SEL Center

Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety

New webinar recording on Strategies for Districts to Support Self-Care for Educators During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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New webinar recording on Strategies for Districts to Support Self-Care for Educators During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Center to Improve Social & Emotional Learning and School Safety, in partnership with REL West and the Region 15 Comprehensive Center, recently hosted a webinar to help school staff cope with the stresses of school closures, service provision, and quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Presenters defined the concept of self-care, and they discussed the importance of self-care for educators to address their own needs so that they are better able to support the needs of students and their school community.

View the archived webinar here.

New brief on Strategies for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center has published a new brief to help educators use trauma-informed teaching practices in distance learning contexts.

The brief offers some general strategies, with specific examples, for how to recognize and respond to students’ social and emotional needs while teaching remotely. The strategies are organized using neuroscientist Bruce Perry’s “3 Rs” approach to intervention: Regulate, Relate, and Reason.

Read the new brief on Strategies for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning here.

New webinar recording on Creating Coherence Around Safe and Supportive Environments through SEL, Trauma Informed Practices, and Restorative Practices Alignment

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The Center recently produced a video to help education leaders communicate how SEL, trauma informed practices, and restorative practices fit together as part of one aligned, coherent system for creating safe and supportive learning environments.

Additionally, the Center has created a downloadable, accompanying infographic on how these approaches can fit together to support students.

View the video, infographic, and more details here.

New brief on Mindfulness in Education

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Emerging research has illustrated the many benefits of integrating mindfulness approaches and skills for both teachers and students. The Center has produced a new brief that introduces mindfulness as a strategy for facilitating social and emotional learning in school, explains the potential benefits for both students and educators, provides examples of mindfulness strategies, and lists resources for learning more about mindfulness.

Read the new brief on Mindfulness in Education here.

New webpage with COVID-19 resources

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The Center has compiled resources to support states, districts, and schools as they serve students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics include SEL resources for students at home, guidance for school leadership, mental health resources, resources for caregivers, and more.

The Center will continue to add more resources over the coming months. Visit the Center’s COVID-19 Resources webpage here.

Launch of Peer-to-Peer State Collaboratives

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The purpose of the Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety (Center) is to provide technical assistance to support states and districts in the implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) evidence-based programs and practices. The Center will enhance the capacity of (1) State educational agencies (SEAs) to support their local educational agencies (LEAs) and (2) LEAs to support their schools. To help enact this purpose, the Center has launched two peer-to-peer collaborative opportunities for state educational agencies (SEAs).

The collaboratives serve 10 states that are working together to address major needs related to alignment and coherence of SEL and other whole child strategies and initiatives, with a focus on two themes: (1) strategic communications and (2) student well-being and safety.

The Strategic Communications collaborative focuses on how to most effectively communicate the coherence and alignment of SEL and other whole child initiatives both across state agencies and, in particular, to the field. The Student Well-being and Safety collaborative focuses on strengthening the alignment and coherence, including across state agencies, of initiatives related to SEL, mental health, school safety, and other components of supporting the whole child.

Over two years, the collaboratives will yield participant-designed and -tested tools and resources that will then be disseminated more broadly to the field.

In the collaboratives’ kick-off convening in February 2020, members of each states’ core team had the opportunity to:

  • Learn more about the work and goals of the peer-to-peer collaboratives
  • Explore their state’s context and define their team’s problem of practice
  • Identify points of connection with other states
  • Articulate success for the collaborative and for their own team’s work
  • Provide Center staff with early feedback on two upcoming tools that Center staff are developing

Participants also had the opportunity to meet their technical assistance (TA) liaisons, whom they’ll continue to meet with virtually as their teams advance the state’s work in between in-person convenings.

Update: For more on the peer-to-peer collaboratives’ work, read about their August 2020 convening and March 2021 convening.