ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the book. There is growing recognition of the value in helping students develop their own motivation and other related Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills like perseverance, self-control, and personal responsibility. The cognitive "bandwidth" required to deal with financial problems, stress and constant "trade-offs" makes it more difficult to maintain the mental reserve needed for those SEL skills. SEL has an important place in teaching and in learning. It is also critical to remember that it kept in its appropriate place, and is not a substitute for appropriate public policy responses to the challenges students may face in the 80 percent of their lives that teachers cannot affect in the classroom. Even with that major caveat, though, unable to think of another teaching strategy that can have a more dramatically positive impact on classes than one that helps students to motivate themselves.
