Welcome to the Center for Social and Emotional Education (CSEE).
When you -as parent, teacher, mentor -think about your children, what do you want most for them? Certainly, you want them to be safe. Safe from physical harm. Safe from harassment, bullying, from any form of violence. And, you want them to feel safe emotionally, safe to show what they are feeling and thinking. Fundamentally, we want our children to fulfill their true potential; to be good friends and mates to the people they care about; to be responsible and active learners. We know that, if these hopes are met, they will experience the satisfaction that comes from becoming involved, productive members of the larger community.
Here, at the Center for Social and Emotional Education (CSEE), it is our mission to further these goals. We seek to educate and support parents and teachers in how they can create a truly safe environment and teach children the skills and knowledge they need to become life long learners. Recently, a number of major research studies have underscored the critical importance of this work and their findings provide a foundation for both risk prevention programs and health promotion efforts. In our work with educators, parents, after-school workers and mental health professionals we continue to focus on:
- Promoting children's social, emotional, ethical, and academic dispositions;
- Creating safe, caring, participatory and responsive homes and schools.
At CSEE, we strive to recognize, honor, and build on what educators and parents are already doing along these lines. Just as there is no one "best way" to teach children to read books, there is no one "best way" to teach children to read themselves and others. From our inception, we have sought to identify principles of effective efforts and to translate them for teachers, counselors, school leaders, after-school workers and parents: what to do, when to do it and how to do it.
We hope that this web site supports your teaching, learning and/or parenting. Please do let us know what additional resources and guidelines you believe will help us to raise healthy children.
Jonathan Cohen, Ph.D.
President, Center for Social and Emotional Education;
Adjunct Professor in Psychology and Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University;
Adjunct Professor in Education,
School of Professional Studies, City University of New York.