SEL Works for Every Student with Christina Cipriano

Christina Cipriano led a research team that studied over 250 social emotional learning programs worldwide again demonstrating that SEL is effective and essential to promote positive outcomes for all students. In this conversation we discuss why SEL is so important and how your school should approach developing daily, quality SEL interventions for students and why every teacher must intentionally work to promote SEL with all students.

Transcript

C Cipriano 2025

Every School can use SEL with Christina Cipriano 

Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and education organizations please visit our website at www.oncoursesolutions.net and reach out. 

Today I am joined by Christina Cipriano an associate professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at the Yale Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine where she also directs the Yale Education Collaboratory. You may have heard Chris share her expertise in media outlets including NPR, PBS and Education Week. She has also published extensively including a recent meta-analysis on the effects of social emotional learning interventions in schools published in the journal Child Development and her new book Be Unapologetically Impatient: The Mindset Required to Change the Way We Do Things both of which we will discuss extensively today. But first we’ll talk about how Chris became interested in social emotional learning.

Welcome Chris to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast. 

Christina Cipriano: Thank you so much for having me, Scott. 

Scott Lee: Yeah. So first off can you tell us a little bit how you became interested in studying learning differences and social emotional learning? 

Christina Cipriano: Sure. So, I really like to say that the field found me over kind of a series of interactions I had across, my own school experiences and through college.

But to get straight to the point, the turning point was when I was in, a doctorate program for applied developmental and educational psychology. And so, studying how people grow and how they learn, and although I was learning how to think like a prevention scientist and how to do all of the kind of fancy stats in my coursework but really transformed my learning the most was my work with schools in classrooms and communities who were all othered by, at that point, by the US Public Education System. So, I was learning with kids in kind of sub-separate tier three settings who were ward boards of the state. Children who were in correctional facilities, children who had emotional and behavioral challenges who were relegated to like windowless basements or, you know, kind of on the outskirts of their public school system, neurodivergent students.

And so I was consulting and working through the Department of Education at that time, working across these different school settings. And I was really struck by the experiences of social, emotional experiences that were happening in these classroom settings and the ways in which. Their support staff and their educators were working to meet students where they were and see 'em as they were, and with kind of little resources under-resourced and kind of overworked in those settings.

And I thought to myself, “you know, there's, there's gotta be something more we can do here.” And actually, for me, when I was asking, “like why, why was it always this way? Why were there so many kind of barriers to their students' joys and experience there within?” 

I was met with the response of, “you know, that's just the way it is.”

All these different versions of just the way it is here. It's the way we do things or it, it, it really struck me that the kids who had been positioned by society to be quote unquote most in need of services we're kind of receiving on the kind of tail end of it, the, the least amount of servicing and support despite all of their educators and support staffs incredible herculean efforts. And so that that experience that working in and across those settings across the state while I was doing my doctorate, really cemented my interest in advancing the science of learning and social emotional development so that all children and educators and all of the adults around them have the opportunities to thrive and reach their full potential.

Scott Lee: Yeah. And, part of the reason that we became acquainted and I reached out, was a recent, meta-analysis that you were one of the co-authors on. And, Joseph Durlak also participated in that meta-analysis and I, that popped into my head, because he originally did a meta-analysis that was also published in Child Development in that journal that I probably cited hundreds of times when I was doing my own dissertation. And you and your colleagues did the follow up on that. So first off, if you could tell us a little bit about how far reaching that was. We'll talk about the finding your findings in just a few minutes, but how big was that study and why did you pursue that? 

Christina Cipriano: Sure. So, a co, a couple of points to, to discuss about that. So, you know, the Durlak at al, 2011 paper, seminal paper in social and emotional learning really put SEL on the map from a kind of fiscal investment standpoint and the ways in which school districts nationwide and across the globe began to invest in SEL initiatives. It was published in 2011, but it only included studies that were available empirically through the end of 2007. So, when you do evidence synthesis work, there's a time lag and I, I draw your attention to it because although there had been systematic reviews and meta-analyses that happened from 2011 through the point at which we preregistered our study in 2020, there had not been one that had gone to scale in covering the full breadth and depth of what was contemporarily known as social emotional learning. In our present times, there were positive youth development studies, character education studies, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. But there hadn't been something done at scale that was all inclusive, that was all in, and kind of what happens when you look across the full scope and range of what could be considered to be social emotional learning from us.

Skill level perspective, so explicit skill, instruction of intra and interpersonal skills. And so that was the driving force behind, why my team and I took on this initiative to kind of set forth a new path. And we started with the idea of preregistering, a study of looking specifically at the ways in which elementary school programs in the United States were servicing and supporting outcomes for students with special education needs. But what we realized when we fell into what I refer to as the “Grand Canyon of data” is that we really needed to kind of do the whole thing and kind of really look, and so we preregistered a study. And what that means, and this is an important kind of nerdy scientific note, when you pre-register a study, you state upfront your research questions and your hypotheses and you state exactly what you're going to do and then you do that thing. So, we pre-registered the study that was accepted to be the first registered report of a meta-analysis published by Child Development.

In 2020, not that there wasn't like a lot of things going on in 2020 when we started this journey. And we said we're gonna do the whole thing. We're going to really document for the broader education community worldwide. What do we know about the state of the evidence of social emotional learning?

And so, in terms of reach, over 50 countries have data that's represented in this study more than 500,000 students are represented K-12. There is a couple hundred SEL programs and we could talk about the kind of differences there within that are included. So, it is a giant evidence synthesis from kind of folks who do evidence synthesis.

They look at this and they go, how? On Earth, like how could you And I say, you know, that's, that's what happens when a non-meta-analyst comes to meta-analysis and says, “you know, I know it's about the forest and we care about the big effect size, but somebody really needs to get down to like the flowers and the blades of grass here.”

Because when we're talking about social and emotional learning there's so many differentiation in the types of programming and approaches and the types of outcomes to be expected, and so we really wanted to get it all the way down to the smallest grain size so that we had a new kind of foundation from which to move the field forward, and that's what we've been doing ever since.

Scott Lee: Wow. Wow. You know, I started doing woodworking 'cause of COVID. And you do that, that's…

Christina Cipriano: yeah. I've got some friends who call this, they're like, “that was your COVID baby.” Or, you know, “your COVID bread baking” or all the other things that folks did during that time. Yeah. 

Scott Lee: And you looked at, I guess in the PBIS world, it'd be universal interventions.

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: But schoolwide interventions, yes. So, you did not go to classroom size interventions, it was schoolwide interventions that you all looked at? 

Christina Cipriano: Yeah. So generally, tier one. Yeah. So, tier one school-based interventions. It didn't need to be adopted in the whole school. So, it certainly is the classroom is a unit of analysis that's included there within.

Okay, but it had to be offered in a tier one universal setting during an intact school day. Mm-hmm. So not the before or after schools or any of those types of programming. 

Scott Lee: Right. So, what were some of the positive outcomes, or findings that you had? And we'll talk more specifically about what an SEL program needs to have in just a minute. But what, what were the general outcomes and general findings? 

Christina Cipriano: Yeah, so, we found an overall significant effect on, using the, the nerdy terms, a three-level hierarchical model. Yeah. Which I'll tell you in and of itself is a really exciting finding because that means that if you take everything that existed up until that date and you put it in to the model to say, does SEL have an effect on student outcomes?

The answer is yes and significantly so, and then we distilled it down and found positive effects on nine outta12 outcome domains. So, we've got your academic achievement in there and students who experience explicit SEL instruction do better in school academically. We also looked at it in terms of school functioning, so homework and homework completion, engagement on task behaviors, as well as that social emotional skill development.

So pro-sociality, civic engagement, which we were able to find significant effects on separately. Furthermore, kids who participate in explicit SEL instruction feel better at school. So, more in inclusion, belonging, they're less likely to both be bullied or be the bully. So, reductions in aggressive behaviors, depressive symptoms.

Moving down the mental health track, we also saw reductions in suicidality. Experiences of stress, and what our largest effect size was on perceptions of school climate and safety. So, students felt safer when having gone through the experiences of an explicit social emotional learning structure in their schools.

And, when I kind of reflect upon the studies at scale and kind of the, the breadth of findings at scale and think about, we're, we're both based in the us but like what we're hearing in the US. Globally, both in terms of mental health and adolescent and young adult mental health transitions there within experiences in schools that may or may not be so safe for all students right now in current spaces and places. There really is an overwhelming, robust evidence of effectiveness of the benefits of social emotional learning on students, academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes across the K to 12 continuum.

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: And you know, the last thing I'll note on that is that we didn't stop there. So, although that was the first registered report that we put forward, we have since launched what's referred to as a living systematic review. So, we are continuously updating the state of the evidence of social emotional learning to keep current with where the field is advancing to. And so we can, we can talk a little bit more about some, what some of that and what that means in the scheme of things and making those findings public as well. 

Scott Lee: Okay. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. So, usually you want to start with the good and then the bad. But I want to go, I want to do it the other way around. What are some common practices, common interventions that. Are happening in schools that are not really evidence-based that people are calling social emotional learning maybe, but are not really evidence-based. And then we'll talk about what a good program has in it. 

Christina Cipriano: Yes. Yeah. So, okay. So, it's a- it's a tricky question to answer in short form.

And, and here's why. Because we used what I felt was as inclusive as possible inclusion criteria in what we cataloged as evidence-based social emotional learning to be included in the review. But that meant that it was an experimental evaluation. Okay. Or an impact evaluation of a program. And so there tends to be a distance between these pro types of programming and approaches who have the, this level of study conducted and what schools may be doing in classrooms and communities that are kind of more of the homegrown programming and approaches that are happening in schools. 

And so, I don't wanna say like, “oh, well just all of it's not evidence-based.” Because that, that wouldn't be fair either. Right? It's just that the, the empirical evidence from an experimental standpoint to be held to this level of like, rigor or tier one we refer to of like, you know, having quality evidence of effectiveness. They, they just haven't caught up yet. And so, what I know, what we hear right, is that there are a lot of digitally mediated interventions that schools adopted. We saw this kind of happening during COVID, and we're just starting to see evidence of, of effectiveness of programs where there are video modules that are playing or students are engaging with, activities or games online that are part of the social emotional learning program.

Prior to our evidence that we publish in child development has no evidence of this type of model, right? There's none of it whatsoever. But we, if we look at what was kind of going on in the past couple of years, we know lots and lots of schools are doing it, and we're only just starting to see any evidence coming out to talk about kind of the evidence, empirical evidence base there within, and then.

Relatedly, there have been conversations and discussions around like, where does SEL meet with certain types of social justice programming and approaches? And you could talk about that from like, across the sociopolitical continuum and there was very little evidence of effectiveness in the data that we had available, these programs just weren't there when we were running our analyses. But you do kind of hear anecdotally, at least up until 2025, that there were more kind of socially justice, social justice focused approaches that some people were maybe referring to as social emotional learning that were happening in schools and communities, but maybe don't have that rigorous evidence-based evaluations attached to them yet. Right? 

Scott Lee: Right. 

Christina Cipriano: So, I don't, again, I don't, it doesn't mean that they're not effective. It just means that we don't, we don't know what we don't know. Right. Until we have that level of study. And then, and then maybe the, the, if I could add just one other Yeah.

I think other note, what we do have some preliminary evidence of, in terms of kind of like mixed effects are programs and approaches that fall broadly in the mindfulness domain within SEL. Those programs tend to have varying degrees of effectiveness for kids the younger that they get. And so, there's been a growing body of literature here. So, when we, in terms of what we think about when I work with schools and talk about like what, what they're adopting and why and like what should they do? That's one that I'm always like, let's just, let's really be, be mind-mindful ourselves and be intentional about what we're adopting 'cause if you're looking for an explicit social emotional learning approach for your primary school population, we may want to be careful about whether or not it is one that is wholly grounded in mindfulness, or maybe it's mindfulness practices with X, Y, Z. Right. And like, like, 'cause again, these programs look very different because there is evidence that, especially when kids are younger. Some of the mindfulness practices aren't showing the robust effects that, again, some of them 

Scott Lee: mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: Some approaches somewhere. Right. So again, we want to just, we, we want to always be moving in the direction of advancing the evidence and so keeping that in mind. 

Scott Lee: Yeah. Yeah. So, so don't necessarily not do something just because you're not sure about evidence, but also, we, we want strong evidence as well. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: So, if I'm a teacher or I'm on a committee at a school and-and we don't do a good job in the world of social emotional learning or maybe we did a bullying prevention program 10 years ago.

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: And so, we're looking around for something new, whether we decide to develop our own in-house or go out and purchase a program or do a hybrid where we're doing a little bit of both, what should we be looking for, and why should we be looking for certain things?

Christina Cipriano: So, we, I love this question. So, we looked at kind of all of the moderators of effectiveness. So, what types of input inputs produce the kind of strongest outcomes? And there is overwhelmingly resounding evidence to suggest that when teachers implement the program, students’ outcomes are stronger. Right?

Significantly, so, we could talk about that across like academic and social and emotional domains. And so, looking for programs and approaches that train the educators and support the educators to implement explicit SEL instruction, rather than kind of having somebody external come in or a consultant come in, or even like the school psychologist or social worker with, you know, like we tested.

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: All these different models when the classroom teacher, the primary instructor, students get kind of the larger benefit. Second point is that there had been evidence to suggest, and this came out of Durlak's original work in 2011, that sequenced programs are better than non-sequenced programs. There's actually an acronym called SAFE: Sequence Active, Focused, Explicit; that this combination of implement implementation features produced stronger outcomes. We found a similar effect in ours. However, I didn't stop just there. I said, “well, let's talk about like what the sequence is, right? What matters more?” And what we find is that interpersonal before intrapersonal. So, emotion skills before social skills is the sequence that produces the most significant positive outcomes for young people, and that stands across K-12.

So, emotion skills before social skills. So, if you are either choosing an off the shelf program or you're developing and kind of putting together a program, thinking about the ways in which you're structuring that sequence so that you are tending to emotion prior to social, so self before others. Kind of at the highest level is a really kind of helpful way to push evidence-based practices into your programming and approach. And I can tell you, not all programs do this, right? So, in order to find evidence of effectiveness, we have to be able to compare it. So… 

Scott Lee: Yeah, my, my, my mind right now is going back to a school where I was teaching at and there was a social skills program that just did the opposite of what you said exactly. There was almost nothing internal. It was all, we're going to practice all of these social skills and the kids don't know why and it doesn't work. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So really thinking about and kind of taking a, taking a close look at what you're doing and not just saying, oh, it has a sequence, but what is the sequence? And what are your opportunities to amend it? And I work with, I have the privilege of working with schools nationwide and there tends to be a bit of like a sub cost phenomenon that occurs here where it's like, “but this is how we do it. This is the way,” right? We built this model and it's been, it's, it's been beneficial, but like imagine how much even more beneficial potentially could be. Right? What could be the potentially increase positive impact if we follow, the evidence-based sequence. So, what the empirical evidence is showing us and, and, and frankly, what developmental science would suggest anyway? So those of us who kind of nerd out in that space, we would expect that to be the case, that know yourself prior to the engagement with others in the ways in which your affect or your emotions are showing up in those interactions.

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you're right. You just can't emphasize that enough because so much that's out there, and I think that's really what I was trying to get to with the last few minutes of our conversation, was, how to avoid some of the mistakes that some people have made that the particular program I'm thinking of was not something that I actually was involved in purchasing, but it was given to us and we had to use it. And how to avoid those kinds of mistakes are really important for, for our teachers listening out there. I know. So. I Wanna change gears a little bit because since you did this study, you've also published a book, that I think a lot of teachers will find interesting. It's called Be Unapologetically Impatient. Tell us a little bit about the book and why you wrote it and that this is something, it's not just for teachers either. 

Christina Cipriano: It's not. It's not. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, my book teaches everyone, so educators, parents, doctors, industry executives, how to be unapologetically impatient. So, the activation of your intrinsic motivation, emotional intelligence. And gratitude, and that this in and of itself is the mindset required to change the way we do things. So, in the book, I draw on deeply relatable experiences, navigated in the barriers that are embedded, embedded in all of our kind of everyday living.

And I anchor the experiences in our son's rare disease journey, so I anchored in the lens of disability, applying developmental, educational, social, psychological science. So, anyone who knows my science as a professional, will appreciate it to provide us all with the skills to change the way we do things right now. 

And so, it is a short form trade book. And it came out in the beginning of June. It's been thrilling to watch it kind of, proliferate across the education, medicine and industry spaces right now, and folks having immediate, actionable strategies to shift how they're interacting with people around them to support, our overall ability to thrive.

Scott Lee: And, one of the things that you mentioned that I really found interesting is that you talked about students oftentimes apologize for asking questions. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: And this is something I think I'd never, might never really been conscious about, but now that I think about it, I'm like, “yeah, that is something that happens an awful lot.” Tell us why you find this concerning. 

Christina Cipriano: So, in the book, I kind of break down the science behind like what's happening when we're apologizing and what are some alternatives to that. Gratitude being one of them. But when you think about it from a lens of asking a question, so inquiry based, we know that we learn through inquiry.

Through asking questions. And so, when you think about a classroom and you have a student or students and a teacher and students are, apologizing for asking a question, a clarifying question, a, a correction, a seeking of support, they're undermining their learning by saying like, “oh, it's like almost like you're doing me a favor by answering my me right now.”

Or maybe I shouldn't ask the question 'cause I should just know the answer already. But, but we know from learning science, right, that we learn through inquiry. 

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: And we, we have the opportunity here to learn and expand thereafter. And as a, as a college professor over the past, nearly now two decades, I'm aging myself. I've met so many students that have been socialized to apologize. To ask questions, and I tell all of my students and all of the, the teachers that I have the privilege of training worldwide, that we, we need to break this cycle encouraging the use of inquiry as an opportunity and a pathway to enriching our students' learning experiences.

Right? So, invite the questions. Yeah. Do not apologize for them. Do not undermine or dismiss yourself. And the second kind of point I'll make on the apologizing piece is if you, if you move that into, if you're a parent and you're a parent in a system, so a parent in the school system, parent in the medical system, many parents will apologize for asking questions to have their child's needs met.

So, they're at the IEP table or they're in the doctor's office for a speech evaluation and whatnot, and they will apologize. And in that apology, it's dismissing their child's needs or their needs, their opportunity to learn and grow from it. And so rather we can say “thank you,” we can lead with gratitude and also state the fact in our question here, right? That like there is a need, a need to be met. 

Scott Lee: Right. And it is tough for parents always to be in an IEP meeting. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: You're outnumbered. Oftentimes it's pretty obvious that it's a tedious process for teachers and sometimes our body language demonstrates that to a parent. And so, it, it is kind of hard to do in, in that context as well. Even if you invite questioning an inquiry as a teacher oftentimes, we're not doing that and we're missing good opportunities really to ally with parents. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 'cause you need, you need a partner, not an opponent. 

Scott Lee: mm-hmm.

Christina Cipriano: In education and medicine and industry. And so, asking questions in an unapologetic way, in a polite way, in a gracious way, right. We can move ourselves forward to have that partnership and not dismiss our needs or our children's needs in the process. And just as students have often been in many spaces socialized to apologize for asking questions.

Similarly, when we think about having our kind of basic needs met as adults, many of us have been in different situations where you may have been socialized to, to adjust yourself or to apologize for yourself, rather than acknowledging that, no, this is, this is a need, this is something that I need in order to access-fill in the blank- whatever that might be. 

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. What else do you think, from the content of your book that, teachers should know about that they may not already? 

Christina Cipriano: So, when thinking about other opportunities for educators to advance their learning and create more just and joyful learning experiences for their students; in the book I talk about the importance of being intentional, about taking perspective, and so this comes straight from social emotional learning, science of perspective taking. But we as adults and we as educators, we become more inward leaning across our professional careers, right? Our brain is actually, in many ways kind of working against us in its effort to be more efficient over time. So, you're a third-grade teacher, you prep third grade that year. You go through that experience and you're like, “I know how to do third grade.”

Right? And you have met a few parents along the way and you've met a couple of students along the way who've had differing needs and experiences there within, and now you know that kid and that parent you have understanding. You have a schema for it if you've decided mm-hmm. How it like you being your brain. Right? And so, then the next year that comes in and the next year after that, and five years, six years down the road, when you are meeting parents and students, we are often taking kind of superficial information and our brain is tricking us to be like, “oh, I know that kid. I know exactly what to do for them oh, I know that parent. I know that email. I know what to write.” 

And we stopped seeing people. Uh, both the, the parents and the students as they are, we start teaching to them as we imagine them to be. We can use the skills of emotional intelligence and we can harness our power and perspective taking to be intentional about what we say and how we say it so that we invite the ability and we train our brain to see people as they are and as educators that for me is changing the way we do things.

That for us is moving into a more just and joyful experience where we're meeting everyone's needs, through our own evolution of the process. 

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. And you mentioned, already about students with disability. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: Disabilities even, or I prefer learning differences. Sometimes we have to use the word disability, but we always try to use learning differences unless we are in a situation where we need to say the word disability. 

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: You've been advocating for students with differing abilities. Can you share a story or two about this work that you think would be illuminating and helpful for teachers?

Christina Cipriano: Sure. I so appreciate the question, and I love that you brought in the language around learning differences and the ways we think about the diverse ways of knowing, seeing and navigating our world and like what we can do as a society if we considered. To on a continuum, right? Mm-hmm. And the ways in which we engage.

And so. Yeah, I've had the privilege of working in this space before I became a parent in this space. And so, I think it's important to, to kind of start there. And so, the whole first decade of my career, I'm invested in tier three services and support, as I was mentioning, and kind of working with all the kiddos who'd been othered by particularly the US Public Education system and the beautiful educators who worked with them.

And then I started having my own family and became a parent on the other side of the table. And so, all of those kinds of injustices that we're experiencing, they came home for us overnight. And I saw the ways in which issues of equity and inclusion were being reduced to check boxes that were servicing a system at the expense of a child.

And so, the book is called Be Unapologetically Impatient and I anchored in our experiences of our family because there is a trend of needing to wait and wait for failure and wait for needs to progress in order to support students' learning. And so, in the book, and in a lot of my public writing, I've, I've share about our experiences of our twice exceptional neurodivergent daughter who has given me the permission to share about her experience that other kids can be supported as well. And how in some settings she will have all of her supports and needs at play, and we'll talk about her ADHD, for example, as her superpower and all the incredible things that she can do. And in other settings, she will tell you that she meets teachers who tell her that she has an illness and that her disability is something that is used to dismiss her needs or position her to be kind of outside of the classroom environment. 

And so, having opportunities to help to support teachers and educators with recognizing that variability is the norm and not the exception in the ways in which we learn. And that we also as educators and leaders not only do our kids vary, but how we respond to student learning varies as a function of ourselves. We have an opportunity to grow and affect change, and we can do that through shifting the way in which we do things. 

So let me give you some, some super concrete examples. So, let's say you have a child who has diverse needs in your classroom. And as part of their recommendations that come in from their OT or their PT, they're saying that their sensory needs would benefit from a standing desk or alternative ways of setting up that classroom environment. So, they have ways to move while they're learning. And so a traditional model, and this totally happened, in some schools that I worked with, is to say, “okay, we're going to give those kids a standing desk.” And so, and I see, I, I hear you laughing there, guys. Right? So, give those kids the standing desk, because those three students in my classroom of 20 students have in their IEP, that they would benefit from standing while learning.

And so now, instead of creating an inclusive environment, right? Let's think about this. What that just did is that just positioned those kids as it othered them in the setting, whereas like a more universally designed way to engage in like taking in that notice to say, well, it's possible that all kids would benefit from some opportunities for movement. And we also know within the learning differences and like learning disability spaces, right, the rates of under-diagnosis or lack of diagnosis, they vary on a whole host of sociopolitical continuum. So, what if we had stations and kids rotate through and have the opportunity to access them? And so we're no longer othering the three kids in the classroom who maybe by law and you're given space or place or required to have access to this, but it creates a new kind of setup there within and like what could happen if we took those recommendations and structured the environments to be all inclusive rather than to be at the exception of certain kid’s needs?

Scott Lee: Yeah. Thinking about it as you may be able to tell on the, on the video link I work at a standing desk and that's not, any type of, intervention for me, I just like it better. And with your example, I'm going, “yeah, I'd have been jealous of the other kids who got that standing desk.”

Christina Cipriano: Mm-hmm. 

Scott Lee: If I had been a student in that classroom, so, 

Christina Cipriano: right. And then what do we, and what do we know about kids with diverse ways of knowing, seeing and navigating the world? We also know that they often have kind of sister or other types of diagnoses that kind of come within their diagnosis as part of their broader spectrum of neurodivergence, and sometimes that's anxiety, right? And so, think about how anxiety inducing it potentially could be for a child to then be positioned as, let's just say, standing in the corner of their classroom. I mean, it just like, you know, when you kind of like step back for a minute, I don't know, at least to me it, it becomes quite obvious.

And so, these are the types of things and, in, in one section of the book on education, then I drill down in and, and provide a whole host of kind of illustrations on and what I've heard from educators worldwide, is they say that they can't unsee it now. So, I drew their attention and now they're like, it's like you put a new pair of glasses on me, Chris now, and they say like, I wish I had this earlier in my teaching career because now I'm going to change the way I'm doing things. 

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: So I couldn't be, couldn't be happier about it. 

Scott Lee: Great. So, where can people find out more? We'll have links to your website on our website, but are there any other resources you'd like to share? 

Christina Cipriano: Absolutely. So, a couple…couple of note. So, my website, drchriscip.com, you can access my book as well as media and the related, kind of academic material there within, through my lab at Yale, which is called The Education Collaboratory, where we work to advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.

I'd also love to draw listeners attention to a new website that we stood up, that's called Improving student outcomes.org. And Scott, I'll make sure you have this. For your links. This is where the updated evidence base for the state of the evidence for social emotional learning in schools is being pushed. And so if you are a school leader, an educator, you know, someone in decision making, you'd like to learn more, I'd really, encourage you to take a first step there and to kind of engage with that website, which is, going live for back to school right now, 2025. 

Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. 

Christina Cipriano: Then one other, website I'd like to plug is disability Discourse Matters. This is an initiative that my lab stood up in January of 2025. It's a pre-registered study that, maps how, political leaders or. Speaking about people with disabilities in their political discourse and then scores them on a scale from humanizing to dehumanizing in hopes that the science will help to support people with making informed decisions about the ways in which what we say impacts the society with which we live in.

Scott Lee: Well, great. Yeah, we, we definitely will share that as well. Thank you so much, Chris, for joining us today. 

Christina Cipriano: Thank you so much for having me, Scott. Pleasure to chat with you.

Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net. Also, please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Bluesky is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com

This has been episode 12 of the 2025 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee.