Social Success in Schools® Can Help Implement CASEL’s Recent SEL Recommendations
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) recently highlighted recommendations to help schools return to the at-school learning environment next year. In a new resource titled Leveraging The Power of Social-Emotional Learning As You Prepare To Reopen and Renew Your School Community, CASEL suggests ways to meet the social-emotional needs of the entire school community; students, teachers, and parents, as everyone makes this transition. The Social Success in Schools® can help implement CASEL’s recent SEL recommendations.
Here at Social Success in Schools®, we’re pleased to share that schools can implement all of CASEL’s recommendations using materials from our school-wide SEL professional development program.
Let’s take a look at CASEL’s 4 recommendations:
1. Implement Recent SEL Recommendations | Take time to build partnerships, deepen your understanding, and plan for SEL.
Meeting this recommendation allows your school community to experience success as you learn what SEL means and how to see the positive outcomes it promises.
The School Edition training modules of our program, sets schools up for success by creating a plan for SEL. We deepen your understanding of SEL with actionable strategies to embed into the natural learning environment. Our curriculum helps schools identify their strengths, build trusting relationships, and encourage positive social behaviors for both students and adults within the school.
Social Success in Schools® goes beyond the school walls and also builds this foundation community-wide through our Home Edition training. This helps schools build partnerships with their school community, encouraging open communication and cooperation throughout the school and home environments. The relationships built in this initial phase are critical to the overall success of your SEL mission.
2. Implement Recent SEL Recommendations | Everyone will need SEL support as we reopen schools next year, not just the students.
Just like any skill, adults must first possess the competencies before we can begin building them in our students. It’s the oxygen mask in the airplane. If we don’t put ours on first, we can’t help others.
Social Success in Schools® helps adults at school and at home cultivate their own SEL skillset that in turn enables them to foster these skills in their students. We offer tools and strategies to help adults identify SEL skill areas they can reaffirm while supporting those areas they may need to reinvent. Our training also supports and nurtures staff and student well-being with access to self-care and mindfulness strategies.
We cultivate a healthy group dynamic by promoting staff and student voice and choice. This structured curriculum helps create norms to ensure respectful communication and problem solving amongst staff, students, and the greater school community. Now more than ever, school communities need proper training to help them unify together to support the development of the whole child.
3. Implement Recent SEL Recommendations | Create emotionally and physically safe, supportive, and engaging learning environments that promote all students’ social and emotional development.
Does that recommendation feel overwhelming? There’s a lot to unpack there. Social Success in Schools® is here to help you break it down so you can implement SEL in ways that don’t feel like one more thing on your plates.
Our program offers specific trainings to help schools cultivate and nurture a safe, supportive, engaging, AND inclusive school culture and climate. You’ll create school-wide systems that are trauma-informed, equitable, and culturally attuned. You’ll also create opportunities for students to connect and engage during SEL all school events, family SEL nights, and community-service learning activities. These SEL activities help children develop cooperation, communication, and coping skills that cultivate safe feelings and a sense of community.
4. Implement Recent SEL Recommendations | Use data as an opportunity to deepen relationships and continuously improve support for students, families, and staff.
Michael Hyatt says “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” We couldn’t agree more. That’s why we include various assessments opportunities throughout the program. These are occasions to reflect as well solicit feedback to ensure everyone is rowing the boat together in the right direction. Our motto here at Social Success In Schools® is: Reaffirm. Reassess. Reinvent. This is what we encourage our schools to embody as they seek to elevate their mission to educate the whole child.
We hope you find both the CASEL document and our program to be influential in your quest for an SEL rich environment in your community. We’d love to have you become a member of our Social Success in Schools® community seeking to improve the ways in which you educate kids in today’s world. You can subscribe to the program here: https://socialsuccessinschools.org/school-wide-sel-professional-development/ or if you need help positioning the program to your school administration, feel free to download our Decision Maker Infograph. You can always reach out to us on social media or via the contact page here on our website too.
Let us be your go-to SEL professional development resource to guide your school in implementing school-wide SEL with integrity, efficacy, and sustainability. We look forward to supporting you.
Together, we got this!