About
Social-emotional learning is the heart of an excellent education, and of a happy and successful life.
We can all learn the skills to be peaceful, to manage our emotions, to create and repair healthy relationships, to set purposeful goals in the world, and more.
But there’s a catch: these social-emotional skills aren’t taught in lectures or scripted lessons. They’re learned experientially. That’s why we made the Diving Boards. Each card is a prompt for a meaningful conversation on a topic that matters to adolescents. It’s through these conversations, in safe and trusting groups, that students learn the social-emotional skills they need for the questions in their lives right now.
Diving Boards was created by teachers, for teachers. It’s for those who lead advisories, homerooms, youth groups, mentoring circles, and more. If you want to create better connection among the group, build students’ social-emotional intelligence, and foster honest conversations about topics that really matter to adolescents – this is for you.
The Diving Boards cards come from years of research into adolescent neuroscience and psychology, and years of testing and usage with students around the United States and in other countries. Educator Chris Balme led the creation of the cards, working in collaboration with talented teachers, psychologists, and most importantly, students themselves.
Diving Boards prompts have been used in school settings, advisory programs, and are the core curriculum of Argonaut, an online advisory program for middle-school youth. They also form part of the curriculum for an annual facilitation-training program for teachers to become experts in leading socially-emotionally focused advisories.
We wish you great luck in leading these meaningful conversations with young people, and invite your feedback, ideas, and collaboration here!
Diving Boards Author,
Chris Balme
Chris has spent the better part of 20 years as an education leader and innovator specifically in service to middle school youth. Maybe it’s because his middle school journey was crummy. Maybe it’s because the research on middle school is so perplexing: it is a time of incredibly rapid development for all young people, not only intellectually but also socially and emotionally; yet it is a time when so many lose their interest in learning. What are we doing wrong with middle school?
Chris’s career has been dedicated to activating the hidden potential of these years. He first taught as a middle school science teacher, and then founded a non-profit to re-invigorate middle schoolers’ love of learning. For this work he received the Ashoka Fellowship, given to leading social entrepreneurs around the world. Chris then co-founded and was Head of School at Millennium School, a progressive independent middle school in San Francisco, California. Most recently, Chris founded and leads Argonaut, a live, online social-emotional learning project.
Connect with Chris on social media here:
ig: @chrisbalme fb: @chrisbalme tw: @chrisbalme