SEL Academy

The skill map

Stage 1 — Notice and name

Nothing downstream works without emotion vocabulary and the habit of noticing.

Stage 2 — Manage

Regulation builds on noticing: you cannot steer a state you have not named.

Stage 3 — Read others

Empathy skills assume self-awareness: you recognize in others what you can name in yourself.

Stage 4 — Work it out together

The social skills the first three stages exist to enable — and the ones that fail without them.

Conflict pause

6–8

Builds on: Cool-down corner · Problem size, problem response

Using the map

Do I have to follow the arrows strictly?

No — the arrows mean "lands better after," not "locked until." A class can enjoy the conflict pause without the cool-down corner; it will simply work better, and stick longer, where the upstream habits exist. Use the map to diagnose why a lesson underperformed (usually a missing prerequisite) as much as to plan forward.

Where do the prerequisite links come from?

They are this site's own editorial judgment, made explicit — the same reasoning behind the four-term curriculum, drawn as a graph. The structural idea is fine-grained skills with prerequisite ordering, which is how modern open curricula map learning, and we credit that inspiration. Every specific node and arrow here is ours, grounded in the lessons themselves.

How do I use this with the mastery criteria?

Together they make a simple diagnostic loop: if a lesson's mastery signs are not appearing, check its arrows — the missing piece is usually upstream. A student who cannot manage the conflict pause often cannot yet name feelings under stress, which is a Stage 1 gap wearing a Stage 4 costume.