The Recipe for Student Well-Being by Solution Tree

5 key ingredients for social, behavioral, and academic success

“The Recipe for Student Well-Being is a gold mine of ideas to improve teaching praxis in a way that places students’ socialemotional health as a new soft skill competency in education. Kudos to the authors for creating a book that can transform group thought about social-emotional well-being. This book is a must-have for school teams.”

—Christie Shealy , Testing and Multilingual Learner Coordinator, Anderson School District One, Williamston, South Carolina “A practical and digestible guide for leaders of all levels to ensure social, emotional, and academic outcomes are met through a comprehensive approach. The extensive evidence affirming the importance of the fifth ingredient, assessment, is particularly intriguing and immediately actionable for a data-driven building administrator.”

—Kathryn Barea , Elementary Principal, Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools, Montpelier, Vermont “The Recipe for Student Well-Being is a must-read for everyone in education. The authors’ connection between research and key ingredients for social-emotional health allows readers to seamlessly follow the included recipe. The incorporation of socialemotional well-being for adults is notably impactful given demands in the current educational environment.”

—Patrick Varro , Licensed Psychologist and Nationally Certified School Psychologist

As students across the globe face mental health challenges, K–12 leaders are asking how they can support their students to move from surviving to thriving. In The Recipe for Student Well-Being: Five Key Ingredients for Social, Behavioral, and Academic Success, Brian H. Smith, Clayton R. Cook, and Aria E. Fiat share five essential ingredients for ensuring all students succeed academically, socially, and behaviorally. Readers learn what each element is, why it matters, and how to implement it. This book goes beyond the idea of a purchased curriculum to cover the myriad social, relational, and data-driven variables that comprehensively meet students’ needs.

READERS WILL: • Learn the five ingredients of effective social-emotional learning programs • Foster positive teacher-student and studentstudent relationships

THE RECIPE for STUDENT WELL - BEING

• Garner strategies and tools to establish, restore, and maintain social and relational harmony • Understand what to avoid and what to emphasize in social, emotional, and behavioral health

ISBN 978-1-951075-61-3 90000

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SolutionTree.com

BRIAN H. SMITH

C L AY T O N R . C O O K

A R I A E . F I AT

key 5 ingredients for social, behavioral, and

9 781951 075613

BRIAN H. SMITH C L AY T O N R . C O O K A R I A E . F I AT

• Implement a research-based curriculum that aligns with the values and culture of their school community

THE RECIPE for STUDENT WELL - BEING

academic success

key 5 ingredients for social, behavioral, and academic success

BRIAN H. SMITH C L AY T O N R . C O O K A R I A E . F I AT

THE RECIPE for STUDENT WELL - BEING

Copyright © 2024 by Solution Tree Press Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

email: info@SolutionTree.com SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/SEL to download the free reproducibles in this book. Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smith, Brian H., 1959- author. | Cook, Clayton R., author. | Fiat, Aria E., author. Title: The recipe for student well-being : five key ingredients for social, behavioral, and academic success / Brian H. Smith, Clayton R. Cook, Aria E. Fiat. Other titles: 5 key ingredients for social, behavioral, and academic success Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023043520 (print) | LCCN 2023043521 (ebook) | ISBN 9781951075613 (paperback) | ISBN 9781951075620 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Affective education. | Social learning. | Emotional intelligence. | Academic achievement. | Teacher-student relationships--Psychological aspects. | School environment--Social aspects. Classification: LCC LB1072 .S544 2024 (print) | LCC LB1072 (ebook) | DDC 370.15/34--dc23/eng/20231012 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023043520 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023043521

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife Associate Publishers: Todd Brakke and Kendra Slayton Editorial Director: Laurel Hecker Art Director: Rian Anderson Copy Chief: Jessi Finn Production Editor: Paige Duke Copy Editor: Madonna Evans Proofreader: Charlotte Jones Text and Cover Designer: Kelsey Hoover Acquisitions Editor: Hilary Goff Assistant Acquisitions Editor: Elijah Oates Content Development Specialist: Amy Rubenstein Associate Editor: Sarah Ludwig Editorial Assistant: Anne Marie Watkins

555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers: Erin Adams Associate Principal Pulaski Community Middle School Pulaski, Wisconsin

Debra Lane Director of Talent Development Alexandria City Public Schools Alexandria, Virginia

David Chilson Principal Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School Binghamton, New York

Agnes Miller Test Coordinator / Instructional Coach Charlotte, North Carolina

Doug Crowley Assistant Principal DeForest Area High School DeForest, Wisconsin John D. Ewald Educational Consultant Frederick, Maryland Louis Lim Vice Principal Richmond Green Secondary School Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

Bruce Preston Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Personnel Howell Township Public Schools Howell, New Jersey Christie Shealy Director of Testing and Accountability Anderson School District One Williamston, South Carolina Kory Taylor Reading Interventionist Arkansas Virtual Academy Little Rock, Arkansas

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TA B L E O F C O N T E NT S Reproducible pages are in italics.

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I N T R O D U C T I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Comprehensive Approach to Student Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Role of Social-Emotional Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Book Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CHAPTER 1

T H E S E L R E C I P E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Is Comprehensive SEL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 SEL for Adults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Safe, Predictable, and Positive Environments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Positive Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 SEL Curriculum and Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Why Is SEL Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Academic Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Well-Being. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Trauma-Informed Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Equity-Focused Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Twenty-First Century Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 How Can Schools Effectively Deliver Comprehensive SEL? . . . . . . 20 v

THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

Putting Together a Distributed Leadership Team . . . . . . . . . . . .

Securing Buy-In. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Engaging in Continuous Improvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Gathering Fidelity Data and Providing Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Training and Coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Reflecting on the SEL Recipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Planning for SEL Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER 2

S E L FO R A D U LT S . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

What Is SEL for Adults? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Educator Well-Being. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 SEL Understanding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Why Is SEL for Adults Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 How Can Leaders Support SEL for Adults in Schools? . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Environment Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Strategies to Improve Adult Stress Coping and Well-Being. . . . 42 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Reflecting on SEL for Adults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Planning for SEL for Adults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reviewing Research-Based Strategies for Educators to Improve Stress Coping and Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 CHAPTER 3

S A F E , P R E D I C TA B L E , A N D P O S I T I V E E N V I R O N M E N T S . . . . .

What Kinds of Environments Support SEL? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Safe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Allocating Protected Time and Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Ta bl e o f C o n t en t s

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Predictable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Positive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Why Do Safe, Predictable, and Positive Environments Matter? . . . . 59 Social-Emotional Competence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Social-Emotional Well-Being. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Academic Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Stress Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Person and Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 How Can Educators Create Safe, Predictable, and Positive Environments? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Proactive Classroom Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 PROMPT Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Multitiered System of Supports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Reflecting on Safe, Predictable, and Positive Environments . . . . . . . .

Planning for Safe, Predictable, and Positive Environments . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER 4

P O S I T I V E R E L AT I O N S H I P S. . . . . . 8 3 What Are Positive Relationships? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Why Are Positive Relationships Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 How Can Educators Intentionally Cultivate and Support Positive Peer-to-Peer Relationships? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Positive Peer Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Classroom Meetings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Can Educators Intentionally Cultivate and Support Positive Student–Teacher Relationships? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Use the Establish, Maintain, Restore Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Get Out of Relationship Ruts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Motivation and Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

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THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

Student–Teacher Relationships and Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Planning for Positive Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Restoring Positive Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 CHAPTER 5

SEL CURRICULUM A N D I N S T R U C T I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3 What Is SEL Curriculum and Instruction? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Based on Curriculum, Not Infusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Comprehensive, Not Single Topic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Developmentally Differentiated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Engaging for Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

127

Culturally Responsive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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User Friendly and Easy to Deliver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Pedagogically Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Supportive of Generalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Backed by Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Why Should Schools Implement a Research-Based Curriculum or Program? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Schoolwide Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Effective Implementation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 How Can Schools Choose an SEL Program? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 School Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Evidence of Effectiveness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

137

Developmental Appropriateness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Support for Generalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 How Can Schools Effectively Implement SEL Curriculum and Instruction? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Secure Educator Buy-In. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Protect Time for Delivery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Reflecting on Positive Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Ta bl e o f C o n t en t s

Avoid Initiative Overload. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Offer Training and Professional Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Make It a Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Ensure Implementation Fidelity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Support Content Beyond Lessons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

147

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Reflecting on SEL Curriculum and Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

151

Planning for SEL Curriculum and Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 CHAPTER 6

A S S E S S M E N T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5 5 What Is SEL Assessment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 What to Assess. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Screening. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Why Is SEL Assessment Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 How Can Schools Conduct SEL Assessment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 SEL Team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Approaches to SEL Assessment: Pay or Do It Yourself. . . . . . . 162 How Can Schools Gather SEL Assessment Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Establish a Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Consult Administrative Records. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Disseminate Surveys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 How Can Schools Assess SEL Ingredients? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

167

SEL for Adults. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Safe, Predictable, and Positive Classroom and School Environments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Positive Relationships With Teachers and Peers. . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 SEL Instruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

Student Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

172

Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

172

Employ a Team Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

Reflecting on Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Planning for SEL Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Reviewing Resources for SEL Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

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R e f e r e n c e s a n d R e s o u r c e s . . . . . . . . . .

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I n d e x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 3

E p i l o g u e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Brian H. Smith, PhD, has been a leader in translating research into effective social-emotional learning (SEL) programs for nearly twenty years. He headed the design and development of multiple revisions of the preK–8 Second Step curriculum as senior research scientist at the Committee for Children as well as the revision of the K–12 SEL curricula as director of research at CharacterStrong. Dr. Smith has presented to educators in several states on SEL-related topics and worked directly with schools to improve their SEL planning and implementation. Prior to attaining his doctorate, Dr. Smith worked in schools in a variety of roles, including as elementary counselor, early intervention and prevention specialist, mental health specialist, school social worker, and substance abuse counselor. Dr. Smith received both his master’s degree and doctorate from the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. He has published book chapters and articles for both research and educator audiences. Clayton R. Cook, PhD, is the chief development officer at CharacterStrong, an organization that aims to create a more loving world through education by designing low-burden, high-impact multitiered solutions. Dr. Cook has been a professor and researcher at three universities— Louisiana State University, the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota—studying topics such as youth mental health, educator well-being and resilience, SEL, and implementation of evidence-based practices. He has obtained over $20 million in grant funding for his research and published more than a hundred xi

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Dr. Cook formerly held the John W. and Nancy E. Peyton Faculty Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Wellbeing at the University of Minnesota and also cofounded the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training Center at the University of Washington. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Time magazine, NPR, Edutopia, and other outlets. Aria E. Fiat, PhD, is an assistant professor and pediatric psychologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She is committed to making mental health care more equitable and accessible through integrated systems of service delivery that emphasize prevention. As a clinician, researcher, educator, and consultant, Dr. Fiat works to enhance the capacity of systems to promote behavioral health and wellness, with an emphasis on supporting the educators and caregivers who help students thrive. She is particularly focused on initiatives that enhance organizational well-being as a key facilitator of systems change. Dr. Fiat has coauthored more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings on topics related to school mental health. Dr. Fiat is the creator of the Seven Cs: A Tool Kit for Caregivers Coping in a Crisis and a codeveloper of the Adult Resilience Curriculum, a wellness-promotion program that has been implemented in school districts across the country to counteract educator stress and burnout. Dr. Fiat belongs to the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and the Society of Pediatric Psychology. She is also a certified instructor of Yoga Calm for Children. Outside of her role as a psychologist, Dr. Fiat is the cofounder of and vice president on the board for Supplies for Dreams, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to mitigating educational inequities. Dr. Fiat received a bachelor’s degree in education and social policy from Northwestern University and a master’s degree and doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. To book Brian H. Smith, Clayton R. Cook, or Aria E. Fiat for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.

peer-reviewed scientific articles, producing scholarship that has influenced everyday policy and practice in schools. He has delivered more than forty keynote presentations and numerous invited breakout sessions to educational leaders, teachers, and support staff.

INTRODUCTION

For any person to perform to the best of their capabilities, they need to be well. Well-being is a critical enabler to both school and life success. Well-being can be broken down into social, emotional, and mental aspects. To be socially well means feeling like you belong and have the skills to build and maintain healthy relationships, collaborate with others to achieve a common goal, and resolve conflicts productively. To be emotionally well means you experience positive emotions and can regulate your emotions in response to challenging situations. To be mentally well means you have positive thoughts and beliefs about yourself, others, and the future—as well as the skills to identify unhelpful thoughts and reframe them to be more helpful. Together, these dimensions of well-being combine to promote school engagement and enable students to fulfill their potential. The good news is that well-being is malleable and can change in response to enriching experiences that educators can intentionally create through the practices they consistently implement day to day. This book is about those practices: what they are, why they matter, and how to put them into practice.

A Comprehensive Approach to Student Well-Being As anyone who works in education knows, many children and youth are struggling with mental health challenges. The Surgeon General of the United States recently stated that youth mental health needs have become “the defining public health crisis of our time” (Peetz, 2023). What does a book about universal approaches to supporting student well-being have to do with mental health?

THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

Schools are underequipped to shoulder the burden of meeting the mental health treatment needs of children and youth (Schaeffer, 2022). Consequently, this book showcases and explains how to implement five effective, scientifically supported strategies to improve student well-being. The beauty of this book’s approach is that the strategies support healthy student development for those who are struggling as well as for those who seem to be doing OK. Research shows that a focus on increasing student well-being can promote positive mental health, enhance the effectiveness of mental health treatment, and protect students from developing mental health challenges in the future (Suldo, 2020).

The Role of Social-Emotional Learning Social-emotional learning (SEL) initiatives are increasingly used in education to support comprehensive student well-being, especially in developing and supporting mental health. SEL is a rapidly evolving field, and educators have realized the critical role it plays in achieving the varied missions of the K–12 school system: increasing academic achievement; improving school climate and student safety and well-being; creating productive learning environments in classrooms; and preparing students for the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities of adulthood. Here at the start of this book, we’d like to clearly articulate an objective understanding of SEL. SEL aims to ensure that all students receive what they need socially, emotionally, and behaviorally to develop and maintain their well-being, engagement, and academic growth in school and to support their eventual success in work, civic, and private aspects of adult life. To this end, we offer a unique resource in the SEL field.

Science has increasingly shown that having mental health is more than simply not having mental illness. The World Health Organization defines mental health as, “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community” (World Health Organization, n.d.). In recent years, therapeutic practice has shifted its focus: from fixing deficits to developing well-being by targeting factors shown to promote young people’s abilities to thrive (Kobau, 2011; Shek, 2019). World expert on resilience, Anne Masten, argues that, in addition to addressing psychiatric emergencies, “we also need an infusion of knowledge and ordinary strategies to support mental health on the positive side” (Abrams, 2023).

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Because this kind of SEL doesn’t happen without the guidance and support of leaders, this book is aimed at educators with leadership capacity—whether formal (for example, school and district administrators) or informal (for example, teacher leaders, school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and paraprofessionals)—to drive meaningful changes in practice within schools to promote equitable social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes for students. Employing a straightforward format, we will help you understand why a comprehensive approach to SEL is important and outline what a recipe for SEL success entails, including what each ingredient is, why it matters for student success, and, perhaps most important, how those practices can be effectively woven into the fabric of schools’ day-to-day operations. By showing how each of the SEL ingredients contributes to all the goals of education, and by laying out practical, concrete strategies for providing students with what they need to thrive in school and in life, we’ll bust the myth that comprehensive support for students’ social-emotional development piles far too much onto educators’ already full plates. By that same token, school-based SEL is intended to add to, not take the place of, the learning experiences and growth opportunities students experience in their families and communities. Educators can appreciate the extent to which factors outside school affect students’ social and emotional development, such as students’ home and neighborhood environments, what they learn there, and the quality of the relationships they have with the adults in their lives—all of which highlight the applicability of the SEL recipe beyond school settings. While these factors are largely beyond teachers’ control, the good news is that decades of research show

A solid foundation of research supports all the approaches covered in this book. And the great news is that evidence clearly states that a full range of effective strategies is available for educators to use to nurture the development of students. Humans are complex, and human development is influenced by what individuals learn and how they are taught as well as by their environments and relationships. A number of vital component parts, then, form the basis of a comprehensive approach to supporting student well-being: the social-emotional competence of educators, the culture and climate educators create in schools, the relationships they build with and among students, and their effective delivery of culturally responsive SEL instruction. Much like ingredients in a recipe, these discrete items work synergistically to yield something remarkable—in this case, the conditions under which students can be successful in school and grow into the adults that a strong, healthy society needs.

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the interconnectedness of students’ social, emotional, and academic growth as well as the power of teacher practices to foster student growth.

Book Overview Each chapter in this book is organized into three main sections that capture the what, why, and how of the topic discussed. Following chapter 1, in which we present our comprehensive SEL approach as a simple five-ingredient recipe, each subsequent chapter covers what exactly a given SEL ingredient is, the evidence for why that ingredient matters, and how schools can effectively mix it into their operations. To illustrate, we’ll begin a tour through the chapters with a little more detail on the what, why, and how for chapter 1. In chapter 1, we explain what we mean by comprehensive SEL by laying out each of the components of our research-based model of universal SEL. We then focus on why this approach to SEL matters for student outcomes, synthesizing the research on student social-emotional development and academic learning to show that SEL is critically important to student success in all areas of life—including academics. Finally, we detail how district and school leaders can successfully support the implementation of the SEL ingredients laid out in the rest of the book. Chapter 2 focuses on one of the major shortfalls in the field of SEL—SEL for the adults in schools. Teaching is a highly stressful profession, and teacher social and emotional well-being have powerful effects on students. In this chapter, we discuss what it means to support the social-emotional competence and resilience of the adults in schools and what SEL for educators might include. We also review the research on the power of supporting teacher well-being and on why SEL for educators can positively impact both teachers’ and students’ social and emotional growth. Finally, we cover how schools can effectively support adult SEL. Given the

As educators ourselves, we have spent years working in and with schools. But we also have research backgrounds and know that there is solid science that can help us be more effective in our work with students. The information and strategies in this book come from our synthesizing the strongest research across education, psychology, neuroscience, and many other fields. But we didn’t write this book for researchers—we wrote it for educators in the field. Our goal was to translate the science on how to support the social-emotional well-being and development of students into practical guidelines educators can use to improve their practice.

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shortage of available resources that support SEL for educators, we also cover some strategies educators can use to manage stress and enhance their well-being.

Chapter 4 focuses on the promotion of positive relationships both between teachers and students and among students themselves. The chapter explains the key components of positive relationships and summarizes why these relationships are critically important for promoting academic achievement, positive student behavior, and social-emotional development. The chapter then lays out the concrete steps educators can take to support and build the positive relationships that enhance everyone’s experience, including teachers’. Chapter 5 explores the most common approach to SEL—direct instruction of social and emotional competencies through implementation of standardized SEL curricula or programs. The what section gives a brief history of SEL curricula and lays out the key characteristics of effective SEL programs. Next, the chapter offers substantial evidence for why direct instruction is a critical part of comprehensive SEL, summarizing research on the positive impacts of well-implemented SEL programs. Finally, the how section explains what it takes to get those results—through how to choose and then effectively implement your curricula, from the school level down to how lessons are delivered and supported. Chapter 6 discusses the role of SEL assessment and the use of data in a comprehensive SEL initiative. First, we provide some perspective on what to assess in order to gather data that you can use to effectively improve your SEL support for students. Next, the chapter explains why assessment is an important part of a databased decision-making process to increase both overall effectiveness and equity in your SEL efforts. Finally, we dive into the details of how to gather data on all the SEL ingredients and use them to power up your SEL initiatives through practical, time-efficient, data-based decision making.

Chapter 3 covers the SEL ingredient of creating safe, predictable, and positive school and classroom environments. First, we discuss what characterizes environments that help all students thrive and provide powerful support to students with additional social and emotional needs. We then explain the reasons our approach to SEL includes attention to the environment by synthesizing the extensive research on the impact of school and classroom environments on student academic achievement a nd social-emotional growth. Finally, the chapter goes into detail on concrete, practical strategies educators can use to create the environments that help students thrive.

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This book lays out a comprehensive suite of practices that educators can use to truly educate the whole student while making schools and classrooms healthier and happier places for everyone. Throughout the book, we strongly make the case that SEL is much more than a lesson students get once a week. Both the work of education and the work of SEL need to be focused on how we can most effectively create environments and experiences that fully support the healthy development of students intellectually, socially, and emotionally. This work is crucial to the mission of schools, and a comprehensive approach to SEL provides a road map to the specific practices shown to be the most important ways schools can help students succeed academically and become resilient people who can help create healthy families and communities.

CHAPTER 1

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was one simple thing we as educators could do that effectively met students’ developmental needs? Of course it would! But that’s like saying wouldn’t it be great if it was easy for anyone to step into a classroom and automatically be a fantastic teacher. Meeting students’ needs, like teaching, is a complex endeavor. All three of the authors have made careers out of studying and figuring out how to apply the best science in education, child development, neuroscience, psychology, and other fields. Our laser focus has been on one question: What works? This begs a few other questions: What approaches and strategies are both doable in real-world schools and shown to benefit students? Which ones have the most bang for their buck? And what are the key ingredients that work together best to support student well-being and social, behavioral, and academic development? Every strategy in this book can make a difference. But the reason we use the recipe metaphor is that, when all strategies are combined, the whole is absolutely greater than the sum of the parts: all the ingredients work to strengthen and increase the effectiveness of the others. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the key ingredients that make up the SEL recipe; discuss why comprehensive SEL matters and is important for student well-being, growth, and success; and look at some powerful ways to ensure successful SEL implementation.

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What Is Comprehensive SEL?

High-quality SEL that effectively supports the full range of positive student outcomes includes five key ingredients. 1. SEL for adults 2. Safe, predictable, and positive environments 3. Positive relationships 4. SEL curriculum and instruction 5. Assessment Figure 1.1 (page 9) shows the five key ingredients of SEL. To take the recipe analogy a little further, you don’t simply bake each ingredient of your chocolate chip cookies separately. To get the right outcome, you need all the ingredients mixed together. The same is true with SEL. Each ingredient is powerful on its own. But the real impact is achieved through the synergy that comes when each increases the power of the others. Direct SEL instruction has more power when delivered in a classroom with a positive climate, by socially and emotionally skilled teachers to whom students feel connected, in the context of a school environment that spells out clear expectations and encourages the use of social-emotional skills. It’s easier for students to meet school and classroom expectations when they’ve learned skills for self-management. Likewise, students are in a better position to master those self-management skills when positive norms for behavior motivate them to put the skills to use. Clear norms, expectations, and routines also provide the framework for staff to create predictability and

Delivering SEL is analogous to following a baking recipe—you need to include all the right ingredients to get the best results. In combining distinct practices to produce the desired outcomes for students, too often, schools fall into the trap of using only some of the ingredients in a recipe for success, which is like trying to bake chocolate chip cookies without sugar or butter. The reality is that singleingredient approaches are not enough to provide the full range of supports needed to promote students’ social-emotional success, prevent problems from emerging, and lay the foundation for more intensive interventions to work for the subset of students who need them. To be effective, schools must use a recipe that combines the key SEL ingredients in order to produce desired social, emotional, and academic outcomes.

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Positive relationships

Safe, predictable, and positive environments

SEL for adults

SEL curriculum and instruction

Assessment

FIGURE 1.1: The five SEL ingredients.

SEL Ingredients

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S E L F O R A D U LT S Students are not the only ones who can benefit from the skills taught in SEL. Teaching is one of the most difficult and stressful professions, and educator wellbeing impacts students’ experience in school and helps support teachers’ ability to meet the many challenges of the profession (Doan, Steiner, Pandey, & Woo, 2023; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2016). In addition, having some understanding and even competence in many of the topics covered in SEL lessons boosts teachers’ abilities to effectively support student development and mastery of SEL competencies. The more resilient teachers are, the better they can handle the stress and workload involved in teaching, which supports their ability to create positive classroom environments and form positive relationships with students.

S A F E , P R E D I C TA B L E , A N D P O S I T I V E E N V I R O N M E N T S This practice or ingredient of the SEL recipe highlights the fact that schools and classrooms are powerful developmental contexts. And it’s not that they can be but that they are—for better or for worse. It may be tempting to think of students as self-contained, that their development is an internal process or perhaps something that is primarily affected by what goes on outside school. But the reality is that students spend a huge amount of their time at school, and the experiences that they have there impact their development not just intellectually but socially, emotionally, and behaviorally. This means that students’ environments during the school day have the potential to influence their development in either positive or negative ways that really matter (Eccles & Roeser, 2011).

consistency that support students to employ and fine-tune SEL skills they learn through lessons. When students feel connected to their teachers and other students, they are not only more motivated to follow positive class norms but also more open to engage in learning experiences, which makes SEL lessons and other academic instruction more impactful. And everyone benefits from a more proactive and positive learning environment in which educators are able to both detect and assist early on those students who have extra needs for support. Let’s take a look at the key SEL practices that together set all students up for success.

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P O S I T I V E R E L AT I O N S H I P S

It might not be immediately obvious why positive relationships comprise one of the ingredients of a high-quality comprehensive approach to SEL. But the fact is that SEL is largely a socially driven process based on a core human need: a sense of belonging. The connections students have with their teachers and other students, as well as the relationship between school and home, powerfully affect students’ ability to benefit from both academic and SEL instruction. In their work on human development and education, professors Terri J. Sabol and Robert C. Pianta (2012) confirm that positive student–teacher relationships help drive student engagement in both SEL and academic lessons, increase student motivation to practice and employ social and emotional skills, and help provide the safety and support students need to develop the competencies to regulate themselves while striving to achieve meaningful short- and long-term goals they set for themselves. Positive peer relationships help students feel accepted and valued for who they are. Positive relationships between school and home, especially when they include sharing information with families about the SEL work happening at school, can help families and schools work together to promote the social-emotional well-being of students.

SEL CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION This ingredient captures what comes to mind for most people when they think of SEL: directly teaching students social and emotional skills and knowledge. The most common way schools do this is by implementing an SEL program or curriculum. Too often, people think that is doing SEL—that SEL is a oneingredient recipe.

Humans are fundamentally social beings. We are wired to connect with others, and positive relationships are one of the most powerful factors in healthy development, learning, and happiness. We know from experience and extensive research what kinds of relationships lead to beneficial outcomes for all students. According to researchers Kelly Allen, Margaret L. Kern, Dianne Vella-Brodrick, John Hattie, and Lea Waters (2018), all students benefit from feeling like they belong; from being able to trust and respect others; and from feeling like they are wanted, valued, and welcomed members of a place. Educators have the ability to intentionally cultivate positive relationships with students and promote relationships among students, both of which are essential to students’ sense of belonging and connection to school.

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ASSESSMENT SEL-related assessment can provide important information schools and districts can use to strengthen and improve their SEL efforts across each of the other SEL ingredients laid out in this book. Gathering information related to the different SEL ingredients can inform a data-based decision-making approach to SEL that helps schools focus their limited resources on where they’re likely to be most effective at improving student outcomes (McKown & Herman, 2020). Once schools use assessment data to ensure they are properly supporting and implementing key SEL practices, they can also use assessment to gauge the various impacts of their providing students and staff with support for their social-emotional competence and well-being.

Why Is SEL Important? Developing social-emotional competence is fundamental to student academic and life success for a wide variety of reasons. In this section, we summarize evidence for the diverse benefits of SEL, homing in on academic achievement; social, emotional, and behavioral well-being; trauma-informed practice, equity-focused practice; and 21st century skills.

AC A D E M I C AC H I E V E M E N T There never seems to be enough time in education. But what if spending time on SEL actually increases rather than takes away from academic learning? The great news is that decades of research show that is exactly what happens. In large-scale studies of the impacts of SEL, researchers Joseph A. Durlak, Roger P. Weissberg, Allison B. Dymnicki, Rebecca D. Taylor, and Kriston B. Schellinger (2011) have found increased social and emotional skills, better behavior, and less

SEL curricula have many strengths. The best ones are easy to deliver, carefully developed, based on science, and shown to work (CASEL, n.d.a). But the strengths of the curricula approach to SEL can also be its weakness. It’s easy to think that simply purchasing a program and delivering lessons once a week means you’ve taken care of SEL. The reality is that not only are the other ingredients necessary, but important aspects of implementing SEL curricula are too often missed. It’s critical that educators understand what it takes to maximize the effectiveness of this key ingredient.

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We have come a long way since the days when we thought of a teacher’s job as simply to pour knowledge into students like coffee into a cup. Research in human development, educational psychology, neuroscience, and educational practice and policy have come together to establish that learning is not just an intellectual act. Learning is impacted by and depends on social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic, and academic development. Neuroscientists C. Daniel Salzman and Stefano Fusi (2010) show that the brain circuits involved in cognition and emotional and physiological regulation are all interconnected. Any experienced teacher knows that motivation, engagement, and academic performance are highly dependent on students’ interest level, mindsets, self-confidence, and persistence. Students don’t just use their IQs to learn; their emotions help drive engagement and effort. Learning also has powerful social dimensions. Success in the classroom requires the social awareness and skill to read social cues, avoid or handle conflicts, collaborate with peers, and contribute to a positive learning climate. One of the biggest factors that drives student achievement is engagement. What and how you teach simply doesn’t matter that much if students are not engaged. We know, and research shows, that student engagement has important emotional, behavioral, and cognitive components that are all affected by SEL. Researchers Hanke Korpershoek, Esther T. Canrinus, Marjon Fokkens-Bruinsma, and Hester de Boer (2020) find that students who feel connected and like they belong in their school have greater self-efficacy and higher levels of both behavioral and cognitive engagement. Similarly, authors Camille Farrington, Shanette Porter, and Joshua Klugman (2019) show that student engagement is impacted by the quality of classroom environments. SEL can also help level the educational playing field by ensuring all students develop the social, emotional, and behavioral strengths they need to be fully engaged. Research indicates that students who possess social and emotional competencies like social skills, empathy, and self-control do better in school and are

emotional distress—but they also show that SEL programs increased student academic achievement by 11 percent. And the effects of SEL have staying power. The work of Rebecca D. Taylor, Eva Oberle, Joseph A. Durlak, and Roger P. Weissberg (2017) reveals that over three years after students participated in an SEL program, their academic performance was 13.5 percent higher than students who had not received SEL. There is no question: SEL can increase academic achievement. But why does time spent on supporting students’ social and emotional development help increase learning?

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Academic achievement is not a solitary endeavor. Even highly motivated and skilled students can fail to realize their potential in dysregulated classrooms. Students who lack social-emotional competence can create disruptive classroom environments, and researchers Carmel Blank and Yossi Shavit (2016) show that disruptive behavior lowers the achievement of all students, not only those exhibiting the behavior. According to educators Scott E. Carrell, Mark Hoekstra, and Elira Kuka (2018), high levels of emotional dysregulation within classrooms decreases the long-term educational outcomes even for students with strong emotion regulation skills. So when students in a classroom are able to self-regulate, all students in the class learn and achieve more, benefiting both directly and indirectly from SEL.

S O C I A L , E M O T I O N A L , A N D B E H AV I O R A L W E L L - B E I N G In their work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ruth Perou and colleagues (2013) note that as many as one out of every five students aged three to seventeen have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder, and many more exhibit milder social, emotional, and behavioral problems that impair their functioning. These latter problems hinder academic success and are linked to interpersonal challenges at school, truancy, and eventual dropout. SEL gives students the support they need to increase their social, emotional, and behavioral well-being. As discussed in the introduction, enhancing student wellbeing is a powerful tool for supporting the effectiveness of mental health treatment, preventing the onset of mental health challenges, and improving the experience and capabilities of all students. Research clearly shows that SEL improves student behavior (Durlak, Weissberg, & Pachan, 2011), including in the classroom, lunchroom, hallways, and on the playground. The great thing about improving social-emotional competence is that the effects are not just short term; changing skills, attitudes, mindsets, and norms can ripple out into long-term gains for students, schools, and society as a whole. In their longitudinal research that follows the same individuals over decades, authors Mona Alzahrani, Manal Alharbi, and Amani Alodwani (2019) have shown that

more likely to be academically successful from elementary through high school (Mahoney, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2018). But the simple fact is that students don’t show up at school with equal levels of those competencies, nor do they all learn them as quickly or easily as others. If we want to promote equity and support the academic success of all students, we need to ensure that they all receive the support needed to develop critical social and emotional competencies.

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Students who receive a high-quality SEL program are more prosocial, get in less trouble, have fewer conduct problems, and experience less emotional distress (Durlak et al., 2011). This increased social, emotional, and behavioral well-being creates a real difference in their ability to make friends, benefit from instruction, and stay in school and achieve. But supporting the social, emotional, and behavioral competence of students who struggle is a powerful support to all students—as well as to teachers. Struggling students need support from teachers. But sadly, the challenges of difficult student behavior can make that support harder to deliver by dramatically increasing teacher stress and frustration. Improving students’ social, emotional, and behavioral well-being can support teacher effectiveness and wellbeing, which makes a real difference for both students and educators.

T R AU M A - I N F O R M E D P R AC T I C E Behavioral scientist Phyllis Holditch Niolon (n.d.) writes that many students come to school impacted by a variety of traumas and chronic stressors, many of which are categorized as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; physical and emotional neglect; domestic violence; parental substance abuse; parental mental illness; the incarceration of a parent; and divorce. ACEs also encompass adverse community environments, such as poverty, discrimination, poor housing, lack of opportunity, community disruption, and community violence (Niolon, n.d.). Professor of public health Karen Hughes and colleagues (2017), along with researchers Patricia Logan-Greene, Sara Green, Paula S. Nurius, and Dario Longhi (2014), show that without proper support, ACEs can result in worse life outcomes into adulthood, including higher rates of addiction, criminal behavior, incarceration, and medical problems severe enough to compromise health and even lead to early death. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (n.d.) reports the following findings about stress in children. When children experience relatively shortlived mild-to-moderate stressors in the context of supportive relationships with adults, it helps them develop a healthy stress response system and build resilience.

students’ social-emotional competence has powerful positive effects years down the road. For example, research from clinical psychologist Terrie E. Moffitt and colleagues (2011) indicates that students’ social-emotional skills in kindergarten lead to real improvements in their young adult educational and career attainment and reduce their involvement in criminal activity, substance abuse, and mental health disorders.

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Emotion regulation is one of the competencies most impacted by trauma (Short, Boffa, Clancy, & Schmidt, 2018). Students affected by ACEs and toxic stress are more likely to show up at school with their brains attuned to signs of danger. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2020) offers the following explanation: From an evolutionary survival standpoint, if you experience your environment as unsafe, it’s better to see danger when it may not be there than to miss out on spotting a real threat. Some students burdened by toxic stress have very specific triggers they respond to, but it’s common for trauma-affected students to have a threat response system that can be set off by a wide range of things that other students might tolerate without a problem. Once the brain of a student impacted by toxic stress detects a threat, whether it’s real or not, the student is more likely to respond impulsively before the thinking function of the brain can engage. This heightened reactivity and rapid, emotionally driven impulsive responsiveness, combined with a lowered capacity to reason through problems and think before acting, causes problems for these students and their teachers and can negatively impact the classroom and school environment for all students. Although some students impacted by trauma may be prone to conflicts and disruptive behavior, others often fly under the behavioral radar. Neuroscience research like that of Michael A. P. Bloomfield, Robert A. McCutcheon, Matthew Kempton, Tom P. Freeman, and Oliver Howes (2019) shows that toxic stress and trauma impact the dopamine system in the brain in ways that can increase depression. The students in your class with their heads on their desks or buried in their hoods may just be behind on sleep from too much late-night gaming or social media, but they may also be overloaded by stress and psychologically and emotionally shut down.

During a healthy, manageable stress experience, heart rate and stress hormone levels briefly rise to meet the challenge and then fall again soon after. But when a child experiences intense, frequent, or prolonged adversity, especially without nurturing adult support, it creates toxic stress in the form of chronically elevated stress hormones. This lasting elevated stress response impacts brain development in ways that can make it more difficult for students to learn and harder for them to manage their emotions and behavior. Over time, ACEs, other trauma, and chronic toxic levels of stress result in greater activation of the parts of the brain, like the amygdala, that are designed to detect and respond rapidly to threats. At the same time, toxic stress can impair the development of the parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, involved in learning, thinking, impulse control, long-term planning, and the ability to manage difficult thoughts and feelings—with obvious impacts on learning and behavior.

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Whether acting out or trying to go unnoticed, students with traumatic histories are suffering, less able to learn, and in need of support.

So what does SEL have to do with ACEs and the impacts of toxic stress? It’s tempting—and frankly pretty scary—to think that teachers need to become therapists, or maybe “abuse detectives,” trying to figure out which of their students have been through exactly what kinds of horrific experiences. Fortunately, perhaps the most effective way educators can help students with traumatic histories grow, develop, and succeed is by creating positive relationships in the context of safe, predictable environments and by supporting the development of students’ socialemotional competence. In other words, the appropriate educational response to ACEs, trauma, and toxic stress is not primarily targeted at identifying and “treating” individual students. Although some students suffering from the effects of trauma do need more targeted or intensive support, schools can make a powerful contribution to the well-being of students impacted by toxic stress through a dedicated implementation of the core ingredients of SEL laid out in this book. Essentially, what implementing comprehensive SEL practices does is supply students with the critical supports they need to grow their brains in healthy ways, gain skills to help counteract the impacts of toxic stress, and improve their ability to learn in school and grow into thriving adults. Supporting the development of social-emotional competence, especially emotion regulation, works to help students overcome the emotional dysregulation and lack of impulse control caused by long-term stress. Much of what drives trauma and toxic stress are the intertwined problems of fractured relationships with caregivers and unsafe environments. Relationships are foundational to human development, and when we create positive connections with students, we are providing them with critical developmental support. The same goes for creating safe, secure, predictable classroom and school environments. Traumatized students’ brains cannot calm down and develop in a nonstressed state while they feel unsafe. We can give students a powerful developmental gift by helping them feel like they are safe enough to let their guard down, know what’s going to happen when, and don’t have to be on alert for danger or

It can be hard for us as educators to think about how many of our students are suffering in these ways. And it can also be difficult to have our best-planned lessons blown up when students act in disruptive ways or disengage because of toxic stress. But the good news is that not only do we have a lot of knowledge about how serious adversity impacts students; we have also learned a lot about the kinds of support they need.

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E Q U I T Y - F O C U S E D P R AC T I C E Educational equity means ensuring that all students receive the supports they need to develop into healthy and successful adults. Of course, that involves rigorous academic instruction as well as high expectations for all students. It also entails working to make sure our discipline policies and practices are constructive, rather than simply punitive, and implemented fairly so they do not feed lower-income students and students of color into the school-to-prison pipeline. But equity is also about providing all students with SEL supports that fit their needs, delivered in culturally responsive ways. It is easy and perhaps traditional for educators to assume that students’ socialemotional development will be taken care of by parents and the out-of-school experiences families make available to their children. But this does not take into account the inequitable distribution of opportunities for young people to develop social-emotional competence outside school. Across all ages, students from families with fewer financial resources and more challenges have less access to the myriad of enrichment experiences that support the social-emotional development of more privileged students, like sports, music, gymnastics, performing arts, summer camps, high-quality preschool and before- and after-school programs, martial arts, internships, mentorships, and more. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2023), children living in poverty in the United States are three times more likely to have a single-parent caregiver. The challenges of single parenting along with the many difficulties of parenting with fewer financial resources mean students often receive lower-quality day care and preschool and parents have less time and energy to support student growth and development at home. A greater understanding of the challenges many of our students face should inspire us to focus on the importance of how we as educators can support the development of the whole student. In their research on schools serving economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, Matthew J. Irvin, Judith L. Meece, Soo-yong Byun, Thomas W. Farmer, and Bryan C. Hutchins (2011) of the National Research Center on Rural Education Support clearly tell us that students can benefit from

sudden changes. Students spend a large part of their lives in school. If we can help make that a period of time when their brains can develop normally—free from constant worry, fear, and stress—it will go a long way toward righting the wrongs they have experienced.

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the right experiences at school despite poverty and disadvantage. The daily actions of educators matter for all students.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SKILLS Educators and parents aren’t the only people interested in and pushing for SEL. There is a growing realization that social-emotional competence is critical for success in the workplace. One person who has done a lot to make a strong evidence-based case for the importance of supporting students’ social and emotional development is Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman. His research shows that social-emotional competence is critical to long-term success, including in the workplace, and he has been a powerful advocate for interventions like SEL as a way to strengthen the U.S. workforce and economy (Heckman, 2000). When key research and policy institutes on both the right and left ends of the political spectrum worked together to produce a joint report on reducing poverty and restoring the American dream, one of their key recommendations was an increased focus on educating the whole student to “promote social-emotional and character development as well as academic skills” (AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity, 2015, p. 5). Their report highlights the widely supported fact that students’ social-emotional competence impacts their educational attainment, employment, and earnings as much as or more than their standardized achievement test scores. Employers themselves make it clear that ensuring students have academic or even technical knowledge is not enough. In one survey of 900 executives, 92 percent said social-emotional skills such as problem solving and communication are as important as—if not more important than—technical skills for worker success (Davidson, 2016). In another workforce study, computing and information systems experts Evan Schirf and Anthony Serapiglia (2017) found that even in the

Engagement is critical to student learning, yet students of color and economically disadvantaged students on average show lower levels of engagement (Bingham & Ogaki, 2012; Yazzie-Mintz, 2007). Educators can advance student development and help buffer the effects of poverty and racism when they intentionally work to create culturally responsive and developmentally appropriate relationships with students, ensure all students have the opportunity to learn in safe and welcoming environments, and actively provide students with the supports they need to develop social and emotional competencies. Schoolwide efforts to implement comprehensive SEL can make important contributions to increasing equity in our schools.

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information technology field, the lack of social-emotional skills such as communication, problem solving, interpersonal skills, motivation, and positive attitude is often a bigger problem than a shortage of technical skills.

No educator went into the profession with the sole goal of producing good workers. But if our students cannot ultimately get jobs, thrive in the workplace, and contribute to a strong economy, we all lose.

How Can Schools Effectively Deliver Comprehensive SEL? This chapter has introduced you to the key practices that make up an effective, comprehensive approach to SEL, and each will in turn be covered in detail in the following chapters. But we must keep in mind that students cannot benefit from practices they do not receive. Implementation refers to whether and how practices are delivered in your classroom, school, or district. As important as it is to embrace good SEL practices, ultimately implementation is what will make or break positive outcomes for your students. Too often, schools get caught up in the “flavor of the month” trap, rapidly adopting a new program or initiative and then just as quickly moving on to something else. One side effect of this tendency is that nothing truly gets a fair chance to work, because high-quality implementation takes time and focused effort. Educators may be left simply waiting for one fad to be replaced by the next and are not surprised when the latest big idea fails to make a difference.

Even young people themselves say they need more support for social-emotional development to help them succeed. In a study conducted by researchers Jennifer L. DePaoli, Matthew N. Atwell, John M. Bridgeland, and Timothy P. Shriver (2018), less than half of recent high school graduates in the United States said they were prepared for success after high school or ready for a job or career. But that was not true across the board. Fully 80 percent of recent graduates from “strong SEL” schools felt they were prepared for a job or career, but that was true of only 8 percent of students from “weak SEL” schools. The students also highlighted the need for more SEL, with less than half of recently graduated high school students saying that their school did at least a pretty good job of helping them develop their SEL skills (DePaoli, Atwell, Bridgeland, & Shriver, 2018).

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Throughout this chapter, you’ve encountered the ingredients for SEL. What does successful implementation look like? Successful implementation of SEL ingredients includes six key elements: (1) putting together a distributed leadership team, (2) securing buy-in, (3) engaging in continuous improvement, (4) allocating protected time and resources, (5) gathering fidelity data and providing feedback, and (6) training and coaching. The following text briefly describes each of these implementation ingredients, and subsequent chapters discuss how to support specific SEL practices by leveraging each of these ingredients.

PUTTING TOGETHER A DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP TEAM The first and most important ingredient in the recipe for successful SEL implementation is a dedicated distributed leadership team. When putting together this team, choose a diverse team of both formal and informal leaders who can work collaboratively. The team should be charged with the following. •

Strategic decision making and action planning around the implementation of the specific SEL practices you’re seeking to put in place

•

Managing potential competing priorities and demands to maintain focus on a given implementation effort and avoid initiative overload and staff burnout

•

Supporting the collection and use of fidelity data to monitor implementation, problem-solve barriers to implementation, and

Educators should be working at both the district and school levels to ensure that students receive well-implemented SEL supports. School districts make SEL happen through aligning policies, resources, procedures, and practices. At a building level, implementation is most effectively supported by a distributed leadership team in the building that oversees implementation and embeds it in a continuous improvement process. Ultimately, you can be sure your school is effectively implementing SEL when you have data that indicate your educators deliver the practices with fidelity—all the active ingredients delivered as intended—and that demonstrate your students are increasingly able to meet the social and academic demands of school and more fully engage in and therefore benefit from their learning experiences.

THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

develop and put in place action plans that include strategies that target improving implementation

SECURING BUY-IN Gaining teacher buy-in is a prerequisite to successful implementation. Halfhearted delivery of SEL practices isn’t likely to be very effective. Buy-in means people understand why the practices are important and are committed to doing the work to make sure students get the high-quality SEL supports they need. Jumping into implementing a new program without bringing staff on board and ensuring buy-in is a recipe for weak delivery that doesn’t last. We can think of buy-in as readiness. When we use the term ready in everyday life (for example, “Are you ready for dinner?” or “Is the team ready for the game?”), what we are referring to is whether individuals are prepared. In an article for Implementation Science, researchers Christopher M. Shea, Sara R. Jacobs, Denise A. Esserman, Kerry Bruce, and Bryan J. Weiner (2014) describe readiness as “the extent to which organizational members are psychologically and behaviorally prepared to implement organizational change.” From an educational perspective, the question is whether staff demonstrate the commitment and willingness needed to motivate them to invest time and energy into implementing and continuously improving SEL practices over time. Psychological preparation means staff have the beliefs, attitudes, and motivation needed to put the SEL practices into action. These come about through intentional exposure to content and experiences that enable staff to learn about the benefits of the SEL practices, how educators like them are able to successfully integrate the SEL practices into their workflow, and why the SEL practices align with their values as educators. The following are ways to increase psychological preparedness among staff. •

Providing initial training on the SEL practices

•

Disseminating research briefs highlighting the evidence supporting certain SEL practices

•

Exposing staff to testimonials from other educators who emphasize the benefits of the SEL practices

Considering all of this, the distributed leadership team owns responsibility for implementation in the building and oversees the other ingredients in the recipe for implementation success.

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Arranging site visits to other schools already undertaking the implementation of certain SEL practices

•

Sharing stories from students and families about the reasons why the SEL practices are needed

Behavioral preparation is about developing a keen understanding of the actions that one will be expected to perform to implement an SEL practice with fidelity. This behavioral preparation comes through didactic training, rehearsal or practice opportunities, modeling, video simulations, and other ways in which people can internalize the actions they will be expected and supported to perform to implement chosen SEL practices. Educator buy-in will make or break an SEL initiative. A more detailed understanding of buy-in comes from Bryan J. Weiner, Cara C. Lewis, and Kenneth Sherr (2023), whose research indicates there are four components that drive motivational readiness to implement: (1) why the practices are needed, (2) positive expectations, (3) social proofs, and (4) self-efficacy. Why S E L Is Ne e de d

Buy-in is strengthened by a deep understanding of the reasons why integrating SEL practices into the fabric of educational programming will meet important student developmental needs and improve academic performance and school climate. If educators don’t believe that SEL practices will make a critical contribution, then they are likely to have low motivational readiness to implement. The effective approach to building a strong sense of why SEL is essential is to appeal to educators’ hearts and minds through a combination of data and stories. Leaders can use data to highlight how SEL practices can effectively meet student needs in ways proven to contribute to positive educational and developmental outcomes. For example, leaders could use data to show that 35 percent of students report that they don’t feel a sense of belonging and connection to their school. Educators want all students (100 percent) to experience a sense of belonging in school because they know it is a powerful driver of student well-being and achievement. Recognition that three out of every ten students, or nine students out of a class of thirty, do not feel like they belong heightens educator awareness of a need that intentional implementation of student-facing relationship practices can meet.

•

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Positive Exp e c t a tions

So cial Pro ofs

Social proofs are a compelling way to increase motivational readiness to implement, as they rely on the idea that people are heavily influenced by the behaviors and actions of others like them. Social proof refers to the tendency of individuals to conform to the actions and behaviors of others particularly when they are uncertain about what to do in a given situation. In an educational context, if you want to encourage educators to adopt a new teaching method, you can provide evidence or testimonials from other educators who have successfully implemented it. This demonstrates that behavior change is not only possible but also widely accepted and practiced by their peers, increasing the likelihood of adoption. Social proofs are also used to establish unwritten social norms and expectations that a given practice is what trusted and respected colleagues are investing in to achieve important outcomes for students. Knowing how many schools are implementing SEL can also help educators understand that engaging in SEL practices is the norm in education, not the exception. For example, in one large study, advisory firm authors Gates Bryant, Sean Crowley, and Caroline Davidsen (2020) find that more than 90 percent of K–12 schools and districts report they are working to support student SEL.

Educators are more likely to implement practices they believe will lead to positive outcomes for students and themselves. Positive expectations motivate behavior change. One way to boost positive expectations for SEL practices is to share scientific research on the effects of SEL. For example, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL; https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel /what-does-the-research-say) offers resources that highlight the consistently positive outcomes educators observe when schools implement SEL. By definition, evidence-based SEL practices should be supported by rigorous research studies demonstrating their positive effects. Sharing this evidence with educators delineates the outcomes they can expect if they commit to integrating and implementing evidence-based practices. Throughout this book, we’ve included evidence to support the ingredients of our SEL recipe. Stories or narratives from others are also a powerful way to cultivate positive expectations. This means bringing in the voices of students, other educators, and families about the benefits of SEL to help educators recognize the value of investing in SEL practices. Ultimately, positive expectations help educators believe that the benefits of SEL significantly outweigh the costs of the energy, effort, and time needed to bring SEL to life.

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Self- Effic acy

E N G AG I N G I N C O N T I N U O U S I M P R OV E M E N T Continuous quality improvement consists of systematic and persistent actions by the distributed leadership team that lead to measurable improvements in the delivery of SEL practices and student social, emotional, and academic outcomes. A process of continuous quality improvement recognizes the direct link between improved implementation of SEL practices and desired student outcomes. To ensure continuous quality improvement, your distributed leadership team must meet regularly to look at data and reflect on implementation. Your team can empower staff to work together more effectively to support students and improve outcomes by focusing on the following questions. •

How well are the educators in the building adhering to delivering the SEL practices as planned?

•

Are the educators delivering the right amount, or dosage, of each SEL practice?

•

Are educators delivering the practices in an engaging and effective way?

Self-efficacy has a direct impact on a person’s intentions and commitment to engage in specific behaviors. It reflects individuals’ confidence in their ability to engage in specific behaviors in the face of challenging or competing demands for their time and energy. This is why boosting educators’ self-efficacy is an important way to increase motivational readiness to implement. A number of strategies can help increase self-efficacy. For example, “Seeing is believing” means allowing educators to see particular practices in action to give them the confidence that they can replicate those practices. Protecting time on the front end to allow educators to think more deeply about how they can integrate SEL practices into their daily workflow can also boost confidence, especially when lack of time threatens selfefficacy. Also, knowing that coaching, mentoring, and modeling will be available to them throughout implementation helps increase self-efficacy by assuring educators that if they get stuck, they can get unstuck by tapping into resources available to them. Ultimately, self-efficacy is needed for educators to have the internal motivation and confidence that they can pull off integrating and implementing SEL practices along with the other things that are on their metaphorical plates.

THE RECIPE FOR STUDENT WELL-BEING

A L L O C AT I N G P R O T E C T E D T I M E A N D R E S O U R C E S School leaders show what they value by how they allocate precious staff time and school resources. If educators lack the time and supportive resources they need to competently implement new practices, it can sink your SEL initiative. To be successful, leadership will need to make it clear that SEL work is a priority, particularly by ensuring staff have protected time and resources to devote to the work. Protected time provides opportunities for educators to learn about, reflect on, and plan how to integrate specific practices into their regular routines. It also enables them to collaborate with their peers to problem-solve barriers to implementation. Being intentional about providing the financial and informational resources necessary to support implementation ensures that educators have what they need to deliver specific practices.

G AT H E R I N G F I D E L I T Y DATA A N D P R OV I D I N G F E E D B AC K Students can’t benefit from an intervention or practice that they don’t receive. However, it’s not realistic to expect educators to be immediate experts at implementing SEL practices, especially given that much of SEL falls outside the training teachers typically receive. One critical way to support effective implementation is by providing performance-based feedback on the quality of SEL supports teachers are providing and students are receiving. As teachers progress in their

During implementation, it is important to protect time for staff to come back together in groups to collaborate, reflect on implementation, and revisit plans around implementation. This collaboration could occur in established professional learning communities or grade-level, department, or whole-staff meetings. The aim is to dedicate collaborative time for staff to reflect on and incrementally improve the delivery of SEL practices to reach high fidelity. An example of a structured process leaders can use to facilitate collaboration among staff to drive continuous improvement is the plan-do-study-act cycle (Deming, n.d.). This cycle supports an implementation effort by helping staff to develop a plan to implement specific SEL practices, carry out the plan, observe and learn from the consequences of the plan, and determine what improvements should be made to the plan before putting them into action. Plan-do-study-act cycles are repeated over time to enable continuous improvement. Ensuring time is protected for staff to collaborate in such a structured way is an important ingredient to successful implementation.

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implementation, it’s important to gather and share data on how effectively they are delivering the SEL practices. This feedback will help teachers improve their practice over time and thereby increase the positive impact on students.

T R A I N I N G A N D C OAC H I N G Training and coaching are cornerstone implementation support strategies that help educators learn about and apply specific practices over time. One-and-done trainings are not enough to ensure high-quality implementation. Initial training provides an opportunity for staff to learn about and get motivated to apply SEL practices. It’s equally important to follow up training by providing coaching. Harness the expertise and experience of school or district staff or bring in expert, trained coaches who are dedicated to helping your educators get incrementally better at delivering specific practices with fidelity. Training and follow-up coaching address knowledge and self-efficacy gaps that otherwise undermine successful delivery of SEL practices. Quality training provides staff with knowledge of background information, theory, and philosophy,

One of the most important aspects of performance-based feedback is to gather data on the delivery of critical components of the practice (discussed in greater detail in chapter 6, page 163, in the context of SEL assessment). Gathering fidelity data requires capturing the core components of the practices that drive student outcomes, including how much the practice should be implemented (that is, what dose of the practice students should receive). Once leaders gather data using the fidelity tool, they use it to determine the degree to which students are receiving the practice in a way that is likely to promote better outcomes. Once leaders have gathered fidelity data, it’s important for them to figure out not only when they’ll present the data to staff but also how they’ll deliver the data as feedback. Performance-based feedback can be verbal (communication on which components teachers have implemented well and which components they are currently missing) or visual (graphs and images that depict how well and completely teachers have implemented various components). Performance-based feedback helps address a common barrier to successful implementation: thinking a practice is being implemented better than it actually is. Feedback based on objective data can clarify what is being done well and what needs improvement. Ultimately, finding nonjudgmental ways of providing feedback can help staff accurately understand how well they’re doing and incrementally improve their delivery of the SEL practices in ways that are likely to achieve desired student outcomes.

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Examining teacher training and coaching in an important early meta-analysis—a research study that combines the results of many individual studies—educators Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers (2002) indicate that even when training consisted of theory, discussion, demonstration, practice, and opportunities for feedback, few teachers transferred the practices with fidelity to the classroom. It was only when follow-up coaching was added that large gains were seen in knowledge and ability to demonstrate practices with fidelity in the classroom. Coaching, according to researchers Allison G. Kretlow, Nancy L. Cooke, and Charles L. Wood (2012), is characterized by an expert or experienced colleague providing a less-experienced educator with advice about or demonstrations of the new practices, as well as feedback on the implementation of the newly learned practices. Quality coaching is fundamentally a relational process that occurs in the context of supportive, trusting relationships. It is important for leaders to identify individuals either outside or inside the school who can build trusting relationships with staff and provide coaching support to staff who may be struggling with implementation.

Conclusion In this chapter, we addressed the what, why, and how of SEL. Our answer to the question “What is comprehensive SEL?” is a five-ingredient recipe: (1) SEL for adults; (2) safe, predictable, and positive environments; (3) positive relationships; (4) SEL curriculum and instruction; and (5) assessment. We also addressed why comprehensive SEL is important to student success in school and in life. Our SEL recipe is a powerful universal approach to increasing academic achievement and student and staff social-emotional competence and

the rationale behind the practices, and opportunities to practice new skills and receive feedback in a safe environment. Educator Jana Hunzicker (2010) explains that to enhance teachers’ ability to learn new skills, training must include “active” learning opportunities, or activities that engage teachers “physically, cognitively, and emotionally” (p. 6). Active learning includes problem-solving activities, sharing and discussion, simulations and role playing, observation of others modeling the practices, review of student or classroom scenarios, collaborative reflections, and physical movement. Quality training can be delivered in person, virtually, and synchronously or asynchronously. The aim is for the training to actively engage adult learners in a process of learning about the why, what, and how of SEL practices they ultimately are expected to implement.

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overall well-being. It also provides effective support to the many students impacted by trauma and chronic stress, can be an important part of equity work, and helps develop students who can contribute to a high-skill workforce.

Next Steps Pause and consider: What are the next steps for leveraging the information in this book to advance implementation of a comprehensive approach to SEL in your building?

Finally, this chapter addressed how educators can effectively collaborate and how leaders can support them in delivering these powerful SEL ingredients to students. A distributed leadership team needs to take ownership and guide and support SEL efforts—but, to be sure, SEL cannot succeed by issuing edicts: educators need to understand why SEL practices are important as well as buy into the work required to implement and continuously improve those practices. And that requires leaders to show they consider SEL a priority by allocating protected time and ensuring availability of the resources educators need to effectively implement the full range of SEL ingredients laid out in this book.

REPRODUCIBLE

Reflecting on the SEL Recipe •

Where is your school or district in its readiness to implement SEL? Do you need to work on increasing educator buy-in to SEL in your school or district? If so, how will you do that?

•

Do you have a multi-disciplinary team in place that can take a leadership role in your SEL initiative? Which school roles do team members represent?

•

Which ingredients of the SEL recipe do you anticipate focusing on first?

Consider the following questions as they relate to your school or district and the SEL recipe.

REPRODUCIBLE

If you are planning on implementation of an SEL curriculum, how will you ensure planned and protected time for lesson delivery?

•

Which aspects of the SEL recipe do you anticipate being most challenging for your school or district to implement?

•

What challenges have you run into or do you foresee in your school or district SEL implementation?

•

How would you explain the SEL recipe to others to help them understand the ingredients that combine to yield positive student outcomes?

•

REPRODUCIBLE

Planning for SEL Practices

Implementation Goal

Necessar y Steps

Key Dates

Establish a team responsible for leading implementation of SEL through putting in place supports that drive successful implementation.

Support educators’ recognition of the need or problem, understanding of the positive outcomes they can expect, perceptions that other trusted and respected educators are doing this work, and selfefficacy around their ability to implement SEL among other demands competing for their time.

Support active implementation through training and coaching, allocating protected time for collaboration, and monitoring and providing feedback on fidelity.

Use the following chart to consider practices to advance SEL implementation. In the space provided, note necessary steps involved in achieving each goal as well as key dates to remember aligned with implementation.

5 key ingredients for social, behavioral, and academic success

—Patrick Varro , Licensed Psychologist and Nationally Certified School Psychologist

READERS WILL: • Learn the five ingredients of effective social-emotional learning programs • Foster positive teacher-student and studentstudent relationships

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• Garner strategies and tools to establish, restore, and maintain social and relational harmony • Understand what to avoid and what to emphasize in social, emotional, and behavioral health

ISBN 978-1-951075-61-3 90000

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/SEL to download the free reproducibles in this book.

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• Implement a research-based curriculum that aligns with the values and culture of their school community

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