A Plan to Increase Social and Cultural Competence

and discussions revealed what both teachers and students need in order to thrive socially and academically. Classrooms are the incubators for what is needed in schools and education. It is challenging for instructional leaders to keep their fingers on the pulse of their schools if they’re not interacting with or listening to teachers.

Our data discussions provided insights about appropriate SEL tools and practices that would empower teachers on this new journey. Resoundingly, we found schools need to set up ways of promoting understanding and healthy discourse between adults. In turn, the adults can team up to increase staff’s and students’ emotional regulation, raise equity for marginalized students, improve SEL integration in daily lessons, and maintain intellectually safe spaces for all. Moreover, we found that achieving our SEL goals required a dedication to learning and practice using a straightforward, data-informed process that honored everyone’s voice. Beyond the workshop modules and framework for equity and SEL, this work produced several how-to blog posts and virtual conference presentations that have helped improve educators’ practices in teaching with technology and focusing on equity and SEL.

This work also addresses racial equity in meaningful ways that educators who want to learn more can consider. I am proudest of that. I hope that this book gives you and your colleagues the clear guidance you need to achieve what equity and SEL success mean in your space. As a man of color as well as a parent and teacher of African American students, this is a very important topic to me, as it is for many other educators who also teach and love Black and Brown students. As an English learner who lived part of my life in poverty in the U.S. foster care system, I have seen firsthand the catastrophic effects of inequities spanning the last three generations of my family. We have been marginalized by broken family bonds, career instability, lack of opportunity, alcoholism, incarceration, and poverty. Before becoming a teacher, I was unaware of how many students of color face similar hardships. Through this book, I hope teachers will become allies who equitably use research-based SEL strategies to help teach students of color who have endured such traumas. (Data on the state of oppressions endured by people of color will appear in chapter 9, page 153. Additionally, that chapter includes recommendations for being more inclusive of students who belong to marginalized groups, such as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, immigrants and refugees, and the LGBTQ community.) Addressing these issues in SEL plans can be crucial to improving learning outcomes for students from underserved and historically harmed communities.

My collaboration with Hertford County Public Schools grew into multiple opportunities to refine our practice by collecting and examining data—which eventually evolved into the five-step Equity and SEL Integration Framework featured in this

book. (Appendix B of this book, page 207, includes our examinations of several data collections and how the framework developed over several months if you are interested in the research aspect of this work.) Through this book, I hope to help readers align their key education reform initiatives. By bridging research and sound teaching practices with personal success stories (and challenges) from other educators and critical resources, this book can help you enhance your teaching practices with technology.

The Reason for a Framework to Incorporate Equity and SEL Into Lessons

In education, SEL advances equity and collaborative learning environments and leads students and educators to cocreate thriving schools. I developed the five-step Equity and SEL Integration Framework to help teachers seamlessly and equitably incorporate SEL into their daily and weekly lesson plans. The framework also guides them with key strategies for restoring justice, becoming trauma informed, and being culturally responsive toward the students they serve. Each step is supported by research and is grounded in sound teaching practices that are actionable and replicable in any classroom. The aim of this book is to provide teachers with strategies for beginning this work either independently or with colleagues—ideally, within a grade- or department-level team that shares students.

Not all educators teach in districts where SEL training is readily available. Even where training is available, educators don’t always have a clear road map to understanding or implementing related pedagogies such as restorative justice, trauma-informed teaching, and culturally responsive teaching. Being able to combine the aforementioned pedagogies to do SEL effectively and equitably is important for educators. In SEL, we are teaching students to better understand themselves, their environment, and others. We cannot do this effectively if we lack cultural or social competence with the students we serve. Therefore, filling in our knowledge gaps and adapting sound practices are necessary for equitably activating SEL in our classrooms.

About the CASEL 5

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five competencies that support the effort of practically applying SEL in classrooms. These competencies, known as the CASEL 5, are as follows.

1. Self-awareness

2. Self-management 3. Social awareness