Central to the EL Education curriculum is a focus on "habits of character" and social-emotional learning. Students work to become effective learners, developing mindsets and skills for success in college, career, and life (e.g., initiative, responsibility, perseverance, collaboration); they work to become ethical people, treating others well and standing up for what is right (e.g., empathy, integrity, respect, compassion); and they work to contribute to a better world, putting their learning to use to improve communities (e.g., citizenship, service).

In Unit 3, students track working to become ethical people as they finish the novel Summer of the Mariposas. In Lessons 1-7, they summarize each chapter and look for examples of how the Garza girls grow in their capacity to show empathy, compassion, and integrity in their interactions with others (and especially with one another).

In addition, students focus on working to become effective learners as they complete a series of partner tasks while preparing to write their explanation essays. As students work together, they identify ways in which they can increase their perseverance and effective collaboration. Students then evaluate their successes and challenges in this work, setting new goals for the next partner session.

For their Performance Task, students work on contributing to a better world by creating a website to house their narrative retelling of a myth from folklore of Latin America and their compare and contrast literary analysis essays that compare the original myth to their retelling. Myths and folklore of Latin America are not well represented on the internet, and creating a webpage for these stories helps to contribute to a better world in which these important stories are more well known.