SSIS Social-Emotional Learning Edition

Audience: This session is targeted for individuals who are interested in developing and implementing a school-based Social Emotional Learning (SEL) program.

Course description: This 3-hour session illustrates how to design, implement, and evaluate a Social Emotional Learning (SEL) program. After a review of the fundamental SEL competencies, this session includes a demonstration on how to evaluate these SEL competencies through screening and assessment, instruct social skills with the classroom, monitor student progress, and program implementation, and evaluate the outcomes and effectiveness of the SEL program. This session uses example SEL assessments, instructional methods, lessons, materials, resources, and evaluation methods. This SEL overview session can be augmented by sessions specific to resilience, equity, and bullying prevention.

Learning objectives: After attending this session, participants will be able to:

• Illustrate an understanding of social–emotional learning, including the specific competencies identified by CASEL and the application of these skills
• Use methods such as universal screening to identify the SEL strengths and areas of need of students and relate them to the broad SEL competencies identified by CASEL
• Facilitate the classroom instruction of specific social skills lessons by identifying which skills to use with students and assisting and training teachers in the use of effective instructional processes
• Apply formal and informal methods to guide and monitor the implementation of the program, specifically how to use screening tools to guide instruction and how to use formative assessment tools to monitor student progress and program integrity
• Use methods to evaluate the outcomes of SEL programs reliably and efficiently and demonstrate how to report this information to educators to guide instruction and assist in decision-making and how to provide feedback to students and their parents
• Better understand the barriers and challenges educators face in the process of implementing an SEL program and discover recommendations from professional groups and researchers on how to overcome these challenges