we as members of society bear the costs of an education system without a consistent and strong SEL component. The costs come in the form of increased incarceration, substance abuse and hospitalization rates just to name a few.
Children who have experienced strong SEL programs in their education have increased emotional, intellectual and even physical resiliency compared to children who haven’t had such an experience. These are not spurious correlations; we know what happens in the brain in terms of the peptide hormones and neurotransmitters that are released when children are experiencing a healthy SEL environment and when they are not.
This bill seeks to build resiliency within children so that they not only become strong and stable individuals but contributing and compassionate members of our communities. Shouldn’t we all want that? I believe we do but if you read a 2014 study by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, that is not what is happening. “Almost 80 percent of [middle and high school] students ranked [their own] achievement or happiness over caring for others.” The study goes on to state that “Any healthy civil society…depends on adults who are committed to their communities and who, at pivotal times, will put the common good before their own. We don’t seem to be preparing large numbers of youth to create this society.” The Jesse Lewis Empowering Educators Act is about preparing large numbers of youth for becoming—literally and figuratively—the pillars of our society.
The bill’s synchronization will help a new generation of Americans strengthen our country far into the future. Thank you Senator Blumenthal for this bill. Thank you Scarlett, Jesse’s Mom, for your unwavering devotion to improve education for all children. And thank you Jesse for inspiring all that is happening today.
Chris is Professor of Political Science at Western Connecticut State University, a Fulbright Scholar, Director of the Kathwari Honors Program, and founding Director of the Center for Compassion, Creativity & Innovation. He is also the author of "The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success" (HarperOne, 2017).
Send this to friend