Press Releases

November 23, 2021

Choose Love Bus Tour Stops at Milford School District 

Milford, NH - Choose Love Founder Scarlett Lewis and the Choose Love On the Move bus tour made a productive stop at Milford School District on November 17-19, 2021. The District has successfully implemented Choose Love curriculum across grade levels since last year which fun-filled mini-lessons focus on COURAGE + GRATITUDE + FORGIVENESS + COMPASSION-IN-ACTION.  

Led by Choose Love New Hampshire Director Shannon Delites, the bus tour team members engaged hands-on creative and reflective activities with students at Heron Pond Elementary School and Jacques Memorial School. The teachers, staff, and students had a great time reflecting and celebrating love and community.

How It All Began

Nine years ago, many innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School were killed in a horrific school shooting.  One of these children was six-year old Jesse Lewis whose mother, Scarlett Lewis, started the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement.  This movement sparked conversations about kindness, compassion and forgiveness in small local communities which later on spread through social and mass media. Throughout these years, Scarlett Lewis has been devoting her time advocating for social-emotional character development learning in schools to empower both children and adults emotionally, mentally, personally, and socially. 

Why Choose Love?

Because essential life skills and tools make students become better learners, more desirable employees and happier, healthier human beings, the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement is committed to getting such training into as many schools around the world as possible for free. In 2018, New Hampshire became the first state to officially adopt and support Choose Love.  

Choose Love is a program for Pre-K through 12th grades, designed to teach students, educators and staff how to choose love in any circumstance thereby creating a safer, more connected school culture. Schools can either teach the lessons in a separate SEL class or weave them into regular academic subjects.  

Choose Love doesn’t track how many schools have embraced its curriculum but it has been downloaded by more than 500 schools in New Hampshire alone, and by countless others in all 50 states and in 111 countries.  The Milford School District therefore recognizes its pivotal role in helping the students to always be kind, be grateful, be courageous, be compassionate, and above all, to Choose Love!