PEP CEO Eric Gordon recently served as a panelist on an episode of Thriving Youth Knowledge Exchange, a podcast intended to help “listeners understand and leverage the complexity of learning and development in ways that are clear reflective and actionable.” According to the podcast’s webpage, “each episode brings together multiple voices to explore an important theme in depth.”
The episode in which Eric participated was entitled, “Implementing the 16 Success Drivers and How They Can Be Holistically Enacted and Embodied in Schools and Across Learning Ecosystems.” Fellow panelists included:
- Queena Kim, principal, Los Angeles Unified School District
- Jillian Aherns, vice president, Cleveland Teachers Union
- Karen Hunter Quartz, director, UCLA Center for Community Schooling
- Vivian Gadsen, Co-faculty director, Penn Early Childhood and Family Research Center
David Osher, senior fellow, The Education Collaboratory, University of Massacusetts, Amhert, who hosts and moderates the podcast explains, “this podcast is about what young people need to learn and deeply thrive – and what young people can do now to thrive.”
The podcast episode focused on the importance of social-emotional learning in school. Eric, speaking about his time as Superintendent of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, said, “our vision was that our kids would experience academically complex tasks that were worth productive struggle, that they would authentically demonstrate those tasks of their academic learning and their transferable skills, that's their SEL, to real audiences who cared about what they were doing, and that they would do it in joyful and adventurous environments.”
He concluded that in order to do that, SEL had to be the foundation and not just a piece of the curriculum.
Listen to the whole podcast here.
To learn more about PEP and how we use social emotional learning as a foundation in our classrooms, visit our website.