Cultural Competence: The ability to examine the various social and cultural identities of one's own self and others, understand and appreciate diversity from a historically-grounded and strengths-focused lens, recognize and respond to cultural demands and opportunities, and build relationships across cultural backgrounds.
Define Team Member Roles and Responsibilities
To ensure meetings are productive, it’s a good idea to define team roles and responsibilities, and strive to share work equitably.
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).
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.
Schoolwide SEL is evidenced by indicators in the classroom, school, family, and community.
By building an SEL team that reflects the school community and incorporates many points of view, the school will be better able to meet its needs and build commitment to SEL.
An important part of building staff skills around SEL is modeling by school leaders. These strategies can provide ideas for administrators and leadership teams to build relationships and show staff they are cared for and appreciated.
Review your current level of implementation, identify needs and resources, set goals, and develop concrete action steps for SEL implementation.
Create a stable budget for SEL resources, professional learning, and staffing to support the sustainability of SEL efforts.
Academic mindsets are beliefs or ways of perceiving oneself in relation to learning, and lay the groundwork for deep academic, social and emotional learning.
This process helps schools create an environment that supports students in developing the academic, social, and emotional competencies that they need to navigate the world.