By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

The Pontiac District 429 schools are now implementing and expanding the social-emotional curriculum at its schools.

Superintendent Brian Dukes explained how the original programs will be expanding.

“That’s something we feel we’ve had and used a lot of the resources a number of years, and this was a good time to evaluate what that looks like and the approach we take. The thought process next year, moving forward, now that we have a dedicated social worker in every building, of having them lead the charge with our social-emotional learning curriculum. That way, they are the experts. They know better than anyone in our buildings. But allow them to teach the whole as opposed to strictly just focusing on the crisis or the students who need it most. Taking now both approaches where they will continue to serve those students who have IEPs and those students who are in need of some social work and counseling services, but also making sure we’re providing those skills for all kids,” Dukes said.

Dukes explained how the curriculum is changing.

“We currently do individual, we currently do small group work. Next year, we’re looking to take the next step, where social workers will be working with all of our classrooms and all of our teachers and they will be going into classrooms and teaching lessons, obviously the content teacher will be in there. So it’ll be a co-teaching situation. And really have more of a k-8 program as opposed to now, we’re isolated with one building compared to another. It looks a little bit different. The hope is, that way we see a little more consistency from grade level to grade level as students move through each of the buildings. It’s a big step for us to have social workers in the classroom and working with all the kids. It just takes us one step closer to where we want to be,” Dukes said.

Dukes was a guest on a recent Community Forum, which can be found at WJEZ.com.