Every one of St. Charles Parish's 15 public schools is now teaching the 7 Mindsets social-emotional curriculum, a districtwide expansion that follows a pilot year in which behavioral incidents fell 48 percent at the high school level. Six elementary schools — Mimosa Park, Ethel Schoeffner, New Sarpy, Allemands, Norco and St. Rose — are implementing the program for the first time this year, joining campuses that tested it during the 2025-26 school year.
According to the St. Charles Herald-Guide, the district piloted 7 Mindsets last school year at Destrehan and Hahnville high schools, all four middle schools, the Landry Educational Programs Center, and Lakewood, Luling and R.J. Vial elementary schools. St. Charles Parish Public Schools is spending $139,000 from its general fund on a one-year subscription that covers classroom curriculum, small-group lessons and employee professional development, per the same report.
The pilot results were strong enough to justify the expansion, district officials said. Behavioral incidents decreased overall from the previous school year at some pilot schools, with the steepest decline — 48 percent — recorded at the high school level. Still, Meghan Dwyer said it is too early to attribute changes or outcomes specifically to 7 Mindsets, a caveat that tempers the district's enthusiasm even as it moves forward with the rollout.
What Students Will Actually Learn
The curriculum teaches positive mindsets, resilience, healthy relationships and life skills built around seven core habits: Everything is Possible, Passion First, We Are Connected, 100% Accountable, Attitude of Gratitude, Live to Give, and The Time is Now, according to background from the Bullard Independent School District. Elementary and middle school students will participate in weekly 7 Mindsets lessons, taught over two days during morning meetings or advisory periods. High school students will have a 30-minute 7 Mindsets advisory period each Wednesday.
Before the expansion reached classrooms, district employees attended introductory 7 Mindsets sessions, learning the curriculum's seven central mindsets. Hayden Shickler and Julie Spierto led that employee training, per the Herald-Guide's reporting. Destrehan and Hahnville High School students then took part in program kickoff events on August 10 and 11.
A Vendor Founded on Studying Happiness
The 7 Mindsets curriculum was founded in 2009 by Scott Shickler and Jeff Waller following a three-year study analyzing common mindsets among happy and successful individuals, according to an interview with Shickler published on Medium. The platform has since grown to serve more than 5 million individuals across all 50 states. Shickler and Waller also founded the Magic Wand Foundation, a nonprofit that runs the annual Ultimate Life Summit and received a $1 million funding pledge from 7 Mindsets in June 2024, per 7 Mindsets.
Several St. Charles Parish students attended that summit this year at Destrehan and Hahnville high schools, including Kayla Dupre, Benjamin Hall, Liberty Thomas and Shaylynn Green. 7 Mindsets sponsored attendance at the summit for four students. Hall and Thomas each received the Unlimited Potential Scholarship, an honor that recognizes students exhibiting leadership, determination, compassion and exceptional potential, along with a $3,700 grant apiece. Both students also joined a mentorship network supporting educational, professional and personal goals.
Research Behind the Rollout
St. Charles Parish Public Schools hopes to create a shared language across the school community that fosters growth, relationships and belonging, and the district says the 7 Mindsets expansion helps meet its long range strategic action plan, which calls for programs and services supporting children academically, socially, emotionally and physically. Independent research lends some support to that approach. A meta-analysis published in October 2025 in the Review of Educational Research and reported by K-12 Dive found that universal school-based SEL programs increase overall student academic achievement by 4.2 percentile points, with gains reaching 8.4 percentile points for programs lasting longer than one semester.
A separate 2017 meta-analysis by CASEL, examining 82 SEL interventions involving more than 97,000 students, found that students receiving SEL instruction maintained an average 13 percentile point gain in academic performance 3.5 years after the intervention, along with sustained reductions in conduct problems and distress. Louisiana does not maintain standalone statewide K-12 SEL standards, though child advocacy organizations successfully defended the inclusion of social-emotional development in state early learning standards in late 2022 amid political debate over curriculum content, according to the Alliance for Early Success. That means the district's $139,000 investment reflects a locally driven strategy rather than a state mandate, even as Louisiana law separately requires public school districts to maintain behavioral health support procedures and report referral data annually to the state education department.
Measuring Success Going Forward
St. Charles Parish Public Schools will monitor student attendance, discipline, school climate, student well-being and sense of belonging as it tracks the expansion's impact. District officials say they received promising data and positive feedback from schools that piloted the program, but with Dwyer's caution that it remains too early to draw firm conclusions, questions remain about how the district will weigh qualitative measures like belonging alongside harder discipline numbers as 7 Mindsets reaches all 15 campuses this year.
