![]() What is the importance of social-emotional learning in schools, and why have you devoted your career to spreading SEL? She introduced me to school psychology and changed the trajectory of my life. Out of all the people I could have run into, it just happened to be the director of school psychology, Dr. And she said, “Well, you know, you can become a school psychologist.” ![]() She had this nurturing, “I can fix everything” personality, so I just poured my soul out to her. I was having an existential crisis-I always joke I was dramatically flat-out on the floor-when this woman walks by. ![]() I was devastated to learn that people I wanted to work with had so many barriers and limitations to accessing therapy. During that class, I realized that Black people, at that point in time, rarely actively sought out therapy. One of the things I’ve always wanted to do was work with Black youth and people of color. I went to graduate school at Abilene Christian University to become a clinical psychologist, and there was an introductory class I had to take looking at different types of psychology job prospects. ![]() I don’t want to say I fell into school psychology because that’s clumsy. How did you get involved in school psychology? The Monitor talked to McClure about the power of school psychologists to change students’ lives. A recent example is the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which includes $500 million in grants for school-based mental health services and another $500 million in grants for training school counselors, school social workers, and school psychologists. Today, schools and school psychology are increasingly central to national conversations around mental health. Schools are an avenue to support Black kids who might not otherwise have access to a mental health professional, he said, and it was this promise that first drew him to school psychology. McClure is also passionate about working with Black youth and Black families. McClure is now director of innovation for 7 Mindsets, working remotely from Houston, where he is devoted to spreading his approach to schools around the country. The company he founded, Lessons For SEL, was recently acquired by the Georgia-based social-emotional learning provider 7 Mindsets. He’s worked in historically underserved schools, and he led the complete redesign of one high school in Southeast D.C. McClure believes in a strengths-based, people-centered approach to supporting students. “Can you hear me pounding on the table?” he joked. When expanding on the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) for students, his thoughtful, measured cadence speeds up, and every word seems weighted for impact. And it’s distinguished from prospering, say, because thriving involves evolution whereas prospering only denotes success, especially financial.Byron McClure, EdD, is a passionate advocate for school psychology. Yet thriving is also quite specific it may involve resilience, for example, but doesn’t just refer to overcoming obstacles or arise out of hardships. The word “thrive” is derived from the Old Norse word thrifta, meaning “to grasp.” In Middle English, “thrive” meant “to increase or grow.” The English definition of “ thrive” today is basically the same the word is used synonymously with positive terms like “ prosper,” “ flourish,” “ blossom,” and “ succeed.” To come closer to a unified understanding of this elusive state, researchers from the universities of Bath and Portsmouth in the UK reviewed 13 influential studies on the topic published between 19 to find commonalities in all their definitions of “thriving.” They also attempted to isolate the essential elements of the state of thriving that could apply across all ages and whatever the domain, whether work, school, sports, the military, or the arts. In the end, the team broadly defined thriving as “the joint experience of development and success.”
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