Social Emotional Learning for the Whole Staff

Social emotional learning is making a big move right now in education. For counselors, we're nodding our heads and (perhaps) whisper-shouting "I told you so." Hey, let's just appreciate that we were ahead of the game. Where I work, schools are being required to include social emotional learning components in their school improvement plans and several districts in my area are hiring social emotional learning central services staff. I'm thrilled that this whole child approach is getting the spotlight.

At the same time, there's a lot of pressure for counselors to do this right. We may be one of the only people in the building with deep knowledge of social emotional learning best practices. I use the analogy of technology in the classrooms. When we started getting more computers, smart boards, and then iPads (I'm old, don't remind me), the entire staff turned and looked at the technology teacher. Great, they thought, our students can learn technology from that person and I can keep on with my usual. Now, we wouldn't dream of only one person in the building teaching technology as a separate entity from core instruction. I think the same will happen with SEL. It's a heavy lift for counselors right now but eventually we can build the capacity of our whole staff to not just teach SEL but to incorporate social emotional learning into the curriculum as a whole. 

Social Emotional Learning as a Practice

CASEL, the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning, are the gurus on SEL right now. I look to them first when I am working on SEL. They look at SEL implementation in four parts:

• SEL lessons with explicit instruction: counselors teach these in their curriculum but teachers do too! When a teacher introduces a project based learning activity to students, they often go over expected behaviors and organizational strategies. That's explicit step-by-step instruction.
• Teaching practices that create positive conditions that support social and emotional development in students: students have to feel emotional and socially safe at school in order to learn social and emotional skills. Culturally responsive instruction is going to be a huge part of this. Schoolwide expectations and tier one practices like PBIS are in this tier as well.
• Integration of instruction and practice of SEL in the academic curriculum: This is more than teaching expected behaviors. This involves actually incorporating SEL competencies into instruction in a meaningful way.
• Policies and organizational structures: When we have policies and structures in place that support SEL as a clear priority for the school they are much more likely to happen.

SEL Competencies

CASEL has identified 5 core competencies for social emotional learning. They have a great handout that breaks down all of the competencies into skills. What I love about the skills highlighted by CASEL is their broad application. Students must actually have these skills in order to be successful in academics. This isn't fluff. It isn't something nice to "add on." 

I recently led a professional development for a full staff on social emotional learning. Social Emotional Learning is something that all educators can quickly understand and apply if they are given the opportunity to personally reflect and reflect on their classroom practices. After completing a culturally responsive classroom checklist and discussing the components of SEL, the teachers worked in cross grade level teams to complete a "cheat sheet" for each of the competencies. In this activity, the staff answered:

• What competencies/skills are listed under the core competency?
  
• Why it matters - why do students need to have this skills to be successful?
  
• Students will - a list of observable behaviors for students at each grade level.
  
• Teachers will - a list of observable strategies that teachers can implement. This is a great resource for ideas.

Overall it went really well and I think the staff walked away with new learning and reflection. If you'd like to snag the entire presentation and materials, you can find it here.