Community Core for Social Emotional Intelligence – Our Story
The path of Community Core founder, Rob Gallo, from a teenager growing up in Washington Heights in New York City to a leader in experiential education is one of adventure and personal conviction. Rob has consciously dedicated his career to working with teens and students teaching social emotional intelligence in summer camps, correctional facilities, and in schools--both public and independent.
CORE VALUES STAY THE SAME
While the environments are decidedly different, there are common threads that run through each. In each of these settings, Rob found that young adults desire the same thing - someone to engage them on the issues that truly affect their lives every day. Understanding the social and emotional world that young people inhabit is the first step to cultivating their complete growth.
The core values remain the same:
Building Community
Leadership
Positive Self-Esteem
Healthy Peer Relationships
Volunteerism
These are the currency of the Social-Emotional Literacy Training Center at Driftwood Ranch founded by Rob 20 years ago. It is at Driftwood Ranch Summer Camps that Rob developed and fine-tuned a comprehensive Social Emotional Educational program with a clear vision and approach by formulating social emotional principles. The Community Core approach at Driftwood has inspired young people and their adult leaders to find a new vision for communicating, dealing with emotional problems, developing community and healthy relationships.
WHERE SCHOOLS COME SHORT
At school, the metrics of success are detached from one’s ability to care for the community. One can gain social capital at school by bullying. One can earn the honor and recognition of valedictorian by earning excellent grades, regardless of character.
So, in this environment, why would a student say the unpopular thing?
Why stand up for the bullied?
Why evaluate others on the strength of their character?
Parents and teachers alike kept saying, “Why can’t the Driftwood model exist in schools?”
Enter Join The Community and the Community Core Curriculum
A week at summer camp is not enough. An assembly once a semester is not enough. Even an excellent set of social emotional skills lesson plans developed to teach “soft skills” is not enough. The solution must be as broad and all encompassing as the issue at hand. Educators have students as captive audiences 6-8 hours a day at school, and yet some students will go through years of school without having an engaging conversation about self-esteem, being inclusive, and how their actions affect a community. Students inhabit a world that is parallel to but hidden from the view of the faculty and administration. They navigate social obstacles, struggle with the emotional transition from child to young adult, and suffer and celebrate setbacks and triumphs without the guidance of those who have been through it all before them.
Many would say that this is not the job of schools; that there is not the time, the expertise or the will to take on this task. The Community Core team, a dedicated group of experienced educators, and mental health professionals profoundly disagrees.
We are determined to push forward a new vision for schools' role in teaching and upholding the social-emotional tools needed for students to truly achieve success outside the classroom walls.
That’s why we created:
Intensive Experiential SEL Training for Educators
Lessons and Activities to bring back to students to guide deeper conversations and practice in using the Community Core SEL Tools
Personal support for teachers and administrators to make systems-level changes that will shift school-culture that truly embodies your own mission and values.
Community Core was created to overcome the most common, most disheartening obstacles schools face, and to give educators the confidence to take charge of cultivating not just writers and mathematicians but confident, reflective, community- minded people.
We are seeking to partner with the like-minded, the innovative, and the courageous educators who know that to truly reach all students, we must start with their hearts.
