Children’s social and emotional health affects their overall development and learning. Research indicates that children who are mentally healthy tend to be happier, show greater motivation to learn, have a more positive attitude toward school, more eagerly participate in class activities, and demonstrate higher academic performance than less mentally healthy peers (Hyson 2004; Kostelnik et al. 2015)

The Social Emotional Initiative helps Flagler and Volusia early educators support the healthy social-emotional development of the children in their classrooms.

Benefits of participating include:

• Training with CEUs through Quorum, an online professional learning system for early educators. Assigned training helps teachers improve their classroom environment and relationships with children and families. Teachers receive subscriptions for unlimited use of the Quorum training system.
• Classroom materials to support social-emotional learning.
• Monthly coaching visits from an ELCFV Quality and Inclusion Specialist who provides resources and demonstrates activities to help meet the needs of all children in the classroom. ELCFV Quality and Inclusion Specialists also facilitate Communities of Practice to help teachers support each other as they make changes to improve social-emotional learning in their classrooms.