Your child has a class in how to handle being a person.

SEL is the process through which children and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. That definition comes from CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, and it is the framework Selwyn’s class is built on.

It is a real class. SEL is one of Selwyn’s specials, timetabled like art or music, and students attend one to two times per week. That is unusual: most schools that talk about character do not give it a teacher, a room and a slot on the schedule.

Kindergarten through middle school, taught at each age’s developmental level. A kindergartener and a seventh grader are working on the same five competencies at very different depths.

Amy Pace, known to most students as Miss Amy. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a master of science degree, both in Behavior Analysis, from the University of North Texas, and she is a licensed and Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She has more than twelve years of experience as a clinician and this is her fourth year teaching SEL at Selwyn.

No. It is instruction. Skills are taught directly, practiced in activities, and then reinforced in the ordinary moments of the school day. There is no diagnosis and no treatment plan; there is a curriculum, and there is practice.

Direct instruction and discussion, then the skill practiced through an activity: a blindfolded partner challenge that only works if the directions are clear, a rod a group has to balance together, a balance path across the classroom floor. The concept is short. The doing is most of the class.

Miss Amy partners with the classroom teachers, who extend the conversation and reinforce the same language across the day. That is what carries a skill from the SEL room to the classroom and the playground, which is the only place it counts.

Mistakes are framed as learning opportunities. The approach to behavior is non‑judgmental and non‑emotional, analytical and self‑reflective: students look at the causes and effects of what they did and make a better plan for next time. Self reflection over simple correction is how self-awareness and genuine self-control get built.

Yes. Each week students add to an SEL binder, a living journal of their year: the experiences, the reminders, the tools, their own reflections and tangible evidence of how they have grown. Miss Amy also keeps office hours and answers email directly.

Because these are not soft skills, they are life skills, and they are the surest route to Selwyn’s own mission of cultivating global citizens who embrace complex challenges with empathetic and innovative thinking that advances the human condition. Research gathered by CASEL also finds that education promoting SEL has a positive impact on academic performance, healthy relationships and mental wellness.