Explicit SEL: Students having consistent opportunities to cultivate, practice, and reflect on social and emotional competencies in ways that are developmentally and culturally responsive. CASEL - Indicators of Schoolwide SEL
Belonging and Emotional Safety
When teachers build the structures that support belonging and emotional safety, they lay the groundwork for students to focus on learning (Sergiovanni, 1994 in Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).
By making the time to build the relationships that allow learners to feel a sense of community- that they are “in this together”- teachers create a safer, more equitable environment where all students participate and achieve.
Align schoolwide systems, policies, programs, and practices to promote SEL for students.
Create a stable budget for SEL resources, professional learning, and staffing to support the sustainability of SEL efforts.
The CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL provides an intentional and collaborative implementation process. Find out where to begin.
Professional Learning Communities
Professional learning communities provide an important opportunity to integrate SEL into existing practices, work collaboratively on the goals of schoolwide SEL, and cultivate their own social and emotional competencies.
Aligning SEL and Academic Objectives
As your SEL team works with teachers to align SEL and academic objectives, it’s also important to consider how the content is delivered so that it supports the practice of social and emotional competencies.
Cultivate a community of adults who engage in their own social and emotional learning, collaborate on strategies for promoting SEL, and model SEL throughout the school.
Academic mindsets are beliefs or ways of perceiving oneself in relation to learning, and lay the groundwork for deep academic, social and emotional learning.
Social and emotional learning is essential to every child’s education.