Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): Our Collective Why
- What the research says about SEL in schools
- The changing dynamic of our classrooms
- ACEs, trauma, and other mental health issues in our youth
- Stress and burnout of teachers, staff, and students
- Limitations of the research and potential risks
Essential Strategies for the Most Common Challenges of Integrating SEL into your Classroom
Challenge #1: SEL is important, but I don’t know where to start.
- Find Your “Why”
- Promote a “change agent” mindset
- Choose preferred instructional practices
- Strategies to increase school connectedness through relationship
Challenge #2: I’m so stressed out myself that I can’t teach my students to manage their own stress.
- Differentiate between positive, tolerable, and toxic stress
- Assess your personal, social, and emotional competencies
- Strategies to build teacher/student capacity
- Self-care strategies that are realistic & inexpensive
Challenge #3: I want to meet the specific social and emotional needs of my students. How can I do this?
- Steps to create a classroom needs assessment
- Establish simple data collection methods
- Determine whether current interventions are working
- Use data in a way that works for you
Challenge #4: There is already too much on my plate & time is an issue.
- Determine the purpose of interventions in school settings
- Practice braiding SEL with other interventions
- Develop a vision statement to guide you
- Create standards to support your vision
Challenge #5: I don’t know how to implement evidence-based strategies in my classroom.
- Use SAFE practices
- Discover your preferred methods for teaching social/emotional competencies
- Develop action plan
- Look for fidelity of implementation
Challenge #6: I don’t know if what I am doing is actually working.
- Use MOOSES to measure competencies
- Understand student outcomes
- Learn from your implementation and document your story
- Discover school outcomes and implications of change
Challenge #7: My administration and colleagues are not on board with SEL. What can I do?
- Understand motivation, barriers, and needs of stakeholders
- Provide opportunities for collaboration and observation
- Be the “change agent”, no matter what
- Determine how resistance is preventing change