Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEE Learning™), a free K-12 education program developed for international use, is the culmination of an academic collaboration that began in 1998 between Emory University and the Dalai Lama. After more than two decades of talks with scientists and educators about the promise of bringing compassion and ethics into k-12 and higher education, in the summer of 2
015, the Dalai Lama asked Emory University to create a curriculum for compassion-based ethics that will be grounded in common sense, common experience, and scientific evidence. Led by Dr. Lobsang Tenzin Negi, the Emory team created the initial framework and sample learning experiences. The initial framework was redesigned to align with social-emotional learning (SEL), a worldwide movement, and with input from Dr. Thupten Jinpa, author of Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives, and Dr. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, who later dubs SEE Learning program “SEL 2.0.”
Key SEL founders and researchers, including Dr. Daniel Goleman, Dr. Mark Greenberg, Ms. Linda Lantieri, and Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, continue to advise the Emory team along the way. In the summer of 2016, Emory hosted more than a dozen veteran educators to work on creating learning exercises for teachers of kindergarten through 12th grade. Throughout that fall, Emory refined framework and learning objectives of this program in consultation with SEL experts Dr. Mark Greenberg, Dr. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl and consultants Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Dr. Robert Roeser, and Ms. Classroom trials with multiple grade levels began in January 2017; learning objectives and SEE Learning standards developed then as well. In the summer, educator preparation workshops were offered and working relationships established with school systems in the United States (Georgia, Colorado, Illinois) and India. Over 150+ educators attended these workshops. Throughout the school year, Emory continued to develop and revise curricula based on feedback from partnered educators, coaching them along the way. In Summer 2018, Emory will offer a Train-the-Trainer workshop
The planned public launch of the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics and SEE Learning will take place in the fall of 2018.
