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SEL Simulation: Five Lenses

Step into Social-Emotional Learning from five sides. The same child, the same school, the same home. Different chairs. Different choices. Different consequences.

What is this game?

A simulation built around real evidence from multiple SEL frameworks — not just CASEL — including SEE Learning (Social, Emotional & Ethical, Emory University + Dalai Lama Centre, used in India), the WHO Life Skills framework (1997, the spine of NCERT and state-board life-skills curricula), Delhi's Happiness Curriculum and Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC), Indian indigenous traditions (Tagore, Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, Nai Talim), NEP 2020 (with its teacher-side provisions — NPST, 50-hour CPD mandate, 4-year integrated B.Ed., teacher autonomy), and twenty years of school-based SEL trials (TaRL, Sangati, Dost, Educational Initiatives, Apni Shala). You'll make decisions across five roles — each reveals what works, what doesn't, and why the field still argues about it.

  • Teacher — a child withdraws. A parent pushes back. You decide.
  • Program Designer — you have ₹40 lakh and one academic year. What do you build?
  • Evaluator — the NGO needs an impact study. What design can actually tell you?
  • Student — a Class 7 child navigating school, family, and self. What strategies stick?
  • Parent — the under-discussed role. Your child comes home upset. A teacher calls with a complaint. Your own bad day spills over. What you do at home shapes SEL more than any curriculum.

How scoring works

Each mode tracks four outcomes — they trade against each other. There's no perfect score. The point is to feel the tradeoffs the evidence shows, and to leave with a clearer sense of what your priorities are.

Pick a Lens

Each mode takes 6–8 minutes. You can replay any mode to try a different approach.

Why five modes?

SEL in India has been written about almost entirely from one chair at a time — either teacher voice, or NGO design, or evaluation methods, or child experience, or (most rarely) parental practice. Sitting in all five reveals where they pull together (when a teacher's care matches a child's experience, when parents reinforce what school teaches) and where they pull apart (when an evaluator finds "no effect" on a measure a child considers irrelevant, or when school SEL collapses because parents are skeptical).

A note on frameworks. CASEL is the most cited, but it is one of several. Indian implementations draw also from SEE Learning (which adds an explicit ethical/compassion dimension and is used by Delhi's Vidya & Child schools and the Dalai Lama Centre's India work), the WHO Life Skills framework (which under-girds NCERT's Adolescence Education Programme and most state-board life-skills curricula), Delhi government's Happiness Curriculum (classes Nursery–8, focused on mindfulness, gratitude, and reflection) and Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum / EMC (classes 9–12, focused on agency, problem-solving, self-confidence), and Indian indigenous traditions (Tagore's Santiniketan, Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, Gandhi's Nai Talim). NEP 2020 draws on all of these — including its teacher-side provisions: NPST (National Professional Standards for Teachers), the 50-hour CPD mandate, 4-year integrated B.Ed., and teacher autonomy in classroom decisions. The game blends scenarios from all of these traditions.

← Switch mode
Round 1 of 6

What do you do?

Year complete

What the evidence shows