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Tips for Administrators, Teachers, and Support Staff
Figure 4.35 contains tips and reflection questions relating to the contents of this chapter. As you consider these questions and next steps, reflect on your current practices in your own classroom and school.
Administrators
• Check in with your teachers and teams to ensure they understand the purpose behind the activities and practices they choose to implement.
If they are unsure of the reason behind a practice, how can your leadership team support them in building a stronger understanding? • In building your growthmindset culture, do your teachers and teams feel comfortable in trying out these new practices?
How can you model the expectation of trying, failing, reflecting, and trying again so that teams feel safe exploring new practices? • Think about your current
SEL practices within your classroom and determine what is working and effective. Think about one of the ten new SEL practices you may want to try. Consider which practice is the most manageable to integrate into your current routines. • Think about how you can use a team approach to implement these practices to share the workload and make the practices more manageable. • How can you support teachers and students in trying out the new practices? What can you offer to the daily routine that will make the practices go smoothly? • Think about how the relationships you build with students support the activities in these routines. How can you maintain your positive interactions while encouraging students in goal setting, participating in transitions, morning meeting expectations, and other new challenges? • Utilize your digital platform to encourage interactive participation throughout SEL activities.
Encourage participation through chat boxes, interactive shared documents within a digital platform. • Digital activities are expanding daily for students! Explore ways to facilitate interactive game play. Keep in mind our students are often more comfortable with technology than we are! • Remember that your affect and connection with your students is even more important in this virtual world. As you read to students, share the morning message, or respond to their emotions, be sure you are using your facial expressions and voice to convey love and warmth.
Teachers Support Staff Virtual Teaching Tips
Figure 4.35: Tips for administrators, teachers, and support staff from chapter 4.
“Of all books I have read about social-emotional learning in elementary school, this book is by far the most practical and easily applied! Building Blocks for Social-Emotional Learning outlines the entire process of identifying students’ SEL needs and intervening to meet those needs at the schoolwide, classroom, small-group, and individual levels. It covers all aspects of the teaching process, including planning, teaching, checking or assessing for understanding, and reteaching as necessary. With possible next steps for all stakeholders, this practical guide will serve a very specific purpose for elementary schools all over the world.”
—HEATHER BELL-WILLIAMS
Principal, Milltown Elementary School, St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is a necessary and often overlooked aspect of students’ development. All elementary students must have access to socialemotional education to acquire powerful skills that will help them excel in school and in life. In Building Blocks for Social-Emotional Learning: Creating Safe, Secure, and Successful Elementary Schools, authors Tracey A. Hulen and Ann-Bailey Lipsett provide elementary educators with research-based guidance for teaching social-emotional competencies alongside academic content in their classrooms. This much-needed resource includes practical strategies for integrating social-emotional concepts into instruction, lesson planning, and assessment and maintaining a positive school culture and climate where social-emotional learning will occur. Elementary teachers and leaders will: y Understand how children’s neurological development relates to social-emotional learning y Learn the benefits of social-emotional learning for all members of the school community y Create a schoolwide foundation for socialemotional learning y Gain practices and tools for teaching socialemotional skills
y Assess students’ social-emotional progress to encourage continual growth
“Hulen and Lipsett’s SEL building blocks have a direct impact on both behavior and academic achievement and can act as a bridge between them. Not only does this text provide the why, it also provides the how for effective SEL implementation at the schoolwide level. This is a book that will be recommended to my school’s guiding coalition.”
—KYLE BATES
Fourth-Grade Teacher, Spradling Elementary School, Fort Smith, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to download the free reproducibles in this book.
