SEL Archives - Granite Grok

BANFIELD: SEL- Building Psychological Profiles on Your Children in School

November 3, 2025November 3, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has become the latest craze in public education. Promoted as a way to help students manage emotions and build empathy, SEL is now a packaged product sold by education vendors—complete with online platforms that collect data on every child who participates in Tier 1 of the Multi Tiered System of … Read more

BANFIELD: Schools Creating Mental Health Problems in Children

August 15, 2025August 15, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Back in the 1990s, schools used a mental health screening tool called TeenScreen. Most people didn’t realize these screenings often produced false positives—flagging children for mental health problems when none existed. Today, with the rise of the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS-B) in public schools, the focus on children’s mental health has only grown. But … Read more

Banfield: Danger – Mental Health Treatment Needs to be Removed from Public Schools

June 26, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Public schools are fully engaged in mental health treatment in New Hampshire’s schools. But does any of this actually help children? We now task school counselors and teachers with assessing and treating a child’s mental health while they attend school. There have been numerous problems with this initiative in our schools. We’ve found that some … Read more

Seabrook’s Psychotherapy in the Classroom

April 4, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

More examples of Social and Emotional Learning are in the school classroom now. Here is a psychological exercise given to middle school students in Seabrook by a health teacher. Normally, these kinds of exercises are given to individuals after they’ve been assessed by a mental health professional, not in Seabrook schools. They just hand mental … Read more

Universal EFAs: Not a Good Idea

March 12, 2025 Doris Hohensee

Rep. Rick Ladd, Chairman of the House Education Funding Committee, argues that Universal Education Savings Accounts (EFAs) are needed because: A “one size fits all” system of education is not the best learning environment for all students. (House Calendar No. 15, March 7, 2025, HB 115 on pg. 13) Chairman Ladd knows exactly why public … Read more

How Schools and the State Wastes Your Money

March 9, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Dear Commissioner, Legislators, Executive Councilors, and State Board of Education Members: We are seeing school budgets rising while enrollment declines. Changing the model in public schools to the Community School (CDC’s) model will certainly add to those escalating costs. Turning our schools into mental health facilities has brought a whole new set of problems, and next … Read more

The Social and Emotional Psychological Profile on Students

February 14, 2025February 14, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Social and Emotional Learning has come under fire since it first began showing up in schools. SEL was going to be used as part of a behavior framework known as the Multi Tiered System of Support. The MTSS-B is a 3-tiered framework that guides schools on how to handle behavior or mental health problems with … Read more

classroom empty desks original Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

Social and Emotional Learning Indoctrinating Students

February 2, 2025February 2, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

School administrators are jumping on the SEL Social and Emotional Learning bandwagon. It may sound good, wanting to help children with their social and emotional needs, but what are children really learning? One SEL program used in Merrimack, and other schools, is called Second Step. I wont go in depth on the data mining that … Read more

Child science art classroom clint-patterson-unsplash

Is It Time To Hand Your Child Over to the State/Public Schools?

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

It seems that the State has decided that they need to move mental and medical clinics into your child’s school. Why even parent your children? It appears as if the State, in conjunction with school officials, will happily take over your job. There is no need to take your child to see their doctor during … Read more

Who Will Protect Student Data? Right Now, No One

January 14, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

Here is my email to Education Commissioner Edelblut and Legislators on the PowerSchool Data Breach: Commissioner Edelblut, PowerSchool, owned by Bain Capital, experienced an international cybersecurity incident that involved unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool SIS customer data. This has impacted many school divisions across North America. PowerSchool is a 5.6 billion dollar company that lost personal … Read more

Disastrous Public Schools Part 2 (Merrimack – SEL)

January 12, 2025January 12, 2025 Ann Marie Banfield

If you have not read Part 1 of the disaster in the Merrimack schools, you can read that here. You will learn why Merrimack residents are pushing back on the school budget along with the poor quality of academics. It is a good preface for looking at the other problems in the district. Merrimack has … Read more

Social and Emotional Learning Set to Dumb Down College

October 9, 2024October 9, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

SEL is now infused throughout public education. SEL is found in math programs like Eureka2, which is used in many schools throughout New Hampshire. This means that less time will be spent learning math, and more time will be spent reshaping your child’s values, attitudes, and beliefs. The SEL model will now also be infused … Read more

Social Emotional Learning, Restorative Justice, and Rewarding Bad Behavior

June 6, 2024June 6, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

Teachers across America are speaking up about the lack of controlled behavior in public schools. What changed? Why are teachers frustrated because behavior problems have become unbearable? Why are they leaving the profession in droves?

Mental health anxiety depression Image by Josh Clifford from Pixabay

Merrimack Should Reject School Budgets Until They Can Teach Kids to Read …

March 27, 2024 Steve MacDonald

Usually, when you hire someone to do something, and they don’t or can’t do it, you do not then give them more responsibility or reward them with additional revenue. But let’s say you do, and they fail again and again. At what point do you stop rewarding failure?

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Can Deny Your Child a Career in the Military or Law Enforcement

March 24, 2024March 24, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

Anytime a student is seen by a school social worker, school psychologist, or clinical mental health counselor, and services are billed to Medicare or Medicaid by the school, a medical diagnosis code is applied. The medical diagnosis code is referred to as a CPT code, which is a procedure code. This refers to the services being performed. An example would be counseling or therapy.

Merrimack School DIstrict web site screen grab altered

SEL is Draining Tax Dollars from the Merrimack School Budget

March 23, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

Social and Emotional Learning is the latest fad in public education. SEL is considered Tier 1 in a three-tiered mental health framework for students attending public schools. Money for this initiative came through a federal grant several years ago, but as those funds dried up guess who is left to fund these initiatives? The local taxpayers.

NH Civics is at it Again…Now They Want to Promote Group Therapy for Children in Public Schools

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

With the desperate call to improve Civics Education for students in New Hampshire, you would think one of the most prominent Civics organizations would be at the forefront of making sure our students are literate in this important subject.

How The State Will Take Over Private and Religious Schools

March 5, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

Democrats have shown that they are willing to go to the first step required for the State to take over private and religious schools. New Hampshire’s HB1610 requires all students in private, religious, and even home-school families to take the STATE standardized test.

Deteriorating … Mental Health, Privacy, and Parental Consent in Public Schools

February 29, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

As schools begin the shift to providing mental health services, parents need to be aware of some big problems that have been uncovered. Personally identifiable mental health information on students has already been shared, but schools are still failing to acquire informed parental consent for their child’s mental health assessments and services.

Night Cap: What’s SO Bad About Social and Emotional Learning (and the SEL Proposed Legislation in NH)?

February 8, 2024 Ann Marie Banfield

PART 1: Introduction
This week, there was a hearing before the House Education Committee to prohibit SEL in our public schools. The sponsor proposed an amendment at the hearing to change that to parental consent for children to participate in SEL.