ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, “social emotional learning” was a growing concern for educators. After working on the development of the National SEED Project for fourteen years, Peggy McIntosh and Emily Style knew that the learning was incomplete: it needed to be “social, emotional, and political learning.” In this essay, they describe their work weaving social, emotional, and political learning together for SEED’s K-12 teacher development programs. They argue that talking with teachers or students about social and emotional learning (SEL) without addressing their own experience of their political realities is sentimental, disempowering, and ahistorical. Additionally, it is necessary to consider the political reasons why “social emotional learning” is not currently part of mainstream education, despite the work of progressive education advocates like John Dewey and Maria Montessori.
