"We're moving forward because now is not a time for small plans. It's not a time to pause, to be passive, or to wait around for our problems to fix themselves." President Barack Obama, May 8, 2009.

The whole community suffers when schools, as well as youth and school athletics, are not considered a place to address community issues such as violence, addictions, eating disorders, obesity and depression. Schools and sports teams are ideal places to teach mental health skills because they shape young minds into habits of thinking that lead to emotional health, self-control, academic achievement and long-lasting relationships.

Schools, and sports teams, need a curriculum that teaches the very same skills preventatively that are found in anger management and addiction program after the fact when the damage is already done. If we teach these skills before the fact, imagine the impact on our society.

There is such an educational plan that has proven to be effective in changing behavior and improving performance in academics. It is called Social-Emotional Learning. In sports, it's called sport psychology, albeit that the goal in that science has always been improving performance and only lately has realized the social and emotional literacy they are teaching as the major premise of their work.

GetPsychedSports.org educates and advocates for the use of schools and sport teams as place to teach preventative mental health skills. In so doing, students are learning habit-forming ways of thinking that can improve academics and reduce incidents of violence, addictions, eating disorders and other societal ills.

For an executive summary of the concept to reduce financial and human costs of social ills like violence, addictions, eating disorders, obesity and depression, see here.

After six months of 2 workshops a month, some significant preliminary figures are in from our teaching sport psychology, cognitive-behavioral and social-emotional learning (SEL) skills to the Mature Workers Program participants:

Seventy-two percent (72%) of the participants stayed with the program all the way through; and

An astounding sixty-five percent (65%) of those who remained volunteered to participate in a movement that would have the Boston schools teach what they learned at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, to all children in the public schools.

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Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has proven to improve behavior and academics. See this clip from PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer about the effect of such teaching and think how it could reduce behaviors that cause so much pain and cost so much money.

The piece was produced by Learning Matters at http://learningmatters.tv/