Nationwide, schools are looking for better ways to connect with students and support their emotional well-being.

A recent Yale University study found that social-emotional learning programs, or SEL, can improve students' sense of belonging and boost academic performance.

While Black and Brown students are more likely to report feelings of isolation from their peers, many SEL models don't reflect their lived experiences.

A Baltimore-based organization called We Do It for the Culture is changing that.

It uses hip-hop and storytelling to help students learn empathy and express themselves.

Ali Rogan spoke to Jamila Sams, the founder of We Do It for the Culture.

Jamila, it's so nice to talk to you.

Many teachers say that the pandemic exacerbated many students' feelings of loneliness.

So what were you hearing from them that made you realize

that there was a gap in social, emotional learning that needed to be filled?

What we're seeing in terms of the research around social emotional learning and what happens

when social, emotional learning is not centered is that since the pandemic, about 61% of our young people

are saying they do not feel a sense of belonging in school. And that's on a national level.

Currently, the United States is experiencing its lowest academic levels in 30 years. And so when we

think about social emotional learning, the art of

not only naming our emotions, but managing our emotions and leveraging our emotions for positive

change, when students do not feel a sense of belonging, when they do not feel as though

their identities and their cultures are being centered in an academic space, then they become

disconnected. And as a result, those are some of the statistics that we're dealing with right now.

And your program is now in more than 150 schools across 16 states. Can you walk us through

what a typical lesson looks like? Absolutely. So we try to anchor content that

students are already engaging with, and we try to stay up to date with youth culture, pop culture,

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