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 (fine-grained skills with prerequisite ordering) 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.