We strongly recommend that users of Be Good People subscribe to our mailing list. We send a handful of emails each school year notifying our mailing list of significant updates to the curriculum.

We encourage you to use our feedback form (also linked in the footer of this website). We appreciate suggestions and input!

Specifics are very helpful to us (e.g., "In the staying on task lesson for 4-5, maybe you could add this photo to step 2: http://www..."

If you work outside of our member districts and feel you need additional support, you can contact our SEL Services Coordinator, Nic van Oss (nvanoss@scred.k12.mn.us), the lead developer of the curriculum. Outside of his work for the St. Croix River Education District, Nic is able to contract with external districts as a consultant/trainer.

Yes! We're very passionate about crowdsourcing and public educators supporting each other.

We strongly encourage staff in external districts who are benefiting from Be Good People to support the project by contributing Extension Activities. These are YouTube videos with discussion questions, read alouds, worksheets, etc. — just a collection of resources that teachers can use to enrich learning around the Be Good People lessons. If you share a resource with us, we will credit you as the creator (if you'd like).

Here is an Extension Activity slide template that you can copy if needed, and here is a dropbox where you can share resources with us.

Feel free to reach out to our SEL Services Coordinator, Nic van Oss (nvanoss@scred.k12.mn.us) if you have any questions.

No, it is not monetized and not designed to make monetization possible (e.g., it includes many embedded YouTube videos and free-use elements).

We are not a for-profit publishing company — we are a small rural public district. We allow other districts to use Be Good People with purely altruistic intentions. If you like our work, we encourage you to learn more about our district, follow us on social media, etc.

If your school/district plans to implement Be Good People, we ask for three things:

1. Please complete our registration form for external districts.

2. Please use our on-demand training materials to adequately prepare teachers and educators who will be using the curriculum with students.

3. Please read our FAQs which answer common questions that we receive via email.

In addition, please consider using or modifying our example pacing guides, monitoring fidelity with our observation/self-assessment forms, etc.

There are two types of videos embedded into Be Good People presentations: (1) YouTube videos and (2) videos stored in Google Drive.

YouTube videos

• If the video is still on YouTube but it's being blocked by your school district: Google Workspace districts can set teachers' YouTube access to Strict, Moderate, or Unrestricted. Open a browser tab (e.g., a Chrome tab) in "Incognito" or "Private" mode (i.e., where you're not logged in with your school email address). This is a helpful way to confirm whether or not district filters are causing the video to not display or if the video was actually removed from YouTube. If you believe that a video is being blocked by your school district's filters, the logical next step is to contact your district's tech department.

• If the video has been removed from YouTube: You will see a message that the video is unavailable because it's been removed from YouTube. If you see this, please let us know by using our feedback form. Be Good People is managed by one person with many other school duties, and it is very appreciated when you help identify small glitches or typos. 😊

Videos stored in Google Drive

On a SMART Board, you may see an error message that reads: "Unable to play video. Error: 5." SMART is aware of this issue, and it is because of the low capabilities of the browser built into the Board. SMART's solution is to connect your laptop to the Board using an HDMI and USB cable. You will then have touch control of your laptop from the display.

The presentations are deliberately set to be non-copyable, and we do not permit any copies to be made.

There are numerous digital SEL curriculums available from publishing companies (e.g., CharacterStrong, Second Step, Rethink Ed). If a district pays a subscription fee, they obtain access to an online module of non-modifiable lessons. From the outset, the goal of this project was to mimic the experience of having access to one of those curriculums. We simply wanted to take that model and make it cost-free in order to support our member school districts. Aside from cost, in every other respect our intention is to recreate the experience of subscribing to a published digital curriculum.

If there are changes or improvements you would like, we strongly encourage you to submit feedback using the Google Form linked at the bottom of this website page. Development of the curriculum is ongoing and very active. We've spent thousands of hours making improvements to Be Good People, all of which were driven by teacher feedback and collaboration. It would be impossible to meaningfully improve many fragmented versions of the curriculum, which is a major reason why we do not permit the curriculum to be split off.

The restrictions that make the presentations non-copyable also make them non-printable. In any case, the presentations in Be Good People were not designed to be printed.

This question comes up because when you click the "Add"/paperclip button in Google Classroom, Google Classroom wants to be able to make a copy of the file you're sharing with students. Because Be Good People lessons are non-copyable (see FAQ above), that's not a workable method for sharing the lessons with students in Google Classroom.

Instead, we recommend that you:

1. Open the Be Good People lesson that you want to use.

2. Copy the URL (i.e., www.docs.google...) of that lesson.

3. Paste the URL into your post in Google Classroom.

Not at this time, and as a district we do not have a timetable for if or when translated versions of Be Good People might be created.

From a quality control perspective, we would only embark on a translation project if several parameters were met, which include:

1. All curriculum materials — the thousands of slideshows, worksheets, videos, etc. — could be translated and released all together, not piecemeal.

2. We could directly control, manage, and supervise the translation project, ensuring that the nuances of all instructional materials are preserved.

3. A maintenance plan was developed to ensure that adjustments and additions to the curriculum could be translated with our continued control, management, and direct supervision.

Because Be Good People is a non-monetized curriculum created by staff at a small school district and because it makes heavy use of embedded YouTube and short-form video content that is only available in English, the infrastructure necessary for a translation project within the parameters outlined above would likely only be available through a significant partnership with a non-profit organization and fundamental changes to the curriculum itself (e.g., the video media content used throughout).

If your district has a need for translated materials (e.g., to support a dual language immersion program), we encourage you to investigate resources that are better positioned to meet your needs, such as a variety of published curriculums that are available in multiple languages.

Be Good People is a locally developed curriculum created by educators at a small rural district. It is not published by an enterprise curriculum company, and it is not designed to make monetization possible (e.g., it includes many embedded YouTube videos and free-use elements).

As a district, we are open to partnerships with researchers and universities that would provide the infrastructure for research studies on Be Good People.

At this time, we consider Be Good People to fall in ESSA's Tier 4 ("Demonstrates a Rationale"). It is built on a well-defined theory of action. As a district, we monitor effectiveness through our district- and building-level data routines; however, we cannot isolate Be Good People as a factor or observe its effects relative to control groups.

We designed Be Good People with these limitations in mind, and our primary plan to support efficacy was to build the curriculum around CASEL's recommendations for locally-developed curriculums: the S.A.F.E. elements.

• SEQUENCED: Connected and coordinated activities to foster skills development. Be Good People includes example scope and sequence pacing guides that support schools in providing students with a meaningful progression of lessons and activities.

• ACTIVE: Employing active forms of learning to help students strengthen new skills. Be Good People includes modeling, role play, multimedia reflection opportunities, choice boards, worksheets and mini-projects with fine arts integration, and many more examples of active learning. These active learning features share a great deal in common with well known evidence-based SEL curriculums (e.g., Second Step, School-Connect, Harmony).

• FOCUSED: Dedicated time and attention to developing personal and social skills. Be Good People includes training materials that support teachers and educators in providing effective freestanding SEL instruction. The instructional strategies we focus on share a great deal in common with those emphasized by well known evidence-based SEL curriculums (e.g., Second Step, School-Connect, Harmony).

• EXPLICIT: Targeting specific social and emotional skills. Be Good People's Lessons target discrete, labeled skills. All curriculum materials are aligned with state SEL benchmarks, which CASEL recommends explicitly.