A New Vision for Social and Emotional Learning: Introducing Erikson’s SEL Certificate Program
This certificate is designed for pre-K through 8th grade educators at any stage of their career.
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is often talked about as a framework, a set of competencies, or a classroom strategy. But at its core, SEL is informed by something much more human: belonging, connection, justice, and love. That belief is at the heart of our newly revamped Social and Emotional Learning Certificate Program, launching its first full year in 2025–2026.
This certificate is designed for pre-K through 8th grade educators at any stage of their career. Whether you’re a classroom teacher, administrator, or educator working beyond traditional school walls, this program meets you where you are and asks you to bring your full self with you.
SEL as Belonging, Humanity, and Connection
Under the leadership of Program Director Jeanette Banashak, the SEL Certificate is grounded in a clear and values-driven definition of social and emotional learning.
“SEL is about belonging,” Jeanette explains. “It’s about knowing that you matter in spaces. It’s about humanity and connection, with ourselves, with each other, and with the natural world. And it’s about justice and love. Love causes learning. Justice causes learning.”
This expansive understanding of SEL moves beyond surface-level strategies and into deeper questions of equity, identity, relationships, and systems, questions educators are already navigating every day.
Flexible Learning, Designed with Intention
The certificate program blends asynchronous modules with live, synchronous virtual sessions, allowing educators to balance meaningful engagement with the realities of busy professional lives. Participants move through thoughtfully designed modules while also taking time to reflect, connect, and learn together.
“There are moments built in where we’re practicing SEL,” Jeanette shares. “We pause. We reflect. We engage with the content in particular and unique ways.”
In other words, adult SEL is something students will actively practice throughout the program.
Learning With and From One Another
One of the defining features of the new SEL Certificate is its commitment to adult learners as co-creators. From their first course, participants are invited to bring their lived experience, professional wisdom, and questions into the learning space.
“We’re really clear from the beginning that as adult learners, what knowledge you bring is part of the content of this curriculum,” says Jeanette.
Cohorts are intentionally built to foster relationships, dialogue, and collective problem solving. Faculty and students work together to build a learning community grounded in trust, curiosity, and shared purpose.
Jeanette also points to the faculty as a major source of inspiration.
“They are some of the most incredible, brilliant humans I’ve ever met. Getting to co-create this program and these relationships with students is very meaningful to me personally.”
Spotlight Course: Joy, Justice, Healing, and Transformation
One course Jeanette is especially excited to engage with is Joy, Justice, Healing, and Transformation, a forward-looking exploration of what SEL can and should become.
In this course, students examine cutting-edge research and movements across fields such as neuroscience, sociology, public health, and policy, while exploring how SEL intersects with:
- Behavior challenges and discipline practices
- Trauma-informed and healing-centered frameworks
- Culturally sustaining pedagogies
Participants also use multiple lenses of risk to examine how access to positive social and emotional experiences has been inequitably distributed across learning environments and what role educators can play in healing people, practices, and systems.
The course asks a powerful guiding question: What do we want our contribution to be in our classrooms, our schools, and our communities?
Now Accepting Applications for Fall 2026
The Social and Emotional Learning Certificate Program is for educators who are ready to move beyond checklists and competencies and toward deeper connection, justice-driven practice, and transformative learning.
Applications are now open for Fall 2026. If you’re seeking an SEL program that honors your experience, challenges your thinking, and invites you into a community grounded in belonging and care, we invite you to apply
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