social & emotional learning - InVESTING
Learning Playlists > Social & Emotional Learning – Investing
The positive impact of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is substantiated by extensive research, demonstrating that an educational framework emphasizing SEL results in favorable outcomes for students, educators, and the wider school community. Numerous independent studies across diverse disciplines confirm that SEL leads to advantageous outcomes in areas such as social and emotional skills, academic achievement, psychological well-being, positive health behaviors, school environment and safety, and long-term life outcomes (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning).
Prioritizing the SEL requirements of educational institutions is crucial for cultivating environments where all students can flourish. The following resources are recommended for schools and districts embarking on the SEL Pillar. Those exploring SEL implementation may find themselves contemplating initial steps. These resources focus on SEL Instruction and Modeling, which are fundamental components of school or district-wide SEL implementation.
Schools or districts are prepared for the “investing” phase of the Social and Emotional Learning Pillar when they have a shared understanding of what SEL means for their unique community and are ready to create systems and structures to embed SEL into the framework of the school culture. Schools at this stage deepen their commitment, strengthen existing practices, and see sustainable, innovative approaches to resilience-building. The resources here focus on: supporting schools in deepening their commitment to resilience-building by embedding sustainable, long-term strategies into their culture; helping schools strengthen and scale successful practices while innovating new approaches that fit their evolving needs; encourage leadership, staff, and stakeholders to advocate for systemic changes that enhance resilience across the school or district. Click here for our Action Planning Guide to help you through the process of creating an action plan that will help your school move towards becoming a more resilience-supportive school community.
- School-based Staff Survey on Schoolwide SEL Implementation
- 20 minutes
You can take the CASEL survey on the RSSI site at www.rss-illinois.net.
Click here for the Assessment Guide to help your team through this process.
For more information and to download a copy of this survey, go to the CASEL site School-based Staff Survey on Schoolwide SEL Implementation
- 30 minutes
A calm classroom starts with defining your expectations, routines, and schedules, creating a predictable space where everyone knows what to do and what’s coming next. But even with strong, fundamental practices in place. there are times when some students need a space to help regulate their emotions and calm their senses. This course provides a quick overview and strategy ideas on creating safe spaces and places for students to self-regulate in the classroom, school community, as well as out-of-school programs.
The Integrated Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Fidelity Rubric (IMFR) is a tool created to assess an elementary school’s implementation of Integrated Multi-tiered Systems of Support (I-MTSS). I-MTSS is a model where academic and social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) supports are strategically combined to improve students’ academic (e.g., reading and/or math) and SEB outcomes. The IMFR can be used to assess, better understand, set goals for, and improve I-MTSS implementation in elementary schools whose goal it is to strategically combine academic (i.e., reading and/or math) and SEB supports to meet students’ needs in both areas.
Integrated MTSS Fidelity Rubric (IMFR) | American Institutes for Research
- 15 minutes
This article provides an overview of how educators across every role can use Mapp’s newly revised family engagement model — the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships — to guide their relationships with families.
Watch the 5-minute video about the Dual Capacity-Building Framework to learn how leaders can use family engagement plans in their schools and districts.
A Family Engagement Framework for All | Harvard Graduate School of Education
- 10 mins
- SEL is Hegemonic Miseducation: Students Deserve Humanization Instead (article)
- 20 mins
The ahistorical objectives of social and emotional learning fall short of repairing the cultural contempt of hegemonic miseducation and does not address the primary social forces negatively impacting the health and wellness of communities of color – their colonial relationship with inequitable social systems. In this article, we posit humanization in place of social and emotional learning because SEL’s inadequate analysis of intersecting oppressions justifies existing power relations in communities and schools. In essence, this article examines the pedagogy and psychology of humanization as a viable framework to confront systemically imposed self-hate, divide and conquer, and sub-oppression if it teaches students knowledge (and love) of self, solidarity, and self-determination.
Social and emotional learning is hegemonic miseducation: students deserve humanization instead
- From a Nation of Risk to a Nation of Hope (report)
- 30 mins
This report explores how the promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. A solid body of scientific evidence confirms that learning has social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions that are inextricably linked. It is not a distraction from the “real work” of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed. And it is not another reason for political polarization. It brings together a traditionally conservative emphasis on local control and on the character of all students, and a historically progressive emphasis on the creative and challenging art of teaching and the social and emotional needs of all students, especially those who have experienced the greatest challenges. Based on conversations with hundreds of people across the nation over the past two years, including students and their families, the report’s recommendations describe strategies that can help local communities address young people’s comprehensive development, including illustrative examples from the field.
- Principals' Social & Emotional Competence: a Key Factor in Creating Caring Schools (report)
- 30 mins
School principals have substantial impacts on many aspects of their schools, including school climate and culture, teacher well-being and retention, and students’ school success. As such, the personal and professional development of principals is a key element in creating a caring school in which adults and children feel welcomed, cared for, and challenged. It is now recognized that principals experience substantial job-related stress which can compromise their personal well-being as well as their leadership. Surprisingly, the social and emotional development and well-being of principals has received little attention.
This brief provides a conceptual model of the Prosocial School Leader, which has two components. The first is the principal’s own social and emotional competence (SEC) and the ability to handle stress and model caring and culturally competent behaviors with staff and students. The second component is an enhanced model of leadership in which principals are the prosocial leaders whose responsibility is to ensure that all staff, students, parents, and community members feel safe, cared for, respected, and valued. Principals’ SECs, well-being, and leadership form the foundation that influences the effective implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL), school climate, teacher functioning and well-being, family and community partnerships, and downstream student outcomes.
- Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom (book)
- 60 mins
Grounded in research and the authors’ experience working with trauma-affected students and their teachers, Fostering Resilient Learners helps cultivate a trauma-sensitive learning environment for students across all content areas, grade levels, and educational settings. The authors–a mental health therapist and a veteran principal–provide classroom strategies. You’ll learn how to: build strong relationships and create a safe space to enable students to learn at high levels; adopt a strengths-based approach to break negative cycles; head off frustration and burnout with essential self-care techniques that will help you and your students flourish. Each chapter also includes questions and exercises to encourage reflection and extension of the ideas in this book. As an educator, you face the impact of trauma in the classroom every day.
Review a sample chapter of the book here. Order a copy of this book here, or wherever you buy your used or new books.
- Dear Young Person: You Are Valued
- 10 mins
Decades of activism and research established a foundation for educators to build safer, more inclusive school communities—but this hard-won progress is far from secure. Politically motivated efforts, especially in the South, to erase LGBTQ+ representation and censor Black history have gained momentum in recent years, threatening young people’s well-being and creating hostile school environments for students and educators. Activists Nikole Parker and Brandon Wolf from Equality Florida emphasize the need for each of us to advocate for safer schools where all young people are valued.
- Leading with SEL (website and resources)
Leading with SEL represents key voices in education – parents, educators, students, community and advocacy organizations, businesses, nonprofits – who share a vision for a high-quality education that includes social and emotional learning. On this website you can find a toolkit and other resources to be an SEL leader in your own community.
- Center to Improve SEL & School Safety (website and resources)
This website offers many great resources including a guide examines some common root causes of staff resistance and offers actionable strategies for leaders to mitigate its effects, and an audiocast that offers ideas about strategic communications and vivid examples of effective approaches to navigating social and political challenges, including cross-sector collaboration, using data, and storytelling. Check out the Resources page and search for information that fits your school’s needs.
- Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging School: a Comprehensive, Evidence-Based Approach to Supporting Students (e-book)
Safe and supportive school communities foster students’ social, emotional, and academic needs. Educators want actionable strategies and practices to ensure that all students can access equitable learning environments. Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging Schools helps school leaders make sense of the various evidence-based resources and frameworks designed to support the whole child. Addressing critical topics like restorative practices, cultural responsiveness, social and emotional learning, and family engagement, this volume offers insights on how leaders can leverage school-based teams to assess student needs and select appropriate interventions. By taking a continuous improvement approach, this e-book includes chapters to help educators and leaders:
- build the capacity of their staff to lead and implement their work with passion, enthusiasm, and efficiency;
- engage the strengths of all school key collaborators;
- implement strong foundational supports which address diverse student and educator needs; and
- monitor implementation efforts using evidence from improvement science.
- A Response to Constructive Criticism about Social and Emotional Learning (reading)
- 15 min
This article provides background context and filling readers in on where the SEL movement has been, the strategic thinking that has guided CASEL field leaders and collaborators, and the possibilities we see for the future. The authors of this article, who are experts in the field of SEL, address four main areas of concern that surrounds SEL: ambiguity, hype, equity and culture, and impatience. The SEL movement requires a long-term commitment to gaining support for the work, building strong professional communities of practice, managing political pressures, and finding a healthy balance between holding schools to fixed standards and allowing flexibility to adapt programming to local contexts, needs, and values.
