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NY State Education Department, Nov. 2022

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These two-page information sheets provide basic information about how Social Emotional Learning (SEL) integrates with other areas of focus.

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Promoting Social-Emotional Learning in Adolescent Latino ELLs:  A Study of the Culturally Adapted StrongTeens Program

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Promoting Social-Emotional Learning in Adolescent Latino ELLs:  A Study of the Culturally Adapted StrongTeens Program

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Castro-Olivo, 2014

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Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.

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➤ Access the full article here: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/#the-casel-5

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Social Emotional Learning for Multilingual Learners:  Essential Actions for Success

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Social Emotional Learning for Multilingual Learners:  Essential Actions for Success

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Though multilingual learners (MLs) comprise nearly 25% of the school-age population, the most widely-used social emotional learning (SEL) frameworks and programs lack an intentional focus on these students' unique strengths and challenges. To foster MLs' academic success and wellbeing, educators must consider students' cultures, languages, assets, expectations, norms, and life experiences when integrating SEL practices.

In this groundbreaking book, Diane Staehr Fenner, PhD and Mindi Teich, MEd break down how each of the five competencies in the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) SEL framework can be implemented with ML success in mind. Staehr Fenner and Teich's practical and engaging guide provides SEL considerations that are unique to MLs, relevant research, easy-to-implement educator actions, and tools to seamlessly integrate SEL practices into content and language instruction. Additional features include:

+ Tools and practical strategies educators can apply immediately

+ Programmatic and systemic considerations that impact SEL for MLs

+ Examples of successful SEL strategies for MLs currently being used in classrooms

+ Ample opportunities for reflection and application in each chapter

+ Templates to prioritize and integrate SEL for MLs into teaching practices

MLs thrive when they are validated and supported to achieve their goals, empathize with others, build relationships, and make responsible decisions. The essential actions presented in this guide will enable you-regardless of your role or prior experience with SEL-to empower MLs to achieve academic and lifelong success.

Chapter 1 - Why SEL For MLs Matters

Chapter 2 - The SEL Framework For MLs

Chapter 3 - Self-Awareness

Chapter 4 - Self-Management

Chapter 5 - Social Awareness

Chapter 6 - Relationship Skills

Chapter 7 - Responsible Decision-Making

Chapter 8 - Taking Next Steps to Implement SEL with MLs

Diane Staehr Fenner, PhD, president and founder of SupportEd, established the company in 2011 as a way to serve educators who work to help multilingual learners (MLs) realize their full potential. Dr. Staehr Fenner is an author of six educational learning books. She is a frequent keynote presenter on ML education at conferences across North America. She spent a decade as an ESOL teacher, dual language assessment teacher, and ESOL assessment specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools, VA and taught English in Mexico and Germany. She earned her Ph.D. in Multilingual/Multicultural Education with an emphasis in Literacy at George Mason University. She earned her MAT in TESOL at the School for International Training and her Masters in German at Penn State University. She lives in Fairfax, VA with her husband and three school-age kids who learned math and science through Spanish in their public elementary school. Dr. Staehr Fenner grew up on a dairy farm in New York State's Finger Lakes region and is a first-generation college graduate.

Mindi Teich, MEd, SupportEd ML Coach, has been an advocate for English Learner students and their teachers for over 20 years. She began her career as an ESL teacher in DC Public Schools (DCPS). During her time as an ESL teacher, she worked with students in pull out, push in, and co-teaching environments. It was during her own co-teaching experience that Mindi embraced the co-teaching model and recognized the benefits for ELs. While still teaching, she worked with District staff to develop and implement training on collaborative practices for classroom and ESL teachers. As part of the DCPS Language Acquisition Division, Mindi spent 10 years providing professional development and on-site coaching to DCPS teachers who worked with language learners.

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Social Emotional Learning for Multilingual Learners: Essential Actions for Success By Diane Staehr Fenner and Mindi Teich.

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Foster a positive classroom environment and support students' wellbeing with Social Emotional Learning (SEL) resources from SupportEd.

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Snyder & Staehr Fenner, 2021

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Social Emotional Learning and Family and Community Engagement

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Social Emotional Learning and Family and Community Engagement

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Effects of a Culturally Adapted Social-Emotional Learning Intervention Program on Students' Mental Health

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Effects of a Culturally Adapted Social-Emotional Learning Intervention Program on Students' Mental Health

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Cramer & Castro-Olivo, 2015

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Snyder & Staehr Fenner, 2021

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The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today

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The Power to Change the World: A Teaching Unit on Student Activism in History and Today

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Schulten, 2018

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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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Social and Emotional Learning and Equity

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Social and Emotional Learning and Equity

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Does Social-Emotional Learning Help Students Who Could Benefit Most?  We Don't Know 

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Does Social-Emotional Learning Help Students Who Could Benefit Most?  We Don't Know 

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Cipriano, Horowitz, & Rappolt-Schlichtmann,  2021

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Imagine if researchers leading a clinical trial of a new vaccine did not publish a breakdown of findings by demographic group. Without these data, it would be difficult to know, for example, how children reacted to it versus adults. Or how women fared compared with men. Or if pregnant women responded differently.

Without this information, it would be impossible to know if the vaccine is right for everyone.

Educational research should be held to a similarly high standard. To truly know if and how particular interventions are effective, we must understand how they work among subgroups of students.

Let's talk about what we know about social and emotional learning from the research.

SEL is understood as an interrelated set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and strategies that underscore how we learn, form, and maintain supportive relationships; make empathetic and equitable decisions; and thrive both physically and psychologically.

Students today are more anxious, less connected, and more likely to have experienced trauma-a threat to their safety, agency, dignity, and belonging-than they were two years ago. And these experiences have been most profound for students marginalized by race, ethnicity, and ability. These students are more likely than their peers to have had their learning interrupted, be underserved, experience the loss of loved ones, and have their household income negatively impacted during the pandemic.

Fortunately, a significant portion of the $190 billion allocated by Congress to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund must be specifically used to "respond to students' academic, social, and emotional needs and address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups." Accordingly, three-quarters of states list SEL or mental health as a top priority in their plans for ESSER funding, according to a recent review from our colleagues at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

We know that high-quality, systemic SEL can help students identify emotions from social cues, set goals, consider multiple perspectives, and problem solve. We also know that SEL can reduce bullying and school suspensions and improve academic performance and school climate.

But what research hasn't yet established is how-or even whether-universal school-based SEL programs serve students with disabilities and students of color, who are among the most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the evidence for SEL's impact on racially- and ability-marginalized youth is murky at best and nonexistent at worst because we haven't looked deeply enough. And that's a big problem.

To be honest, education research is riddled with descriptions of school-based interventions that, once studied, are revealed to inequitably serve students with disabilities and/or those of color. To quantify the extent of this problem, teams at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the education nonprofit EdTogether reviewed the current evidence describing whether SEL interventions are inclusive and representative. Our recent findings were nothing short of devastating.

After reviewing 242 studies of elementary school SEL from 2008 through the end of 2020, we found that more than 75 percent of them make no mention whatsoever of students with disabilities, and fewer than 1 in 10 include students with disabilities in their analysis. Nearly 75 percent of studies do not report student race in their results, and only 1 of every 10 reports on the effect of SEL on students by racial or ethnic identity.

With limited evidence, how can we know who is being well-served by SEL?

Further, although most studies don't actively exclude students with disabilities (4 percent), most studies don't include them, either (only 7.4 percent). Students with disabilities may be underrepresented in SEL research in part because researchers are unaware that students with disabilities are present in their classrooms, such as the 1 in 5 students in the United States with learning disabilities -learning disabilities that are often invisible.

Speaking of visibility, we also found evidence of worrisome labeling practices for students. For example, some studies reported on subgroups of students where teachers assigned students to umbrella racial categories-including white or nonwhite or "minority" and "nonminority." It's well established that knowing someone's race and ethnicity is a proxy for deeper understanding of their culture and experiences of privilege, marginalization, discrimination, and opportunity. Race and ethnicity demand this deeper level of inquiry within SEL, but we are yet to even scratch the surface in the current research.

The SEL research we studied did not describe or account for the experiences of the students and educators who are most likely to be marginalized in schools. Historically, racial- and ability-minoritized students have not benefited equally from educational interventions compared with their white, abled peers. In some cases, interventions have actually made education less accessible and actually more punitive for our most vulnerable youth.

We call on researchers and advocates for evidence-based SEL to commit to implementing research practices that are inclusive of all student identities. We must identify, confront, and overcome obstacles to breaking down demographics in SEL work, which can result in oversimplification or exclusion of key groups from findings. We must collect and disaggregate data based on disability status, race, ethnicity, and whether the student is impacted by poverty.

Only then can we begin to examine who benefits (or not) from SEL. This evidence would provide the necessary foundation from which to design and execute critical studies of SEL effects, through action-research and person-centered designs.

Further, policymakers and practitioners should promote the implementation of SEL approaches that recognize and empower students of differing and intersectional identities. Following a set of core principles for inclusive SEL from the National Center for Learning Disabilities is a great starting point to guide decisionmaking that meets the needs of all students. From meaningfully including students with disabilities and their families in the implementation process to making sure that technology tools needed to learn are fully accessible, school leaders and educators can put in place policies and practices that support all students.

If we want something to be different, we must do things differently.

As states and districts are making decisions about investing COVID-19 relief dollars, support for fully inclusive and representative SEL practices should be high on the list. Our students-and the education field as a whole-are counting on us.

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Does Social-Emotional Learning Help Students Who Could Benefit the Most? We Don't Know (Opinion)

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There's a big hole in the research on SEL, and it should galvanize researchers and advocates to step up.

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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Baker, et. al, 2014

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Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice

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Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice

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Learning for Justice

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school.

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Finding Your Place 2021:  Social Emotional Learning Takes Center Stage in K-12

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Finding Your Place 2021:  Social Emotional Learning Takes Center Stage in K-12

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Tyton Partners, 2021

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Social Emotional Learning and Adult Practice

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Social Emotional Learning and Adult Practice

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Latino/a Adolescents Who Took on Childcare During the Pandemic at Risk of Depression, Anxiety and School Failure

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Latino/a Adolescents Who Took on Childcare During the Pandemic at Risk of Depression, Anxiety and School Failure

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WASHINGTON (April 6, 2022)Latino/a adolescents who took on greater childcare responsibilities due to COVID-19 experienced a significant increase in symptoms of depression, anxiety and acting out behaviors such as aggression. They also experienced a significant drop in their grade point average, according to a study published today in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

"This study is the first to show how burdens on U.S. Latino/a families due to the pandemic have put adolescents at risk of serious mental health problems and poor school performance," Kathleen Roche, the lead author of the study and a professor of prevention and community health at the George Washington University, said. "If not addressed, such difficulties can lead to suicidal thoughts, school failure and difficulties that last far into adulthood."

Roche and her colleagues surveyed 547 Latino adolescents before the pandemic and two more times several months after COVID-19 hit. They found that six months into the pandemic, one out of 10 Latino adolescents reported that a household member had been hospitalized due to COVID-19, more than one out of three reported increased childcare responsibilities and nearly 50% reported increased household financial pressures.

Although household hospitalizations, family job and income loss did not have a direct effect on adolescent adjustment after COVID-19 started, such stress seemed to have harmful effects on adolescents because it led to an increase in adolescent childcare duties, Roche said. While other studies have shown that Latino/a families are at greater risk of COVID-related infection, deaths in the family, and financial difficulties, this study is the first to show how pandemic-related stressors affected important outcomes for Latino/a adolescents a year after COVID-19 started, she said.

Adolescents are undergoing rapid biological, cognitive and social changes that increase their vulnerability to very stressful situations, Roche said. Increased focus on caring for younger children may take time away from schoolwork and healthy coping behaviors such as time spent with peers and physical activity, she said.

The study, "COVID-19 Stressors and Latinx Adolescents' Mental Health Symptomotology and School Performance: A Prospective Study," was published April 6 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.
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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Latino/a adolescents who took on childcare duties during the pandemic at risk of depression, anxiety and school failure

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Latino/a adolescents who took on greater childcare responsibilities due to COVID-19 experienced a significant increase in symptoms of depression, anxiety and acting out behaviors such as aggression. They also experienced a significant drop in their grade point average, according to a study published today in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

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Tool:  Sentence Starters to Support Some Aspects of Self-Awareness

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Tool:  Sentence Starters to Support Some Aspects of Self-Awareness

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Sentence Starters to Support Self-Awareness Guide

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Download the free sentence starter guide to help scaffold multilingual Learners’ discussion of their self-awareness in the K-12 classroom.

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Companion Resources (Videos and Tools) from Culturally Responsive Teaching for MLs

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Companion Resources (Videos and Tools) from Culturally Responsive Teaching for MLs

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➤ Access the resources here:
https://bit.ly/CRTeachingResources

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How Kids Can Overcome the Awkwardness of Asking for Help 

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How Kids Can Overcome the Awkwardness of Asking for Help 

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Gonser, 2021

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There are many reasons students don't ask for help. Research shows there are strategies to help them overcome their reluctance.

Daniel Garcia / The iSpot

Office hours, as many middle and high school teachers can attest, are often a frustratingly underutilized block of time during the school day-an unstructured period earmarked for student check-ins and lesson support that very few kids take advantage of, even when they understand the benefits.

Students' tendency to avoid seeking help is an area Vanessa Bohns, a professor of psychology and organizational behavior at Cornell University, focuses her research on, perhaps partly inspired by her own experience with students at the college level.

"The quietest part of my day used to be my office hours, when students could meet with me without an appointment. Why? Because no one would show up for them," writes Bohns for Character Lab. "I clearly advertised the time I would be available, door open, ready to answer any questions. I extolled the benefits of asking for help. But I still sat there alone."

Bohn's office hours experience largely mirrors what happens in middle and high school, compounded for teenagers by a potent mix of peer pressure-the urgent need to appear competent in front of friends and classmates is a driving force at this age-and a lack of metacognitive skills when it comes to assessing their own learning and knowledge gaps. "Middle schoolers have a harder time asking for help because they're transitioning from the cut-and-dry thinking of elementary school," writes educator and academic coach Penny Kostaras for TeachThought. "Add to that the self-consciousness and insecurity that puberty brings, and no one dares to ask for help for fear of being 'found out' or 'exposed'."

We also tend to underestimate just how much discomfort kids feel about asking for help. That can cause parents or educators to "sit back waiting for those in need to ask for help, engage in misguided attempts to encourage help-seeking without directly addressing help-seekers' discomfort, or mistakenly attribute underutilization of available help to a lack of need rather than a lack of confidence," write Bohns and Francis J. Flynn in a 2009 research article. "In each case, a likely outcome is that critical support is never provided."

Yet the answer, Bohns notes, isn't about getting students to grasp the benefits of asking for help, convincing them, for example, of the upside of office hours. Instead, it's much more productive, she says, to lower the temperature on the process generally so that identifying where they need help, and then asking for it, becomes a low-stakes, normal part of being a good learner, something students feel comfortable and empowered to do regularly. "Students need to feel like they aren't the only ones struggling," Bohns writes. "They need to believe they won't be judged negatively for getting extra support."

Here are seven educator-sourced strategies designed to normalize seeking help in middle and high school, making it a natural, easy choice for students.

Consider Eliminating Office Hours: On top of all the aforementioned reasons students may avoid traditional office hours, the period immediately after the school day ends is also when kids head to commitments like clubs or jobs. It's also when many kids simply need to relax and socialize after a day of focused learning. Even if they need a quick teacher check-in, an opportunity to ask questions and seek clarification, perhaps briefly review a test or paper to ensure they grasp the material, there's a scheduling conflict for many kids.

Consider intentionally scheduling weekly in-class time for this purpose-and keep track so it's not just the kids most at ease with seeking help who benefit. This might feel overwhelming when your class size is large, but these check-ins can be brief and scheduled over a period of weeks, ensuring that each student gets a time slot and you don't feel overwhelmed by the task. For a less scheduled approach, plan for a weekly open ten to 15 minutes during class where you walk around and casually check in with students.

Theresa Williams, a middle school math and science teacher, likes to conduct brief in-class interview assessments, scheduled over a long period of time. It can be a better way to get a feel for how well her students know the material, compared to traditional assessments, she says, and gives kids "more opportunities to recall information, share it in a kind of relaxed way."

Teach Metacognitive Skills: It's not uncommon for students to "sit in silence or confusion," instead of raising their hand to ask for help, writes educator Jennifer Sullivan. "Students must first recognize that they're struggling. This requires honesty and self-awareness-some students don't think they need help even when formal or informal assessments indicate otherwise."

So encourage self-reflection in students, help them develop the metacognitive skills to take on at least some of the responsibility for monitoring their learning, rather than keeping that task the sole purview of teachers, or parents. As they learn, students should regularly check in with themselves, asking themselves basic questions like: "Do I need to ask for help?" and "Are there areas that are unclear to me?" As they prepare for a test, they can ask themselves open-ended questions like:

* Can I teach this concept to a friend or family member?

* Can I identify one strategy I've been using during this lesson that's helped me be successful?

* Can I identify one strategy I want to try using more often?

* How do I think I'm doing in this class, in this unit, on this project? How do I know?

Normalize It: Part of lowering the stakes for students involves demonstrating how commonplace needing and asking for help can be. So talk about it in class and provide examples, read aloud about it, and share your own stories about seeking support or assistance from others.

"Share with your students what you were good at and what you struggled with when you were their age," Kostaras writes. "It's important to remember what it was like to be the age of your students. What were your strengths and weaknesses in the subject matter that you teach, or in other subjects? How did you overcome those obstacles? What embarrassed you?" Sharing your own very human learning experiences with students serves not just to illustrate how you sought help, it can also provide a valuable glimpse of the teacher "not as an untouchable authority, but as a relatable human who has grown and changed throughout the years," says Kostaras.

Model Assertiveness: Assertive communication is a hard but valuable skill for students to learn. "In the classroom, students who lack assertiveness skills may hesitate to share their thinking openly or ask clarifying questions when they're confused," writes educator Kristin Stuart Valdes. "But when people behave assertively, they stand up for themselves without diminishing or hurting others. In other words, they're strong, not mean."

After clarifying the definition of assertive communication-you might explain that it "represents the middle ground between the extremes of aggression and passivity," Valdes suggests-students can role-play solving various conflicts or problems. Try a "Stating Your Needs" exercise where students practice responding assertively to a misunderstanding-a student can't keep up with her notes, asks the teacher to slow down, but the teacher doesn't see her quietly raising her hand and keeps going. "We sometimes run into misunderstandings because we haven't communicated our own needs clearly," Valdes says. "It may seem that other people are ignoring or disrespecting our needs when in fact they're simply not aware of them. If we recognize this, we can address the problem by stating our needs calmly."

Prove It Exists in the Wild: Consider inviting adults who work in the school building, or in your local community, into the classroom to discuss ways that asking for help benefits them in their jobs and lives, Kostara suggests. "Revealing to younger students that getting help is the norm in the creative, scientific, and professional world makes them aware that receiving help is universal and OK," she writes. "Once in the know, students can let down their guard and be open to receiving help earlier so that they can thrive."

Offer Conversation Starters and Role-Play: For students who are introverted or shy, who are English learners, or who-for any number of reasons-struggle to speak up in class or initiate a conversation with a teacher, practice and role-play can help build confidence and skills, says Sullivan.

Ask students to brainstorm ways to initiate a conversation asking a teacher, or peer, for help, and then have them role-play in small groups or one-on-one with an adult how the conversation might unfold. To help get things moving, provide a few sentence starters such as:

* I'm struggling with... . Can we talk about it later?

* I'm working hard, but I'm still not understanding... . Can you help me?

* I'm not sure what I need. Can you please talk to me?

* Can you give me advice about ... ?

Provide Non-Public Options: When sign-ups for an SAT prep class at three high schools were public-allowing students to see who would be taking the class-53 percent of students expressed interest in the class. But when sign-ups were offered in private settings, participation in the prep class rose to 80 percent, according to a 2017 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, underscoring the powerful pressure kids feel about how they're perceived by peers.

It's important that students know they can also reach out privately to seek help and support-by email, for example. While most teachers share their email address with students, go one step further and make a point of clarifying with students that it's another way for them to reach out to you for help or support. Consider establishing ground rules around your response time and other details that protect your non-school hours -and then be sure to check your inbox daily.

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How Kids Can Overcome the Awkwardness of Asking for Help

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There are many reasons students don't ask for help. Research shows there are strategies to help them overcome their reluctance. Daniel Garcia / The iSpot Office hours, as many middle and high school teachers can attest, are often a frustratingly underutilized block of time during the school day-an unstructured period earmarked for student check-ins and lesson support that very few kids take advantage of, even when they understand the benefits.

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From Response to Reopening:State Efforts to Elevate Social and Emotional Learning During the Pandemic

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From Response to Reopening:State Efforts to Elevate Social and Emotional Learning During the Pandemic

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Yoder, et al., 2020

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Elementary or Middle School Role-Play Scenarios

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Tool:  Student-Facing Multicultural Resource Analysis Tool

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Tool:  Student-Facing Multicultural Resource Analysis Tool

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Listen to audiocasts of stories of American schools and districts describing their innovative, evidence-based approach to their SEL work

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Listen to audiocasts of stories of American schools and districts describing their innovative, evidence-based approach to their SEL work

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A welcome video from our team to yours

Across the country, teachers and leaders value well-being, connection, and equity and see it as foundational to their school communities. However, many struggle with how to provide these for students, staff, and families.

To help educators equitably serve the whole-person needs of their communities, WestEd created this audio gallery. Each audiocast shares a story from an American public school or district, describing its innovative, evidence-based approach to this work. Each audiocast is paired with a brief that summarizes the story and offers related resources. The series also includes a companion implementation guide that will help you adapt these practices for your own school.

Implementation guide

Use the implementation guide to support your team's engagement with the audio gallery

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A welcome video from our team to yours Across the country, teachers and leaders value well-being, connection, and equity and see it as foundational to their school communities. However, many struggle with how to provide these for students, staff, and families. To help educators equitably serve the whole-person needs of their communities, WestEd created this audio gallery.

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How to Change the Story About Students of Color

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How to Change the Story About Students of Color

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Simmons, 2017

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As a teacher and teacher-educator for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators. Now, in my current capacity as the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, part of my job is supporting educators from all over the nation in learning, living, and teaching social and emotional learning (SEL), a set of life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing their emotions effectively and in fostering rewarding interpersonal relationships. Throughout all of these years working with educators in various capacities, I have been continually inspired by their dedication to supporting their students' academic, social, and emotional growth.

At the same time, I have been noticing an unfortunate trend among some of the educators-and other practitioners and scholars in the SEL field: When they describe how students of color behaved before they participated in an SEL program, they tend to use words like "rowdy," "misguided," "disengaged," and "violent," as if to highlight the urgent need for SEL programs for "these kids."

In other words, they frame SEL as a sort of savior-one that transforms students of color from being unmotivated, loud, lazy, and uninterested students into motivated individuals suddenly enthusiastic about school and quiet enough to learn.

To be sure, one might wonder what's wrong with a teacher describing the power and potential of SEL programming in that way, especially if it seems to be working-and especially if the teacher means well. In fact, we know from a 2011 meta-analysis of 213 school-based programs that SEL instruction helps improve students' social and emotional skills, attitudes, and behaviors as well as their academic performance.

Here's the problem: While stories about the impact of SEL may feel hopeful and uplifting to educators, parents, and others, they can also convey subtle messages that harm students inside and outside of the classroom.

Quite often, these stories perpetuate what University of Alabama professor Latrise Johnson calls a " failure narrative," one suggesting that youth of color need SEL skills more than other children and that they would be better off if they would just learn to relate to people better, manage themselves more effectively, have more self-control, and be more calm. The result is that students of color-and their teachers-internalize the idea that such students are inherently deficient and in need of a teacher or some intervention to save them from themselves.

The consequences can be dire. Numerous studies have already suggested that teachers hold unconscious biases and stereotypes about children of color, leading them to discipline students of color more harshly than white students for the same behavior. Students of color begin to believe these messages about themselves in ways that influence their social and academic functioning at school, as demonstrated by research on teacher expectations and " stereotype threat," which has found that when students of color think their performance on a test could be seen as confirming a negative stereotype about their ability, they feel added stress-which leads to the poor performance they were worried about confirming in the first place. And, research has also linked these same types of biases to the litany of tragic police shootings of black, Latino, and first-nation people: Evidence suggests that unconscious biases against non-white faces cause officers to assume the worst and pull the trigger more quickly.

So, how we tell stories about our students matters, particularly students of color, who do not need to look too far to see negative images of themselves littered throughout mass media. As a black educator who grew up poor in the Bronx, I know how dehumanizing it can be to hear that youth of color need saving and taming. I am still tackling my own internal challenges around impostor syndrome, and as a result, I'm particularly sensitive to the far-reaching effects that these stories can have.

Yet, from my experiences training thousands of educators around the country, I know firsthand that most teachers are very well-intentioned; they want to do right by their students.

I wholeheartedly believe we are capable of keeping our biases in check and changing the stories we tell about students of color. It is a process that takes time and commitment-and if you are an educator ready to commit to this work, here are four ways to begin.

1. Observe how you tell stories

When sharing stories about your students, or listening to a colleague talk about his or her students, consider whether the story represents the fullness of a person or a people, or whether it disempowers them or perpetuates problematic stereotypes.

That is, is the story spreading a single narrative of children of color being fearful, unmanageable, and uninterested in learning? Is the story implicitly taking away your students' agency in improving their own circumstances-are you solely their savior? Does the story discuss the societal and community contexts that may add stressors to your students' lives, impacting their learning and behavior?

For example, during a class discussion in one of my teacher education classes, one of my teacher-students shared that his students, who were all students of color, were not successful at school because (unlike his former high school classmates and himself) his students did not want to learn. He spoke with such certainty, and as evidence cited the fact that his students did not listen to him. The other 30 teachers in the room digested what he said as the truth-that his students of color were essentially unteachable-except for one, the only teacher of color in the room.

Instead of creating this reductive narrative about his students, which likely caused him to have low expectations for them, he could have approached his teaching dilemma as an opportunity to seek feedback on his classroom practice from his fellow teachers, and to reflect on ways that his instruction-and storytelling-could do more to respect and acknowledge his students' assets, life experiences, and context.

That is, in addition to asking the reflective questions above, consider how you might tell more balanced narratives about students of color. Focus not only on discussing their shortcomings and challenges but also on highlighting their strengths-what makes them beautiful, resilient, kind, and interesting. In general, this kind of " strengths-based approach " leads to better outcomes for students.

Also, be aware of whether you describe students of color as "these kids" or as "our kids." Saying "these kids" suggests a distance, a separation between your students and you-and this subtle shift in language can represent a major shift in your thinking and behavior towards them.

In sum, the goal is to refrain-and to help your colleagues refrain-from equating problematic behavior with problematic people and to emphasize students' strengths, not their deficits.

2. Cultivate mindfulness to reduce unconscious bias

It can be hard to notice when our words are perpetuating harmful stereotypes about our students, especially since those stereotypes can be deeply ingrained in our consciousness.

Fortunately, research has identified an effective strategy for keeping our unconscious biases in check: mindfulness, the moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

Studies have found that mindfulness meditation practices not only cultivate positive emotional states toward others but also reduce our knee-jerk biases against certain social groups. In particular, studies on loving-kindness meditation, which includes discussing and cultivating love and compassion toward oneself and others, have found that it increases social connectedness and reduces bias. This may be because mindfulness subjects our unconscious biases and impulses to the scrutiny of our conscious awareness.

Engaging in a short daily practice of loving-kindness meditation can potentially help us reduce bias and connect more deeply with our students and their communities. Sure enough, a recent experiment found that when teachers received mindfulness training, they felt less stressed and were less quick to punish students.

3. Cultivate greater awareness of your power and privilege

"Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person," according to novelist Chimimanda Adichie. When telling stories, it is helpful to get into the habit of asking the following: Should I be the one telling this story?

While sharing people's stories can sometimes give them a stronger platform from which to spread their work or ideas more widely or acknowledge their accomplishments, we also risk silencing other people when we tell their stories for them. For one, when teachers share stories about their students, they might implicitly take credit for the successes of their students. When we do that, we put ourselves at the center of the story and strip the student of the opportunity to highlight and fully own his or her successes.

Storytelling requires self-awareness, which involves reflecting on how our identity markers-gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, size, and so on-position us in the world and give us access to power and privileges, or not. Building this type of self-awareness is a lifelong practice that requires honesty, self-compassion, and deep reflection.

Author and educator Peggy McIntosh, a scholar on white privilege, outlines some reflective questions and practices that support becoming more aware of the privileges some of us are afforded that others are not.

When we are aware of our power and privilege, we are less likely to abuse them and more likely to be open to other people's lived experiences, allowing us to move forward with more empathy in our storytelling and ultimately in our lives.

4. Create opportunities for people to tell their own stories

While it is important for everyone, regardless of background, to be empowered to author his or her own narrative, this is especially true for people of color and other marginalized groups because, historically, we have had fewer opportunities to have our stories heard. For instance, in Hollywood and in academia, the dearth of people of color had led to incomplete or even nonexistent narratives about ourselves.

To change this pattern, teachers can devise activities for students to share their diverse experiences; these could include spoken word performances, written pieces, podcasts, videos, other multimedia and art projects, or even simply one-on-one lunch conversations with classmates or educators. Additionally, in all spheres, increasing the diversity of people in the room will help ensure that more diverse voices are heard. When people become the authors of their own stories, they pave the way for social transformation.

Through engaging in these four practices, we can push through the discomfort of confronting our unconscious biases and create opportunities for people to tell their own stories. Importantly, although research has documented impressive benefits of SEL programming, we must be careful about viewing or describing it as a corrective to character flaws in some groups of children, and not others. Despite good intentions, these types of narratives about our young people of color do more harm than good.
Dena Simmons is the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Her views are her own.
Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How to Change the Story about Students of Color

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As a teacher and teacher-educator for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators.

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Tool:  Educator-Facing Multicultural Resource Analysis Tool

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Tool:  Educator-Facing Multicultural Resource Analysis Tool

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Tool:  One Adult I Have a Good Relationship With

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SEL for MLs Student Checklist: Free Checklist: One Adult I have a Good Relationship With Student Checklist Tool

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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning

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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning

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Simmons, 2019

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Vol. 61

No. 4

Abstract

Calling on Courageous Educators

The Ultimate Life Skills

Students need the skills to navigate unjust realities.

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Abstract

Calling on Courageous Educators

The Ultimate Life Skills

Our young people are growing up in an increasingly complex world-one where our own citizens commit terrorist acts against their fellow countrymen and women. Hate-fueled violence against black and Jewish Americans this past fall was a particularly terrifying reminder of our new reality.

Last year, the FBI released 2017 data showing hate crimes in the United States increased for the third year in a row . Of the 7,106 hate crimes involving about 8,500 victims in 2017, 60 percent were targeted based on race, and about 20 percent were motivated by religious identity. 2019 began with reports of a white man attacking a black motorist , repeatedly striking him in the head with a U-lock, because of his hatred for black people. American youth are consuming these narratives of hate with too few opportunities to digest what is happening or to recognize their agency in creating meaningful change.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity. SEL refers to the life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing emotions, making sound decisions, and fostering interpersonal relationships. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. These competencies seamlessly lend themselves to preventing violence and to building a more peaceful world.

Calling on Courageous Educators

However, educators often teach SEL absent of the larger sociopolitical context, which is fraught with injustice and inequity and affects our students' lives. As an SEL practitioner-researcher who speaks nationally about the intersection of emotional intelligence, equity, and culturally responsive practices, I hear that educators shy away from such discussions for fear that they will be accused of politicization or that they will lose their jobs.

This fear is not unfounded. In Arizona, state representative Mark Finchem wants to introduce an education bill that will threaten teachers' jobs if they engage in any dialogue or activity that appears to advocate political, ideological, or religious positions. Other teachers feel ill-equipped and uncomfortable in addressing topics like poverty, gun violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of injustice that many students, particularly our most marginalized, experience daily.

In addition, many popular SEL approaches do not explicitly confront these forms of violence or other social inequities. Recoiling from topics that divide us-when SEL skills could help us get along better-diminishes SEL's promise. Why teach relationship skills if the lessons do not reflect on the interpersonal conflicts that result from racism? Why discuss self- and social awareness without considering power and privilege, even if that means examining controversial topics like white supremacy?

Maintaining a safe space that prevents triggering students is crucially important when infusing SEL opportunities with the sociopolitical context.

The Ultimate Life Skills

We can no longer avoid discussing topics that make us uncomfortable. Our students, incessantly inundated with divisive rhetoric and reports of premeditated acts of violence (or even themselves targets of violence), don't have that luxury. SEL has tremendous potential to create the conditions for youth agency and civic engagement and, ultimately, social change. We owe our students an education that centers on their lives and explicitly addresses the sociopolitical context. This will not only prepare our students to engage civically and peacefully across difference, but also to become the changemakers and leaders we need.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity.

Strategies for Teaching Fearless SEL

Provide students opportunities to reflect on identity and equity to build self-awareness.

Aristotle said, "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." Self-awareness-the ability to recognize one's emotions, thoughts, and values-is a crucial skill for understanding others and the world. Teachers can teach a unit on the relationship between identity and equity, including activities that push students to reflect on how their identity hinders or enhances their life opportunities. Students can interrogate their power and privilege, as well as racism, homophobia, sexism, and other forms of violence, to consider what changes they can make within themselves and their world to achieve more equity. To begin, the New York Times has a collection of videos (" 25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity With Students"), and the Learning for Justice website features many K-12 curricular resources on these topics.

Enhance relationship skills through debate.

Relationship skills include making and maintaining rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups and being able to communicate, cooperate, and negotiate conflict constructively. Have students debate an issue in their school or community that matters to them as a way to develop their abilities to build relationships with diverse team members, resolve disagreements, and work collaboratively to debate in effective ways.

Develop responsible decision-making skills through community-based projects.

Responsible decision making means constructive choices about how we behave and interact based on safety, social norms, and ethical standards. Ask students to identify a community problem they want to solve and then, in groups, decide how best to solve it, keeping in mind safety, resources, social norms, and ethics. Students might start a community garden or organize a farmer's market to address access to fresh food in food deserts, protest a community-identified injustice, or partner with an organization to provide a service lacking in the community. The goal is for students to use their responsible decision-making skills while creating change in their communities.

Use current topics to foster social awareness.

Social awareness involves appreciating diversity, building empathy, and respecting others. To develop these skills and use them to create social change, students can study a current event or social issue that is important to them. For example, teachers could lead students on a unit about restroom accessibility. Students can research recent court cases, read and discuss narratives from transgender and gender-expansive students, and interview classmates. A culminating project could include a campaign or a letter to a government official to advocate for a cause or a creative writing piece from the perspective of a marginalized group.

Explore different expectations for self-management.

A key component of self-management is regulating one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations. Students can investigate the relationship between emotion regulation and race, gender, or other aspect of a person's identity to explore the different expectations for marginalized groups' self-management. For instance, police-related killings of people from marginalized backgrounds as well as the spate of "concerned citizen" calls on black people napping, celebrating in the park, or entering their own homes make clear that certain groups of people are expected to regulate their behavior and emotions more strictly in public. Research has confirmed this racial bias. Students can also study how implicit bias influences teachers' behavioral and academic expectations for students as it relates to the school-to-prison pipeline. At the end of the unit, students can write an opinion piece, produce a YouTube minidocumentary, or present their learning to the school board.

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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning

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Students need the skills to navigate unjust realities.

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Simmons, 2021

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Vol. 78

No. 6

Abstract

Opposing SEL Mindsets

In Need of Collective Healing

An Antiracist Approach to SEL

Freedom-Dreaming for an Antiracist Future

Done poorly, SEL faces the risk of becoming "white supremacy with a hug."

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Credit: Neil Webb / IKON IMAGES

Abstract

Opposing SEL Mindsets

In Need of Collective Healing

An Antiracist Approach to SEL

Freedom-Dreaming for an Antiracist Future

As a college student in Vermont more than 15 years ago, I took a child development course as one of the requirements of the teacher education program. In that class, my peers and I learned about the stages of childhood development as well as the social, emotional, and academic supports necessary for students to thrive.

I remember what happened one day, in particular. My best friend, Alicia Hernández, a Honduran woman, and I rushed into class just in time after running from another campus building a mile away. We took front-row seats next to each other so that we would not disrupt our classmates with our almost-late arrival. As was customary, our instructor, a white woman, took attendance before her lecture.

Since Alicia's last name begins with an H, the instructor called her name before mine.

"Alicia Hernández," the instructor read, anglicizing the pronunciation of my friend's name.

Busy rustling through her bookbag for a notebook and pen, Alicia did not hear her name, leaving our instructor to scan the room looking for an Alicia Hernández. When the instructor's gaze landed in our direction, she looked at both of us, and without skipping a beat, said, "One of you two."

With a roomful of white classmates, she assumed that one of us had to be the obvious owner of the Central American surname.

Our instructor called the next name after Alicia's and proceeded as if she had not just insulted us, as if she had not just reduced us to a blob of one-of-you-two.

I could not concentrate for the rest of the period. My heart raced. My body grew tense. My mind filled with questions: How come she didn't make an effort to learn our names after four weeks of taking attendance? Why did she think it was acceptable to diminish our individuality? When will these public assaults, these public erasures, stop?

With her actions, our instructor communicated to us and our classmates that, like her, they did not need to learn our names. They did not need to get to know us. They did not need to regard us as more than one of the two girls of color in a sea of whiteness.

Opposing SEL Mindsets

While my instructor taught us the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) in child development, she was not culturally competent. She illustrated how an educator could be well-versed in textbook SEL practices and still inflict harm on students. Simply put, to be effective equity-centered educators, we cannot be emotionally intelligent without being culturally responsive (Simmons, 2019a).

That college experience, along with many others from my schooling and work life, exemplifies why SEL faces the risk of becoming white supremacy with a hug if we do not apply an anti-oppressive, antiracist lens (Madda, 2019; Simmons, 2019b).

Through my work with school districts nationally, I have learned that some educators share distinct reasons for implementing SEL depending on who their students are. In mostly Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) school districts, SEL is often about compliance and control. SEL then becomes another way to penalize and police BIPOC youth for their non-whiteness and to justify their supposed inferiority for lacking "these necessary skills" (Kaler-Jones, 2020; Simmons, 2019c). What is even more perverse is the implicit belief that SEL skills are exactly what BIPOC students need to function in underresourced classrooms and to smile through the pain of racism. On the other hand, for white, privileged students, SEL is about supporting college and career readiness. These opposing mindsets lead to different practices and outcomes, which ultimately perpetuate a racial hierarchy that positions white students on top.

As we confront our country's sin of racism, we must acknowledge that our nation's schooling has always been an education in whiteness (Brooks & Theoharis, 2018), which manifests as textbooks lauding white heroes, excuses about too few "qualified" BIPOC teacher candidates, dress codes that criminalize Black hair, productivity over people, and well-meaning educators who correct Black diction but claim color-blindness. In this context, any curriculum, policy, or practice in our nation's schools that is not deliberately and actively combating racism, bias, and oppression can easily be used as a weapon to put BIPOC students in their place.

Relatedly, the overwhelming number of articles that cite SEL as critical to employability (Committee for Children, 2016) also puts white hegemony on display. It seems we cannot talk about SEL without talking about what we deem, in a narrow sense, as employable and professional. For me, that has always meant talking white, dressing white, and acting white-unspoken rules I have learned on my educational and professional journeys. If we laud SEL for how it supports youth with career, business, and economic success, we must also reckon with our blind obsession with capitalism and its relationship with the white supremacy upon which it was built. We can still prepare students for future success without diminishing their identities, without sending them the message that there is only one way to be successful. We have to begin to open our minds to the possibility of genius outside of whiteness.

SEL that fails to address our sociopolitical reality and combat racial and social injustice will not prepare our young people for the world they will inherit-one fraught with hate, misunderstanding, and bigotry. SEL alone will not keep politicians from making laws that disenfranchise BIPOC communities. SEL alone will not keep educators from suspending BIPOC children at disproportionate rates. SEL alone will not keep teachers from having low expectations for BIPOC students. SEL alone will not prevent cops from killing BIPOC people. If SEL alone were the magic bullet, perhaps George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Walter Wallace Jr. would still be alive today. We need more for our collective healing.

Is SEL, alone, enough to provide this? Absolutely not.

In Need of Collective Healing

Over the past year, there has been much talk about the importance of SEL in schools as a necessary response to our pandemic reality. There has been an influx of stand-alone courses about managing stress and anxiety, pushes for educators to focus on self-care, and free student resources offering mindfulness strategies for the uncertainty. As a long-time proponent of SEL, I could not be happier.

However, as we embrace this new urgency, we must address not only the trauma of COVID-19 but also that of racism. Pushing for "neutral" SEL only aims to protect white comfort. That is, courses that teach educators how to manage stress and anxiety without speaking to the stress and anxiety stemming from racism disregard the experiences of BIPOC people and contribute to the trauma of erasure. Likewise, pushing for teacher self-care without also advocating for school systems to value teacher health and well-being puts the onus on educators, making collective care nearly impossible. And asking students to practice deep-breathing in response to systemic oppression is simply offensive.

Collective healing starts with committing to eradicating our country's wound of racism and not looking away, sanitizing history, or advocating for neutrality. It means taking a stand against the injustices we witness in our districts, schools, and classrooms, whether that happens through community organizing, peaceful protest, or speaking up in-the-moment. It means creating space for processing the collective traumas of the pandemic, racism, and other forms of oppression in our school communities. It means abolishing white supremacy culture from our schools to prevent the constant spirit-murdering of BIPOC students, educators, and families. It means implementing culturally and contextually responsive practices. It means prioritizing care through partnering with community therapeutic providers and building healing-centered practices into the fabric of schooling. It means ensuring equity, justice, and humanity in our teaching and learning. And it means loving and honoring BIPOC members in our school communities, not just saying we do.

An Antiracist Approach to SEL

Last June, while in quarantine, I became the victim of a hate crime. Shattered, I had no choice but to focus on my healing. I reflected on what was important to me, what inspired me, and what made my spirit feel most whole. In the process, I rediscovered my voice, the one that had been tone-policed, silenced, and punished for the past six years because it was, as I was told, "too strong" and "too powerful."

As part of my healing journey, I left my job, in the middle of a pandemic. I needed my voice to ring louder than other people's doubts, slights, and limitations. I left so that I could save myself, so that I could dream. And I left so that I could invest my time into changing the very system that failed me and is failing so many others.

For me, that has led to the development of LiberatED , a new program that takes an anti-racist approach to SEL and healing. Instead of assuming what people need, the LiberatED team and I are connecting with school communities through a listening tour to collect stories, needs, and ideas about healing, SEL, racial justice, and abolitionism. From what we learn from educators, families, and students during the listening tour, we will create resources, curricula, and training. In this way, LiberatED will become a community-generated, student-centered approach to SEL, racial justice, and healing. In our preliminary conversations with school leaders, we have learned that educators have great interest in implementing SEL and diversity, equity, and belonging (DEB) practices in their districts. However, many do not know where to begin or how, especially as it relates to racial justice. Above all, schools want to do well by their students, but I remain steadfast in my belief that good intentions are not enough. While the interest in SEL and DEB work is heartening, interest does not always result in action. We need to start our racial justice journeys now.

To this end, I invite educators to start a practice of reflecting on their identity, positionality, power, and privilege. Had my college instructor understood the damaging effects of her white-centered perspective, perhaps she would have called Alicia's name again and waited for a response. Perhaps she would have admitted to the class that she was still learning names. Perhaps she would not have left Alicia and me scarred with her nonchalant erasure. Bound to white supremacy's need for urgency and productivity (Western States Center, 2003), my instructor breezed through attendance in her desire to be efficient. However, there is a tension between equity and efficiency. Equity takes more time. Efficiency saves time, but at what cost?

Additionally, schools could collect data and devise action plans from their own listening tours about what belonging means for their school communities, especially since many of us are physically apart this school year. In the process of transforming how we teach for our new virtual and hybrid settings to build connectedness and engage students, we could check in with our students through surveys and one-on-one conversations to ensure we are meeting their needs.

Though we are already exhausted and overwhelmed with so many pressures related to the pandemic, we still must find the time to take inventory of our curricula, pedagogy, and policies to ensure they prioritize student safety and belonging. That is, affirming our BIPOC educators, students, and families must be a part of every pandemic-safety plan. This moment calls for developing partnerships with community organizations to support children and adults with healing, SEL, mental health resources, food security, and basic needs.

Freedom-Dreaming for an Antiracist Future

So much time has passed since that college experience. Yet I still shudder at the memory of my instructor's reduction of my individuality. Too many others have a collection of similar reductions, similar scars, from well-meaning educators, whose unchecked privilege and a lack of cultural competence harmed them. The field of SEL cannot similarly fall victim to this pattern. We cannot rely solely on good intentions, on how we teach empathy, without being self and socially aware enough to interrogate how such a kind field could perpetuate white supremacy culture.

Ultimately, my hope is that, through projects like LiberatED and through schools committing to racial justice and collective healing, we can begin to dismantle structural, institutional, and individual practices that harm young people, that inhibit their optimal social, emotional, and academic development. Educators and students deserve to express themselves freely without fear, to be treated with respect and valued, to feel safe, and to go to schools that challenge bias, discrimination, and oppression.

As I've written before, the pandemic is our equity check, our opportunity to do and be better. LiberatED is one part of my effort to be and do better, part of my freedom-dream for a future where we are liberated from the burden of hate and oppression, where we are all free to live and learn in the comfort of our own skin.

References

Brooks, J. S., & Theoharis, G. (Eds.). (2018). Whiteucation: Privilege, power, and prejudice in school and society. New York: Routledge.

Committee for Children. (2016). Why social and emotional learning and employability skills should be prioritized in education. Seattle, WA.

Kaler-Jones, C. (2020, May 7). When SEL is used as another form of policing. Communities for Just Schools Fund.

Madda, M. J. (2019, May 15). Dena Simmons: Without context, social-emotional learning can backfire. EdSurge.

Simmons, D. (2019a). You can't be emotionally intelligent without being culturally responsive: Why family and consumer sciences must employ both to meet the needs of our nation. Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences, 11(2).

Simmons, D. (2019c, October 4). A call to action for SEL's next 25 years [Conference presentation]. 2019 SEL Exchange, Chicago, IL.

Western States Center. (2003). Dismantling racism: A resource book for social change groups. Portland, OR.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action.

We empower educators to reimagine and redesign learning through impactful pedagogy and meaningful technology use. We achieve this by offering transformative professional learning, fostering vibrant communities, and ensuring that digital tools and experiences are accessible and effective.

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Done poorly, SEL faces the risk of becoming "white supremacy with a hug."

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Tool: Considerations for Student Grouping

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Tool: Considerations for Student Grouping

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Considerations for Student Grouping to Promote Comfort and Engagement

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An Examination of K-12 SEL Learning Competencies/Standards in 18 States

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An Examination of K-12 SEL Learning Competencies/Standards in 18 States

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CASEL, March 2020

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State policy - including the development of voluntary SEL competencies or standards -- plays a key role in creating the conditions that support quality implementation of SEL at the local level (districts, schools, homes, community organizations). By 2020, 18 states had developed SEL competencies or standards for K-12. These standards are embedded within more comprehensive frameworks; in 2017, the American Institutes for Research identified at least 136 frameworks for SEL (including our widely used, five-part wheel), which policymakers and educators are using to varying degrees.

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An Examination of K-12 SEL Learning Competencies and Standards in 18 States - CASEL

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State policy - including the development of voluntary SEL competencies or standards -- plays a key role in creating the conditions that support quality implementation of SEL at the local level (districts, schools, homes, community organizations). By 2020, 18 states had developed SEL competencies or standards for K-12.

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Schools Face Fears of 'Critical Race Theory' as They Scale Up Social-Emotional Learning

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Schools Face Fears of 'Critical Race Theory' as They Scale Up Social-Emotional Learning

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Prothero & Blad, 2021

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This is a pivotal moment for social-emotional learning in K-12 schools.

While district and school leaders are eager to nurture the social-emotional skills they see as vital to overcoming the disruptions and trauma caused by the pandemic, no one wants to get caught in a political firestorm.

So, how should educators navigate these difficult political waters and do what is best for kids?

"In this environment, anything can be politicized," said John Bridgeland, the CEO of Civic Enterprises, a public policy firm, who has worked extensively on building bipartisan support for SEL programs in schools.

Through social-emotional learning, schools teach students skills like creative problem-solving, persistence, and showing empathy. Teachers incorporate those skills into traditional classroom instruction through exercises like group projects and guided conversations, and schools adopt practices, like morning meetings, to boost students' sense of belonging and trust.

Now schools have access to funds through the American Rescue Plan and the CARES Act that can help them train teachers, buy new materials, and implement programs.

New funding comes with new challenges

Texas, for example, plans to offer schools guidance on assessing students' emotional and mental health needs. Virginia awarded funds to schools to develop universal SEL surveys. Wyoming provided funds for schools to enact new SEL programs. Tennessee plans to create a centralized website to offer SEL resources and training to schools. Montana included the adoption of two SEL programs in its American Rescue Plan application.

"Now more than ever, we need to focus on this area," said Molly Spearman, the state superintendent of education in South Carolina. "I'm not so sure it's not the most important thing we need to work on."

But as interest in social-emotional learning rises among educators and policymakers, it's also increasingly the target of ire from some conservative groups.

Local news reports show parents in several states-including Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, and Utah- have confronted their local school boards over social-emotional learning plans, often conflating it with critical race theory and saying some of the subjects addressed in their districts' SEL curricula-such as gender identity and implicit bias-have no place in schools.

A September controversy in Virginia that included both state and national politics may foreshadow conversations that will only grow louder as states approach the 2022 midterms.

In the Fairfax County schools, some parents and a group called Parents Defending Education, which has objected to equity efforts in schools around the country, criticized the district's decision to survey students about SEL and school climate. Some activists from national groups outside of the district called SEL a "Trojan horse" for critical race theory.

Panorama helps schools around the country field similar surveys to ensure students feel supported and safe at school. Educators also use the company's analysis tools to examine trends such as attendance patterns alongside students' grades to determine the most effective way to intervene if they struggle. While the district allowed parents to opt their children out of taking the survey, some parents expressed concerns about how the data would be used and how children would respond to the questions.

The situation boiled over after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo in October calling for his agency to respond to "a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff" across the country by meeting with local schools and law enforcement to discuss strategies for addressing those threats.

Republican lawmakers immediately pushed back, arguing that Garland was trying to chill dissent of parents who'd spoken out against their schools' virus precautions and teaching about race. And they insisted Garland had a conflict of interest because his son-in-law helped found Panorama Education. Garland denied any conflict of interest, and the company said his son-in-law, Xan Tanner, is no longer an employee.

Meanwhile, some SEL programs have also faced criticism for not doing enough to recognize the full extent of the challenges students face-be it racism, poverty, or homophobia.

Social-emotional learning is a popular idea, but a confusing term

Social-emotional learning is a somewhat nebulous term. That leaves school administrators and teachers with the task of sorting out parents' legitimate concerns about things like whether programs are effective and how schools will measure success apart from broader misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of SEL.

SEL aims to teach students "life skills" such as empathy, managing their emotions, developing relationships, and understanding other points of view and backgrounds. But, by extension, it can also encompass topics such as mental health, bias, and identity.

Tia Kim, the vice president of education research and impact at the Committee for Children, a nonprofit that promotes SEL and is also the developer of the popular Second Step curriculum, said she has seen a general shift among school districts' goals for their social-emotional learning programs. A few years ago, they focused on improving academics or reducing disciplinary referrals, she said. Now, the focus is around mental health and building positive school climates.

"If [students] are coming in with depression and anxiety, it's going to impact their learning," Kim said. "To build good conditions for learning, kids have to feel like they belong and that they have good relationships, both with their peers and educators, and SEL is one way to support that sense of community and belonging."

Among those parents, 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans agreed that students must have their social-emotional needs met in order to achieve their full academic potential-they just prefer the term "life skills." (Republican parents in particular disliked the name "social-emotional learning".)

Educators and policymakers would do well to use less jargon when talking about social-emotional learning, the report warned.

Supporters of SEL have long recognized that their efforts needed to be bipartisan, said Bridgeland, the CEO of Civic Enterprises and the former director of the White House domestic policy council for President George W. Bush. Bridgeland was a member of the Aspen Institute's Commission on Social Emotional and Academic Development, which made recommendations in 2019 for educators, researchers, and policymakers about how to better incorporate an awareness of students' relational and emotional development into education.

The commission's members knew that affiliation with one political party or ideology might jeopardize their efforts, so they were very deliberate in engaging people across the political spectrum, Bridgeland said. Events featured discussions from members of the Kansas state board of education in addition to leaders of national teachers' unions. Commissioners included Brian Sandoval and John Engler, the Republican former governors of Nevada and Michigan. And materials emphasized skills employers wanted to see in new graduates alongside discussions of empathy and inclusion.

Bridgeland remembers meeting with conservative organizations to discuss the commission's work.

"The first question they had was, 'What the hell are you talking about?'" he said. "'I get math. I get reading. What the hell is social-emotional learning?'"

When commissioners explained they wanted schools to nurture qualities such as discipline, self-management, and relationship skills, "they'd say, 'Oh yeah, we're for that,'" Bridgeland said.

Family engagement is essential to SEL

It's essential that schools actively engage families in talking about and creating social-emotional initiatives, their districts' goals, and the research that supports those efforts, researchers and district leaders said.

The key to engaging families is demystifying the jargon around SEL and explaining to parents that the schools are trying to reinforce a lot of the life skills parents are already teaching their kids at home, said Sandra Martinez, the social-emotional learning family engagement coordinator for the Dallas Independent School District.

"We wanted to create consistency in the practices and the terminology," she said, "so that families understood what was going on in the classroom so they can support that learning at home because we know that parents are kids' first teachers, and they are the utmost experts on their children."

Martinez's position is a new one in the district, and a lot of her outreach to families has been virtual. She writes newsletters for parents in English and Spanish, each exploring a different SEL theme that includes definitions of terms, videos of experts, and exercises to try at home.

"We basically provide the terminology so when their kid comes home and says we did a mood meter or a check in, they are familiar," Martinez said. "We say, 'You already do this at home when you ask your child how they feel, we just call it a mood meter.'"

She also surveys parents on the social-emotional skills families consider most important for their children to learn and works with schools to provide a virtual SEL discussion series for parents. She plans to launch a book club for parents where they will read about social-emotional learning topics.

Spearman, South Carolina's state superintendent, acknowledges that she's heard suspicions about SEL from some parents.

"I say 'I don't know what's going on in other states, but in South Carolina, here's what we are focused on: It's about building confidence in our young people that we care about them, that they matter, and that they learn the golden rule,'" she said. "That's what it means to me. I have not found a single person who disagrees with that."

Spearman, the president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said her peers around the country have faced similar communications challenges. To overcome them, South Carolina's SEL website, for example, includes a video which explains the concept and a section for parents about ways they can support their children's emotional development.

South Carolina's SEL plan relies on regional coaches to support teachers in helping students cope with emotional challenges, build empathy for their peers, and build trusting relationships with adults so they know how to ask for help.

"That connectivity, especially right now, is how we remain a community that has open and honest conversations and remains a community through these difficult times," said Sarah Gams, the state's 2021 teacher of the year, who is leading its SEL work.

SEL has a history of both challenges and bipartisan support

SEL has faced political headwinds in some places before current debates over how schools discuss issues like racism and sexuality.

When Idaho state education leaders pitched a social-emotional learning proposal to lawmakers in 2020, citing concerns about teen suicide rates, one member of a legislative committee compared the plan to the dystopian behavior control in the novel  Brave New World. Others said responsibility for helping children develop their character should be in the hands of parents, not schools.

"We want to make sure we are connecting parents and students and teachers with the right tools and the right resources to get them the help that they need," Ybarra said. "I don't think there is any other way to talk about this. It is not a blue issue. It is not a red issue."

Despite recent opposition to social-emotional learning from some conservatives, the idea, and overlapping concepts like character education, have had-at least not too long ago-support from prominent politicians across the political spectrum.

After the 2018 school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas, for example, a federal school safety commission assembled by Republican President Donald Trump included social-emotional learning in its recommendations for schools.

"Youth who learn these core skills are able to manage their emotions and interactions in ways that benefit themselves and others," said the final report of the commission, which was led by then-U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. "Most importantly, recent research suggests that the development of social and emotional skills can lead to improved outcomes for educational attainment, employment, and earnings."

Bridgeland, who calls SEL a "rocket booster" for schools' work to improve student skills and academic outcomes, said educators must work to build on that past agreement.

"When you go through it with parents, it's overwhelming how much they support it," he said. "It carries away the political arguments that, frankly, people are tired of."

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Schools Face Fears of 'Critical Race Theory' as They Scale Up Social-Emotional Learning

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This is a pivotal moment for social-emotional learning in K-12 schools. While district and school leaders are eager to nurture the social-emotional skills they see as vital to overcoming the disruptions and trauma caused by the pandemic, no one wants to get caught in a political firestorm.

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Tool 3: What I Want My Teachers to Know 

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Tool 3: What I Want My Teachers to Know 

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Tool 4:  Interaction Tracking and Deeper Reflection

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Tool 4:  Interaction Tracking and Deeper Reflection

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Deeper Reflection on an ML You’d Like to Build a Stronger Relationship With

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Tool 5:  Jenga Icebreaker Questions and Sentence Frames

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Tool 5:  Jenga Icebreaker Questions and Sentence Frames