About Us
Why Is It Called ‘SECOND STEP’?
It’s a question we get from clients, students, even new staff: “Why is it called ‘SECOND STEP’?” And slightly more humorous but no less valid is its natural follow-up: “What was the first step?” We’re so glad you asked. Fortunately, Executive Director Joan Cole Duffell has been with Committee for Children since its inception, and can give us a firsthand account of how the name of our most popular and acclaimed curriculum came about.
Taking the First Step
Committee for Children began as a group that helped keep children safe from sexual abuse. That’s how our TALKING ABOUT TOUCHING program was born in the early 1980s. Duffell recalls, “It represented our organization’s ‘first step’ in preventing violence and abuse.” And although that was a very important first step, Duffell and her colleagues began to wonder: “Is it really primary prevention to teach children, parents, and teachers skills to report abuse once it is already taking place? Wouldn’t it be a deeper step into primary prevention to teach children skills that would make them less likely to be the abusers when they grew up?” Ideally, if we could teach children to grow into adults who would never hurt another person, then their children wouldn’t need reporting skills, because the abuse wouldn’t be happening in the first place. But how to turn this ideal into a reality?
Taking the Second Step
To answer that question, researchers and program developers at Committee for Children began research in the mid-1980s to answer another question: What makes people hurt other people? Duffell says, “We found remarkable consistency in the literature that suggested violent offenders (both adults and young people) lacked a core set of social and emotional skills. Those skills were empathy, impulse control, problem solving, and emotion management.” So they developed a curriculum that would teach these skills to children. “We called it ‘SECOND STEP,’” explains Duffell, “because to us, it represented a second step into true primary prevention of societal problems.”
The Steps Become a Journey
The motivation behind the SECOND STEP program hasn’t changed over the 20 years and three editions of its existence. But the program’s benefits have grown and changed profoundly. For example, says Duffell, “Recent studies show that teaching children an evidence-based social and emotional learning program can result in significant academic improvement and greater attachment to school.”
And improved academics aren’t the only added benefit. The SECOND STEP program has helped Committee for Children create a unique web of people all over the world whose collective aim is to keep children safe and thriving. Duffell marvels at the life it has taken on of its own accord: “Never did we dream that this idea—to proactively teach social and emotional skills to children—would grow into the picture we see today: millions of teachers, children, and families in schools around the world teaching and learning SECOND STEP skills each and every day. How gratifying it is to hold hands with educators and parents who teach these skills to children, and to see what a difference we can make in their world!”
