A $1.06 million grant from the St. David's Foundation will support the expansion of Austin ISD's social and emotional learning, or SEL, programming in schools throughout the district.

St. David's Foundation CEO Earl Maxwell presented a check Dec. 11 to AISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen during a ceremony at Govalle Elementary School. SEL programs focus on helping students learn to manage their emotions and behavior.

"This is the third year of the program, and this will allow the district to build on the schools that are already participating in SEL and over a two- or three-year period, take this to scale and expand it to all the schools within the district and all grade levels," Maxwell said. "We're so happy about that."

The donation fulfills the match challenge of $1 million set in 2012 by donors Jeanne and Michael Klein, Betsy and Hughes Abell with the Buena Vista Foundation, and Carmel and Thomas Borders with the Tapestry Foundation.

Carstarphen said the district has already seen results from its SEL education programs and noted that this is not how medical foundations typically approach funding support in the area of mental and social health for families in Austin.

"The investment that [St. David's Foundation is] making to prevent or [eliminate] some of these behavioral health challenges before they even begin by actually working with children is just a hugely progressive approach," she said.

Govalle Elementary was one of the district's first schools to implement SEL progamming, Carstarphen said. In a classroom on the East Austin campus Dec. 11, first-grade teacher Lyndi Garrett led students in SEL exercises during class.

Garrett presents students with hypothetical problems, such as encountering another student who is frustrated because he or she cannot find a book in the library. Students then break out into pairs and discuss potential actions and solutions, including offering to help the other student locate the book.

These conversations help students to learn valuable skills including conflict resolution, openness, empathy, planning, self-control and persistence, Tapestry's Carmel Borders said, pointing to students' behavior during the recent floods in Southeast Austin among examples of positive results of SEL.

"After the flood, a young Perez Elementary student shared with his teacher that while he was standing on his roof with his family waiting to be rescued, he remembered to take a 'deep belly breath' and to use self-talk to say 'I'm gonna be OK,'" she said. "A volunteer parent was reading with a child in the Matthews Elementary hallway when two students began arguing in the hall, and a third came up and said, 'Hey, let's work this out together.'

"This is social and emotional learning in action, and it is visible daily in our Austin schools and in the homes of the 44,000 students already receiving social and emotional learning education," she continued.

Carstarphen said the district aims to shift from a culture of high-stakes testing to a culture focused on developing all parts of students' education to help them not only succeed academically, but also "be a good person."