Emotionally Smart School Counselors: A School District’s Initiative to Create Emotionally Intelligent Schools

Beginning in 2000, New York City Community School District 2 implemented an SEL program that was one of the first in the nation to systematically use counselors as agents of change. The initiative, called Project EXSEL, was viewed as a pilot project. It also came to serve as an example of how a commit-

ment to emotional literacy can enable one school district to cope with a horrible disaster such as the events of September 11, 2001.