Connecting With Students: Social and Emotional Learning in Brazilian Schools

• In Event: Current International Practices and Challenges in Social and Emotional Learning Intervention Programs

Abstract

Puppets and songs. Audiovisual series. Youtubers. These are some of LIV's carefully developed pedagogical tools to build a social and emotional program that truly connects with students. LIV, which stands for Laboratório Inteligência de Vida (Life Intelligence Lab), aims to promote social and emotional education for all. LIV creates spaces where students can listen, talk and expand the comprehension of self, other, and the world.
LIV was created in 2016 under the umbrella of Eleva Educação, one of the biggest K-12 education groups in Brazil. Today, LIV has broadened its walls and expanded its reach. The social and emotional learning program is present not only in 115 schools which are part of Eleva's group, but also in additional 240 schools nationwide. Guided by 2,000 teachers, over 140,000 students between three and eighteen years old experience LIV’s classes during 50 minutes once a week.
The program's priority is to develop content that speaks directly to students and that connects to the reality of each age range. Whereas preschool children have access to social and emotional learning through originally written stories, songs and puppet characters, elementary and middle school students develop their skills and abilities using LIV's proprietary audiovisual series as a starting point. Finally, Brazilian Youtuber Jout Jout, with over 2 million subscribers, sets the stage for high school students to discuss pressing topics. The students speak for LIV's program: 8-year-old Daphne, for example, mentioned "LIV helps me know more about my feelings."
Given LIV's exponential growth, the program is now facing some interesting challenges. During the second semester of 2019, LIV will pilot its program in public schools, specifically in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Over 600 schools, 1,700 teachers and around 50,000 second-graders will deep dive into emotional literacy with the stories of Tomás, a blue character who experiences different types of emotions as the story unfolds. Entering public schools raises important questions, such as "How should the program and its materials be adapted considering different socioeconomic status and a country strongly marked by inequality?" and "How to build a scalable follow-up solution to meet the demand of entire public schooling systems?"
Additionally, in partnership with ACT, LIV is moving towards measuring the development of social and emotional skills in schools. However, despite the fact that Brazil has taken an important step to embed social and emotional learning in its recently approved Common Core, the country still doesn't support efforts to measure the development of such skills. In this scenario, LIV faces the challenge of how to build a culture of measurement as well as how to guarantee that the access to such results and data doesn't negatively impact students.
Overall, LIV has already brought the topic of social and emotional learning to hundreds of private schools and thousands of students in Brazil. Now, the program is growing to reach the public schooling system and measure the impact of its approach.

Author

• Caio Lo Bianco, Laboratorio Inteligencia de Vida