Teams

Social-Emotional Learning Team

The Urban Assembly Social-Emotional Learning Team builds schools' capacity to ensure that all staff and students receive relevant training and instruction to develop competencies impacting students' mental health in order to achieve and sustain success in school, work, and life.

Social-emotional learning supports early college and career readiness by helping students build on their resiliency, develop pro-social behavior, and take part in positive experiences beyond the classroom. These experiences are essential for students to become strong candidates as they apply to college, and give them cultural competency as well as transferrable meta-cognitive skills to succeed after their transition from their high school to a post-secondary institution.

Working across schools with key school staff, including principals, deans, social workers, teachers and counselors, the Urban Assembly Social-Emotional Learning Team employs the following key strategies to address mental health, emotional, behavioral, and social challenges:

  • Develop and Establish Behavior Support Systems
  • Develop and Establish Social-Emotional Learning Programming
  • Monitor and Enhance School Culture/Climate

Team Members

  • David is the Director of Social-Emotional Learning at The Urban Assembly. He previously served as the Social-Emotional Learning Coordinator for District 75 where he shaped the District's approach to social-emotional learning for students with severe cognitive and behavioral challenges. He has worked internationally in schools in England, standing up and evaluating programs of positive behavioral supports and Social-Emotional Learning as a research intern at Yale University’s Health, Emotion and Behavior Lab, and published multiple academic papers around the relationship of social-emotional competence, and student academic and behavioral outcomes. He is married with two children and is an Engineering Officer in the Army Reserve. David holds an M.Ed in Educational Psychology from Fordham University.