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Constructivist Listening Dyad Protocol (1)

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Illinois Standards for School Leadership

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Illinois Standards for School Leadership

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Advancing Social and Emotional Learning - CASEL

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CASEL is helping make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education, preschool through high school.

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The benefits of social and emotional learning (SEL) are well-researched, with evidence demonstrating that an education that promotes SEL yields positive

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence;

Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development.

Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

Use our reflection protocol to facilitate a discussion on implementation efforts in your school, district, or other setting.

Read more about the 2020 update to our framework, which highlighted the potential of SEL in promoting educational equity and excellence.

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Communities

Communities. Community partners often provide safe and developmentally rich settings for learning and development, have deep understanding of community needs and assets, are seen as trusted partners by families and students, and have connections to additional supports and services that school and families need. Community programs also offer opportunities for young people to practice their social and emotional skills in settings that are both personally relevant and can open opportunities for their future. To integrate SEL efforts across the school day and out-of-school time, school staff and community partners should align on common language and coordinate strategies and communication around SEL-related efforts and initiatives.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Community Partnerships

Families & Caregivers

Families & Caregivers. When schools and families form authentic partnerships, they can build strong connections that reinforce students' social and emotional development. Families and caregivers are children's first teachers, and bring deep expertise about their development, experiences, culture, and learning needs. These insights and perspectives are critical to informing, supporting, and sustaining SEL efforts. Research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home, and families are far more likely to form partnerships with schools when their schools' norms, values, and cultural representations reflect their own experiences. Schools need inclusive decision-making processes that ensure that families-particularly those from historically marginalized groups-are part of planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL.

Schools can also create other avenues for family partnership that may include creating ongoing two-way communication with families, helping caregivers understand child development, helping teachers understand family backgrounds and cultures, providing opportunities for families to volunteer in schools, extending learning activities and discussions into homes, and coordinating family services with community partners. These efforts should engage families in understanding, experiencing, informing, and supporting the social and emotional development of their students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Family Partnerships

Schools

Schools. Effectively integrating SEL schoolwide involves ongoing planning, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement by all members of the school community. SEL efforts both contribute to and depend upon a school climate where all students and adults feel respected, supported, and engaged.

Because the school setting includes many contexts-classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, bus-fostering a healthy school climate and culture requires active engagement from all adults and students. A strong school culture is rooted in students' sense of belonging, with evidence that suggests that it plays a crucial role in students' engagement. SEL also offers an opportunity to enhance existing systems of student support by integrating SEL goals and practices with universal, targeted, and intensive academic and behavioral supports. By coordinating and building upon SEL practices and programs, schools can create an environment that infuses SEL into every part of students' educational experience and promotes positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes for all students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL

Classrooms

Classrooms. Research has shown that social and emotional competence can be enhanced using a variety of classroom-based approaches such as: (a) explicit instruction through which social and emotional skills and attitudes are taught and practiced in developmentally, contextually, and culturally responsive ways; (b) teaching practices such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; and (c) integration of SEL and academic curriculum such as language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and performing arts. High-quality SEL instruction has four elements represented by the acronym SAFE: Sequenced - following a coordinated set of training approaches to foster the development of competencies; Active - emphasizing active forms of learning to help students practice and master new skills; Focused - implementing curriculum that intentionally emphasizes the development of SEL competencies; and Explicit - defining and targeting specific skills, attitudes, and knowledge.

SEL instruction is carried out most effectively in nurturing, safe environments characterized by positive, caring relationships among students and teachers. To facilitate age-appropriate and culturally responsive instruction, adults must understand and appreciate the unique strengths and needs of each student and support students' identities. When adults incorporate students' personal experiences and cultural backgrounds and seek their input, they create an inclusive classroom environment where students are partners in the educational process, elevating their own agency. Strong relationships between adults and students can facilitate co-learning, foster student and adult growth, and generate collaborative solutions to shared concerns.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Effective SEL Programs

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Such as:

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Identifying one's emotions

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Linking feelings, values, and thoughts

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Self-Management

Self-management: The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Such as:

Managing one's emotions

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social Awareness

Social awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Such as:

Taking others' perspectives

Recognizing strengths in others

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Such as:

Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness

Learning how to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, and facts

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside and outside of school

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Such as:

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural competency

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Resisting negative social pressure

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Standing up for the rights of others

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

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Our SEL framework, known to many as the "CASEL wheel," helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students' learning and development.

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Overview

At this moment, practitioners can see what research and science have been telling us for some time: the concepts of equity, excellence, and well-being are an interrelated sequence of efforts.

Natalie Walrond Director, Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities

Children thrive when they learn and develop in environments that support their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being.

At WestEd, we promote a whole-person, whole-systems approach to building resilient and healthy schools and communities across all levels of K-12 education and other child- and youth-serving systems.

Using research-based best practices, we offer technical assistance and professional learning, surveys and measures, product and resource creation, and research and evaluation.

Our expertise helps our partners:

Support responsive, safe, and equitable school climate and culture

Enhance social and emotional learning and development

Encourage self and community care for educators and other adults

Promote community resilience and well-being

When conditions are in place to support equitable learning and development, children and youth thrive in important ways-by cultivating a sense of purpose, building healthy relationships, and engaging as active citizens within their communities.

Learn about Our Approach

WestEd Bulletin

Stay up to date with the latest WestEd news, events, research, and leading voices to support your commitment to improving learning, healthy development, and equity in schools and communities.

Insights & Impact / March 12, 2024

In this Q&A, Senior Program Associate Lauren Trout discusses the upcoming Courage Museum, led by FUTURES in partnership with WestEd, which aims to address various forms of violence and promote healing within communities.

Events / March 18, 2024

Jennifer Loeffler-Cobia, Justice and Public Health Policy and Practice Director at WestEd's Justice & Prevention Research Center (JPRC), will present at the Joint Meeting On Youth Prevention, Treatment, And Recovery held March 18-20, 2024, in Baltimore Maryland.

Insights & Impact / February 20, 2024

Learn about how California partnered with the Region 15 Comprehensive Center to revise the state's teaching standards to reflect current research, center equity, and allow for effective implementation.

Resources

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Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities

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WestEd works with schools, communities, and policymakers to create safe, healthy environments that help young people improve their academic achievement and well-being.

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Natalie Walrond, MBA, serves as the Director of the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd. In this role, she oversees the growth and dissemination of the agency's body of work related to creating safe, supportive, responsive, and equitable conditions in which every child, youth, and adult can learn, grow, and thrive. She also serves as director of the national Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety, housed at WestEd. In this role, she leads the vision, strategic direction, and external engagement of the center. She leads a team of people who work nationally to build state and local capacity to integrate evidence-based approaches to social and emotional development and school safety with academic teaching and learning, school climate and culture, and all of the ways that children and youth experience school. She speaks and writes for the Center on social and emotional well-being, excellence, alignment and coherence, and equity.

Walrond brings to her work 25 years of experience in K-12 education, finance, and strategy, for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining WestEd, she was an independent consultant, serving mission-driven education organizations, providing strategic planning, financial strategy, and board effectiveness consulting. All of her engagements were guided by clients' aspirations of equity and race equity. She began her career working for ten years in investment management and investment banking. She then served as a nonprofit chief financial officer before becoming an associate partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, a local education venture philanthropy organization. Additionally, she has served on several nonprofit boards. She is currently a member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC) and serves on the board of Beyond 12. Walrond earned a BA in International Studies and International Business from Trinity University and an MBA from the University of Chicago, with concentrations in analytic finance and policy studies.

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Natalie Walrond, MBA, serves as the Director of the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd. In this role, she oversees the growth and dissemination of the agency's body of work related to creating safe, supportive, responsive, and equitable conditions in which every child, youth, and adult can learn, grow, and thrive.

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Lauren Trout is a Senior Program Associate for the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team and leads WestEd's restorative practices body of work. Trout works with schools, communities, and larger education and justice systems to provide training, coaching, and technical support. Trout's work centers on equity and focuses on climate and culture, harm prevention, sustainable implementation, and community-driven change.

As a restorative justice practitioner, Trout's work aims to shift trauma-informed practice, social-emotional well-being, and relationship-centered learning from being siloed programs into being paradigms, collective values, and guiding principles that inform and are embedded in structures and organizational culture. Trout specializes in using a restorative justice paradigm and constructivist and critical pedagogies to transform systems of power, helping create inclusive, safe, and culturally responsive climates.

Prior to joining WestEd, Trout ran restorative justice programs for the Jefferson Parish District Attorney's Office and Public School System in Louisiana. There, Trout led restorative work in the Parish, facilitated victim-offender dialogues as an alternative to court, and oversaw the implementation of restorative practices for the school district. As a trainer, facilitator, speaker, and consultant with over a decade of direct work with youth, communities, and systems, Trout has experience spanning local and national levels of education and criminal justice systems.

Trout received a BA in political science and international studies from Saint Louis University, and is a native southerner currently residing in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Lauren Trout is a Senior Program Associate for the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team and leads WestEd's restorative practices body of work. Trout works with schools, communities, and larger education and justice systems to provide training, coaching, and technical support. Trout's work centers on equity and focuses on climate and culture, harm prevention, [...]

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Link to Case Study Padlet for Breakout Rooms

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Link to Case Study Padlet for Breakout Rooms

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ATLAS Protocol - Referenced by Principal Calloway

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ATLAS Protocol - Referenced by Principal Calloway

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Title

Atlas Looking at Data

Attribution

The tool, developed by Eric Buchovecky, is based in part on the work of the Leadership for Urban Mathematics Project and the Assessment Communities of Teachers Project. The tool also draws on the work of Steve Seidel and Evangeline Harris-Stefanakis of Project Zero at Harvard University. Revised November 2000 by Gene Thompson-Grove. Revised August 2004 for Looking at Data by Dianne Leahy.

Description

Looking at Data is a tool to guide groups of teachers discovering what students, educators, and the public understand and how they are thinking.

Last Updated

March 30, 2017

[acf_ProtocolInfo_Related Tools]

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Title Atlas Looking at Data Attribution The tool, developed by Eric Buchovecky, is based in part on the work of the Leadership for Urban Mathematics Project and the Assessment Communities of Teachers Project. The tool also draws on the work of Steve Seidel and Evangeline Harris-Stefanakis of Project Zero at Harvard University.

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SCARF Model Referenced by Principal Fleer

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SCARF Model Referenced by Principal Fleer

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David Rock’s SCARF Model - Using Neuroscience to Work Effectively With Others

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SCARF is a brain-based model that helps us to collaborate and work effectively with people by understanding how they react to threats and reward.