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The Empathy Map
Using what I have learned in the PhD program at Old Dominion University and in my years as an educator and curriculum consultant, I have worked with my school partners to develop a collaborative framework for equitably activating SEL across the curriculum. I say collaborative because equity and SEL work shouldn’t alienate anyone in your school—even when some people have different core values and beliefs. The equity-based framework I introduce in this book is meant to be implemented by teams of diverse individuals who want to improve students’ conditions for living and learning.
This book uplifts what I call the Equity and SEL Integration Framework and underscores the framework’s usefulness for helping educators implement trauma-informed teaching, culturally responsive teaching, and restorative justice practices. The framework is an amalgam of insights and practices gleaned from the SEL coaching work I do with schools. It features actionable steps teachers and their coaching teams can take to make SEL a meaningful academic intervention, and not just another administrative change for educators to struggle through. The book’s framework rests on emotional intelligence as its primary domain; it is designed to help us educators raise equity for those learners who need it most, including students we perceive to have privilege. Remember, equity is for all.
When I have taught this framework’s principles and shared skills in workshops across the United States, some educators who were previously unsure about implementing equity and SEL in their classrooms have had their thinking transformed. Many have expressed that, instead of making them feel voiceless because of their identity, each step in the framework broadened their understanding of how to develop their own emotional intelligence skills, which then encouraged them to appropriately examine their beliefs and improve how they empathize with their students. This has led these educators to activate SEL in their daily lessons while maintaining their instructional focus. Many educators, even those who weren’t initially inclined to participate, have expressed gratitude for making the process inclusive.
On the flip side, many equity enthusiasts who have participated in my sessions have appreciated the framework’s method of implementing trauma-informed teaching, restorative justice, and culturally responsive teaching practices to enhance their school SEL plan. The framework in this book is not the only way to implement SEL. Still, the framework’s steps create a clear pathway for building the skills and knowledge educators require to help marginalized and isolated students. My hope is that teacher teams use these practices to level the academic playing field for all students and help them succeed.
Part of the initial work was to engage leadership and teachers in learning walks to audit and glean what’s happening in classrooms before investing time and resources
to design professional development (PD) for SEL. Our classroom visits and discussions were very telling and helpful for informing what’s needed for both teachers and students to thrive socially and academically. Classrooms will always be the incubator for what’s needed in schools and education. It’s challenging for instructional leaders to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in their schools if they’re not interacting with teachers or listening to them.
Our data discussions provided insights for recommending appropriate SEL tools and practices for empowering teachers on this new journey. Resoundingly, we found schools need to set up ways of promoting understanding and healthy discourse between adults. In turn, they could team to increase emotional regulation for staff and students, raise equity for marginalized kids, improve SEL integration in daily lessons, and maintain intellectually safe spaces for all. Moreover, we found that the steps to achieve our SEL goals require dedication to learning and practice in a straightforward process informed by data and that honors everyone’s voice. I hope that this book and supporting PD through Solution Tree can provide you and your colleagues with clear guidance for achieving what equity and SEL success means in your space.
The Discovery of Social-Emotional Learning and Emotional Intelligence
As an education coach since 2014, I’ve spent the better part of a decade touring the United States (twenty-seven states and seventy-plus cities), working with schools to collaboratively solve instructional problems. Instructional needs I help support include tiered instruction, SEL, project-based learning, performance tasks, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) integration. I spent a decade cultivating the foundational knowledge for doing so as a curriculum specialist for an urban school district in Richmond, Virginia.
In addition to helping educators with multiple aspects of their instructional design practices, I assist schools in aligning and embedding key education reform initiatives across the curriculum. Some education reform initiatives I have worked with include computational thinking and computer science integration, STEM, restorative practices, SEL, project-based learning, and effective technology integration. In the ever-changing education landscape, my ability to focus on multiple areas of education is a major plus for the school systems I partner with. We work together to create viable professional learning solutions for both their staff and their students. Enhancing the teaching profession by helping educators improve teaching and learning in their schools and classrooms is important to me. It’s the purpose of my work.
In my work, I’ve had to learn to pay close attention to my own emotions and the emotions of those around me. It’s not always easy, but I have found it necessary to perform at my personal best, no matter the topic or area. So, if there is a secret to how I carry out my work, I’d say it’s following my heart and refining my emotional intelligence skills. Perhaps the greatest influence for this has been my shift in focus to SEL. This shift occurred in the spring of 2016 due to a transformative professional learning I attended during a PBLWorks national faculty summit. Formerly known as the Buck Institute for Education, PBLWorks (https://www.pblworks.org) is an organization that has helped shape my pedagogical perspective in several key instructional areas. At the conference, colleagues and I learned about the effects of trauma due to racism and the deportation of many Latinx (a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American descent, used as an alternative to Latina/o) people in California. We also visited Angel Island and saw artifacts that had belonged to Chinese immigrants who were detained during World War II. It was there that I also learned about the need for equity and the importance of raising it for the students furthest from opportunity.
This experience with PBLWorks triggered many painful emotions inside me, being the son of an immigrant who was detained by law enforcement for some time, which forced me to live in the New York City foster care system. But as the adage goes, “You have to feel it to heal it,” so it strengthened my journey of healing and understanding.
Since that summit in 2016, I have expanded my knowledge of emotional intelligence, educational equity, restorative justice, inclusive pedagogies, and culturally responsive teaching strategies. My previous work and life experiences, along with constant dedication to new learning, have shaped this book’s advice to educators for improving their districts’ SEL plans.
The Equity and Social-Emotional Learning Integration Framework came into being because educators needed a solution to problems introduced by rapid, exponential changes in education. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, it demanded that U.S. schools suddenly figure out distance learning. Hertford County Public Schools in North Carolina and I established an instructional coaching partnership at the time to engage the school system’s staff in virtual professional learning sessions. Early in that work, a Hertford County assistant superintendent introduced me to the Instructional Design Principles for Remote Teaching and Learning (see figure I.1, page 5) spearheaded by North Carolina State University and aligned with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. She and I had already been
Social & Emotional Learning Instructional Time
Collaboration Among Students
Feedback on Student Work
Connection to Families & Students
Instructional Design Principles for Remote Teaching & Learning
Student Engagement Aligned to Standards
Equity, Choice, & Flexibility
Source: North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Used with permission. FIGURE I.1: Instructional Design Principles for Remote Teaching and Learning framework .
working together for some time to grow teachers, and she asked me if we could align the heavy concepts that make up the framework.
After closely examining the framework, I realized how powerful it could be if we leveraged it correctly by connecting each of the targeted items—especially equity and SEL—to the teachers’ practice. Together, we worked hard to create modules that would help educators integrate equity and SEL into academic and career and technical education lessons in tandem with engaging and innovative remote teaching strategies. We had many successes, including developing and refining the Equity and SEL Integration Framework for this book.
We developed the framework using data from the diverse individuals who were dedicated to uniting adults and improving student social and academic outcomes in Hertford County Public Schools. Part of the initial work of designing the framework involved engaging leadership and teachers in virtual classroom observations, where we audited and observed classrooms in session, before we invested time and resources to design professional development for SEL. Our virtual classroom visits
