KeyWords Education coming to Sunset Park Elementary School

A new after-school program is picking up steam in West Orange County schools and intends to give children the emotional tools they need to succeed.

KeyWords Education recently partnered with Sunset Park Elementary for the 2019-20 school year, inviting students to take part in songs, discussions and roleplaying exercises that teach emotional and social skills.

Academic Coordinator Eric Faria, of KeyWords Education, said the program consists of five pillars: self awareness, self knowledge, empathy, responsible decision making, and social and emotional abilities — or how to actually handle emotions. 

“It goes from joy to sadness to fear to disgust — we go through the whole process with them,” Faria said. “It’s very intuitive and, of course, age appropriate in a way that they can understand.”

The four-module program lasts 40 weeks for kindergarten students and 48 weeks for elementary students.

KeyWords Education stemmed from Chicago-based company Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning and is used in more than 600 public schools in the Chicago area.

“(CASEL) saw the importance of not only teaching their public school students about English, mathematics, science and history, but also in terms of making them emotionally intelligent,” Faria said. “They saw that there was a gap in terms of how the students related to each other and to the world around them.”

Central Florida is the first area in Florida to try the program — the area was chosen because of its growing, diverse population, Faria said. Although KeyWords Education is only being hosted in Orange County as an after-school program, Faria said the hope is to someday have it integrated into the school curriculum.

“Our goal is that, eventually, they will see the value — the program speaks for itself,” he said.

KeyWords Education may not be a familiar name in the area yet, Faria said, but the company hopes to spread its name during the upcoming school year.

Faria said it is critical for children to learn about emotional skills during their developmental years.

“Our main goal is to really inspire kids so that they grown up to be better teenagers and, of course, better young adults,” Faria said.