Ensuring all children and youth thrive as they move through school and into their adult lives requires that they have the opportunity to develop the skills and competencies that will help them land their first job, navigate and overcome the challenges they will face, keep positive relationships, and make good decisions. A new Afterschool Alliance issue brief, An Ideal Opportunity: The Role of Afterschool in Social and Emotional Learning, delves into the multifaceted ways afterschool and summer learning programs are engaging students to support their social and emotional development.

School-based programming aimed at building competencies in social and emotional learning (SEL) has been shown to have positive outcomes for kids in pre-school and beyond. But even high-quality, evidence-based programs can falter if they are not implemented effectively. Preparing for Effective SEL Implementation, part of a series commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, is a brief by Harvard Graduate School of Education's Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning Laboratory (EASEL), that describes features and best practices of effective SEL programs and offers a set of recommendations.