LIV | Connecting with students: social and emotional learning in Brazilian schools #SELday

Puppets and songs. Audiovisual series. Youtubers. These are some of LIV’s carefully developed  pedagogical tools to build a social and emotional program that truly connects with students. LIV,  which stands for Laboratório Inteligência de Vida (Life Intelligence Lab), aims to promote social  and emotional education for all. LIV creates spaces where students can listen, talk and expand  the self-comprehension, the other and the world.  

LIV is part of Eleva Educação group, one of the biggest K-12 education groups in Brazil.  Today, LIV has broadened its walls and expanded its reach. The social and emotional  learning program is present 350 schools and reaches over 200,000 students between three  and eighteen years old who experience LIV’s classes during 50 minutes once a week.  

The program’s priority is to develop content that speaks directly to students and that connects to  their reality, considering each age range. While pre-school children have access to social and  emotional learning through originally written stories, songs and puppet characters, elementary  and middle schoolers develop their skills and abilities using LIV’s proprietary audiovisual series  as a starting point. Finally, Brazilian youtuber Jout Jout, with over 2 million subscribers, sets  the stage for highschool students to discuss pressing topics. The students speak for LIV’s  program:  

8-year-old Daphne, for example, mentioned “LIV helps me know more about my feelings.“ 

Given LIV’s exponential growth, the program is now facing some interesting challenges. During  the second semester of 2019, LIV piloted the program in public schools, specifically in the city of  Rio de Janeiro. Over 600 schools, 1,700 teachers and around 50,000 second-graders  experienced emotional literacy with the stories of Tomás, a blue mascot that experiences  different types of emotions as the story unfolds. Entering public schools raises important  questions, such as “How should the program and its materials be adapted considering  different socioeconomic status and a country strongly marked by inequality?” and “How to  build a scalable follow-up solution to meet the demand of entire public schooling systems? 

Believing in the power of propagating socioemotional content, the Laboratório Inteligência de  Vida holds the LIV Congress annually. The event, which brings together renowned professionals  in the field and opinion makers, is in the 4th edition and became a reference in the debate of  socioemotional skills in the country. Already personalities such as Edgar Morin, Howard Gardner,  Paul Tough, George Couros, Daniel Goleman, Domenico De Masi in addition to the influencers  Lázaro Ramos, Flávio Canto, Bernardinho and Ingrid Guimarães. This is a great meeting for  schools and guests from education sistem, to improve their knowledge and discuss good  practices on the topic. 

Overall, LIV has already brought the topic of social and emotional learning to hundreds of  private schools and thousands of students in Brazil.