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(LEAPED) The Leadership, Ethics & Awareness of Personal & Emotional Development Program

LEAPED to becoming You

In Indian schools the focus is on high-pressure academics & SEL is not taught. We believe that SEL competencies are essential foundations for truly empowering students that must be taught explicitly. Far too many people assume students will learn them incidentally through life, but left to chance, they may not. This aspiration for a generation of students in India, led to our LEAPED Program.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2019

Established

2.2K

Children

1

Countries
Target group
Students
Updated
June 2021
Education is not the preparation for life; education is life itself - John Dewey

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Indian schooling system gives importance to high-pressure competitive academic exams focusing on rote-memorisation & doesn't teach SEL skills. Explicit SEL instruction is essential to equip students with capabilities to succeed academically, nurture healthy relationships, maintain sound mental health, secure employment, and become productive citizens. LEAPED aims at addressing this problem.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

We teach self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building skills, and responsible decision making capabilities explicitly in our LEAPED classes which happen daily at the start of the day. We changed our timetable to include teaching this essential subject explicitly. Students also do guided practice of each of the skills they learn so that first they are able to learn exactly how to do it in a controlled simulated environment and get feedback on it and practice appropriate ways of doing this. Then, through the day when these things happen, teachers and peers can remind and support each other using the same things they had explicitly learnt in class. This way students learn it explicitly and then practice it when situations crop up instead of being thrown into the deep end without knowing what to do or how to do it and maybe with no one supporting them.

How has it been spreading?

We started by creating an evidence-informed SEL K-12 Curriculum for our LEAPED Program. We understood that students need SEL knowledge but also opportunities to put what they have learned into practice. We also understood that teachers would need professional development to empower students successfully. We incorporated both into the design of the program. We then piloted, iterated and then scaled up. We now serve more than 2000 students in our schools and as we measure its impact on students, we will continue to refine and release research. In time we hope to extend our reach beyond our own schools to many more.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

For further information and to discuss the LEAPED program; it's components, content, implementation and impact, please reach out to Siamack Zahedi at siamack.zahedi@acresfoundation.org and Pooja Harlalka at pooja.harlalka@acresfoundation.org

Spread of the innovation

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