Modeling SEL for Students

Instructions

Note: This activity can be adapted or expanded to include considerations for how staff will model SEL in their interactions with other staff, families, community partners, etc.

• Welcome staff and ask them to reflect on the quote: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” (James Baldwin in “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” published in Esquire, July 1960).
  • Ask staff to find a partner and share what this quote means to them and how it relates to promoting students’ SEL.
• Review each of the five core social and emotional competencies and how they connect to student outcomes and lifelong success.
  • Prompt staff to think about how students learn these competencies in many ways–through classroom lessons, through afterschool groups, and by “imitating” the way that adults model these competencies.
  • Ask staff to do a 1-minute free write to reflect on one way they demonstrated a social and emotional competency when interacting with students in the previous week.
• Divide staff into five groups and assign each group to one of the SEL competency posters (i.e., “Self-Awareness,” “Self-Management”, “Social Awareness”, “Relationship Skills”, “Responsible Decision-Making”.)
  • Give staff 5 minutes at their poster to collectively brainstorm how staff can model this competency in their interactions with students.
  • As they brainstorm, a notetaker in each group should record their ideas on the poster paper.
  • After five minutes, ask the group to move to the next poster, read what the previous group has written, then add on to the existing ideas.
  • Rotate until each group has gone to every poster.
• Provide an opportunity for staff to do a “gallery walk” around all five posters.
• After staff return to their seats, ask them to write on a post-it one specific way they will model SEL in their interactions with students in the coming week.
  • Ask staff to share what they wrote in small groups, then close out the activity.
• After this activity, your SEL team can synthesize and type up the ideas to create printed posters or one-pagers that can be distributed to all staff, used in team meetings, and/or hung in classrooms.
  • You can use this template to create this.
  • This handout has additional examples of how staff might model each of the competencies.

Source

Adapted from the CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL, developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). CASEL, a nonprofit founded in 1994, defined social and emotional learning (SEL) more than two decades ago. Today, CASEL is a trusted source for knowledge about high-quality, evidence-based SEL and collaborates with leading experts and supports districts, schools, and states nationwide to drive research, guide practice, and inform policy.

Evidence That It Works

Ongoing training and support of educators in cultivating their social-emotional competencies is key to successfully implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) into schools. Indeed, researchers have found that SEL program implementation is more successful when all stakeholders in a school are committed to SEL as part of their professional development.

Why Does It Matter?

When staff model SEL in how they interact with students throughout the school day, they offer positive examples of how to navigate stress and frustration, build and maintain healthy relationships, take on different perspectives, and reflect on how their decisions impact others.

In addition, classroom teachers who model SEL effectively can positively influence the learning climate in their classroom. For example, teachers who model self-awareness and social awareness when responding to student questions help to minimize anxiety and contribute to an equitable classroom where all students feel comfortable making their voices heard.