States have shared that the boundaries and relationships among SEL, school safety, and other whole person initiatives often feel unclear, resulting in misaligned efforts that work at cross-purposes with one another. They have also shared that their child- and youth-serving work is often misaligned and uncoordinated with other child- and youth-serving agencies in their state. They also see misalignment with the work happening at the district level.
In response, the Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety at WestEd developed a 2-year peer-to-peer collaborative for teams from SEAs to address individual and shared problems of practice related to alignment, coherence, and strategic communications. WestEd also deployed foundation funding to develop several guides to help state and local educational agencies improve the alignment and coherence of their whole-person efforts. The guides have been piloted with the states of Delaware, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
The collaborative ran from January 2020 to August 2021.
Resources
Serving the Whole Person: An Alignment and Coherence Guide for Local Education Agencies
Spotlighting Whole-Person Success: A Guide for Using Statewide Data to Identify Exemplar Districts in SEL and School Climate
Aligned and Coherent Communications to Serve the Whole Person: A Workbook for Strengthening State Education Agencies’ Strategic Communications
Case Stories
Breaking Down Barriers, Building Relationships: Delaware’s Collaborative Approach to Inventorying Whole-Child Efforts
Preparing Students for Life Beyond the Classroom: Spotlighting Success in North Dakota — The benefits of social emotional learning (SEL) in two rural school districts
Serving the Whole Person: Safety Through Collaboration – Ohio’s Comprehensive Approach to Student Well-Being
