Therapeutic board games provide
an effective intervention for young people who have been targeted for further
guided practice in small group settings. Verbatim quotations from students and teachers
demonstrate ways in which SEL has generalized to real-life situations. The role of
facilitator is crucial to the success of this approach, both in modeling appropriate skills
and making the learning connections for students. In this article, facilitation and
debriefing are deconstructed and the value of collaborative, rather than competitive,
aspects of games highlighted.