SEED Shipley School

Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development

Shipley is committed to ensuring that all students develop the skills and ability to make good decisions at every point in their career at Shipley. We offer an integrated and thorough “core values” curriculum devoted to Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED). The SEED curriculum is under the direction of the office of Student Support, which provides assistance that is individual and developmental in nature and designed to connect health (physical, social, and emotional) with academic skill development. At Shipley we know that it is the combination of rigor and support that leads to deeply rooted learning and success. Our SEED curriculum is a critical component of Shipley’s unique approach to education.

As with other parts of the Shipley curriculum, the SEED curriculum is:

Integrated PreK through Grade 12 and addresses a wide variety of topics (see below)
Integrated with other curricular elements (e.g., science, character education, physical education, emotional literacy, service learning, advisory program)
Supported by parent programming (details below)
Age and developmentally appropriate in instruction/experiences
Built to spiral and scaffold through the years, repeating and reinforcing key concepts over time
Clear about the content, skills, and assessment of each curricular piece
Designed to equip students at every age to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills to make good decisions.

Positive Education

Trough a partnership with Penn Center for Positive Psychology and IPEN, Shipley is poised to become the first full-immersed Positive Education school in the US.

Learn more about Positive Education

In order to integrate evidence-based practices from Positive Education, Academic and Social Emotional Learning, Emotional Intelligence and other programs, Shipley has chosen to use an overarching framework to inform its SEED program. The framework was developed through a “metasynthesis of over 18,400 peer-reviewed publications from fields such as psychology, education, public health, neuroscience and social science across an eighteen-year time frame” (Waters, et al, 2016). The acronym SEARCH identifies six domains that contribute to a student’s psychosocial functioning and wellbeing. The framework identifies the aspects of psychological and social functioning that lead a person to “feel good, function well and do good” (Waters, et al, 2016). (Read the original research as well as the work of Lea Waters, PhD.

Waters, L., Sun, J., Rusk, R., Aarch, A., & Cotton, A. (2016). Positive Education: Visible wellbeing and the five domains of positive functioning. In M Slade., L Oades., & A Jarden (Eds). Wellbeing, recovery and mental health. (Chapter 13; pp 235-260). Cambridge University Press

List of 6 items.

Strengths of Character:

Strengths of Character: Thoughts and actions that are guided by moral and ethical principles.
Emotions:

Emotions: Present-moment experiences of emotion, identification of emotions, understanding emotional associations with stimuli and memories, cultivating positive emotions, reducing negative emotions.
Attention and Awareness:

Attention and Awareness: The consciously controlled or automatic regulation of attention toward particular aspects of sensory or cognitive information, including novel aspects.
Relationships:

Relationships: Enduring social relationships and momentary social interactions, including family, friend, romantic, school, societal and spiritual levels.
Comprehending and Coping:

Comprehending and coping: Comprehend one’s situation by using consciously controlled or automatic processes involved with identifying stimuli, determining processes and causal relations within past and present stimuli, and anticipating or predicting future possibilities. This domain includes the application of these comprehension processes to cope effectively with adversity.
Habits and Goals:

Habits and Goals: Enduring conscious or unconscious values, rules, principles and goals involved in guiding the selection of behavior and the habits and skills involved in the execution of those behaviors.

Gyasi Miller ’24: A Perfect Blend of Love and Basketball
11/23/2018
Two years ago, when Gyasi Miller ’24 was in fifth grade, it was no surprise his love of basketball inspired his Think, Care, Act project to clean up a park near his home. He presented a proposal to a local councilman, secured funding, and recently cut the ribbon to officially open the renovated park in October.
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Psychologist Lea Waters, Ph.D. Visits Shipley to Speak About Strength-Based Parenting
9/18/2018
World-renowned psychologist Lea Waters, Ph.D. visited Shipley on Thursday, September 6 to speak to colleagues and families about strength-based parenting.
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Meeting of the Minds: Positive Education
7/9/2018
Melissa Tassoni

Shipley is the first school in the country to adopt a school-wide approach to Positive Education, which aims to strengthen academic and personal achievement through wellbeing using evidence-based techniques. What is wellbeing? Can you teach it? How do you incorporate a successful Positive Education practice in schools? Should you? Our panel explores these questions and more.
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Meeting of the Minds: Gender & Sexuality Diversity
6/15/2017
Melissa Tassoni

It’s an important topic that’s sparked legal battles, political debates, and philosophical divides in communities across the country. Our roundtable explores the role of schools in navigating this complex subject. How are Shipley and other schools responding to the issues surrounding gender identity and sexuality diversity? Shipley’s Head of School and a national expert weigh in.
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From The Blog: Why Practice Mindfulness? A Student’s Perspective
5/25/2017
Fitz Dougherty

While mindfulness is something I’ve been interested in for a while, I only began seriously looking into it about a year ago. I started making regular practice a part of my life in the beginning of March, and already I can see a difference.
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Meeting of the Minds: Educating for an Unknown Future
2/13/2017
Melissa Tassoni

In our rapidly-changing world, there is a lot of uncertainty about the future. What skills, knowledge, and experiences will our students need in order to thrive professionally and personally? How can Shipley and other schools ensure that students are future ready? Shipley administrators and alumni weigh in on the topic.
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Dr. Ken Ginsburg Speaks to Eleventh Graders and Families
4/12/2016
As part of their Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development (SEED) curriculum, eleventh graders and their families hear from Dr. Ken Ginsburg, author of Raising Kids to Thrive: Balancing Love with Expectations and Protection with Trust.
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Age of Opportunity, Lessons from the new science of Adolescence
11/24/2015
Dr. Laurence Steinberg, an expert on the science behind adolescent brain development presented a program for 9th and 10th grade students and parents. Dr. Steinberg’s research has focused on a range of topics in the study of contemporary adolescence, including adolescent brain development, risk-taking and decision-making, parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent employment, high school reform, and juvenile justice.
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