Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Curriculum

Coalitions that Adopted

Improving Children's Mental Health - Racine County

Strategy Type

School-based

Strategy Goal

Enhance the social-emotional (SE) development of elementary school students in the areas of Emotional Regulation and Social Awareness, so that social emotional learning (SEL) skills do not diminish over time.

Intended Population

3rd through 5th grade elementary school students in Racine Unified School District (RUSD).

Strategy Background

A child’s social-emotional (SE) skills are central to their healthy development and lay a foundation for well-being that influences their entire life. Research shows (PDF) the greatest factors to improve mental health outcomes for youth are early intervention strategies and policies that build a strong foundation, thus building resiliency and protective factors that reduce the probability of the risky behaviors that often lead to substance abuse or involvement in the criminal justice system. In Racine County, early intervention for social emotional learning (SEL) involved building on the existing curriculum to improve youth mindfulness through the addition of the Inner Explorer mindfulness program and the administering of the Panorama SE assessment. SEL can be defined as the development of self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills in students that benefit their academic, professional, and social future and allow them to better cope with everyday challenges.

Inner Explorer is a daily audio-guided mindfulness program, offered in both English and Spanish, designed to support mental health and well-being in school-aged youth. It takes approximately 10-minutes and promotes each of the five core competencies of SEL:

Self-Awareness;
Self-Management;
Social Awareness;
Relationship Skills; and
Responsible Decision-Making

The Panorama SE assessment is a validated survey that collects reliable data from youth to measure progress over time which can further be used to guide strategy. The Panorama tool is especially beneficial, because it provides data at the district level, school level, classroom level, and individual level. It also provides a playbook with 2-minute interventions to improve upon core competencies and whole lesson plans provided by other teachers who’ve found them effective.

The survey has been used with diverse student populations across the U.S., containing questions specifically designed for multiple age groups, and measures SE health along nine competency scales. Two scales were chosen for this strategy. The first, Emotional Regulation, is defined as how well students regulate their emotions. The second, Social Awareness, is defined as how well students consider the perspectives of others and empathize with them.

To supplement this curriculum, SE education courses for a child’s parents/caregivers were provided, as well as training for child-serving professionals. These educational opportunities provide parents with the skills to support SE development at home and teachers with the ability to design teaching strategies and cultivate classroom environments in a manner that promotes SE development more generally. At the organizational level, new policies have been embedded in local school districts that sustain parental education on SE health and require all RUSD elementary school child-serving staff to complete SE health professional development.

In short, early intervention for SEL should involve improving mindfulness in youth and can be complemented by educating parents and training child-serving professionals. Through the use of Inner Explorer and Panorama, one can develop an enhanced curriculum that supports SEL and provides students with the opportunities to develop better cognitive, social, and emotional skills that ultimately improve their behavioral health and mental well-being.

Did you know: RUSD is a nationally recognized school district considered as the gold standard for their ability to quickly implement and embed the Inner Explorer curriculum in their district?

Strategy

In order to successfully implement an SEL curriculum in your community, Improving Children's Mental Health - Racine County has listed the following core components to guide you. While these items were key to the coalition’s success in Racine County, you should consider what changes might be necessary based on the needs and behavioral health environment of your own community.

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Data Analysis

In order to secure any needed buy-in from key stakeholders, first analyze the data available in your community to identify whether there are any gaps and determine what the specific need is in the community. Frame your strategy within a specific age group, showing what curriculum improvements would address the need of that group. Be considerate and mindful of the work already being done on SEL and decide in coordination with the school whether that curriculum needs revision or revamping.

Tip: If you are unsure of your SEL curriculum options, you can start looking for ideas on your state’s Department of Public Instruction website or through gold standard programs, like the CASEL Program Guide and the Center for Promotion of Social Emotional Learning.

Develop Action Plan

The next step in implementing an updated curriculum involves the development of an action plan, which you can use as a guide to track progress and highlight moving parts of the strategy as they develop. This would include task responsibilities, deadlines, and action steps. This document will keep the team on track and maintain clear goals and expectations.

Curriculum Timeline Template (PDF)

Develop Evaluation Plan

Create your plan for evaluating the strategy’s progress over time, setting data measurements and goals for the curriculum’s implementation, allowing you to revise and improve upon aspects that aren’t working. Your first couple of years should focus on implementation, then transition to an outcome-based focus.

Racine Evaluation Model (PDF)

Garner Community Buy-in

To garner buy-in, start by engaging leaders within the school district to leverage local data and information you’ve analyzed that demonstrates the need for SEL curriculum, such as where your district is underperforming. Engage parents of school students and staff to provide their perspective on the state of student behavioral health, including barriers, needs and desires.

Youth Behavioral Health Data Continuum

Note: The growth of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey throughout the state can be extremely beneficial in accumulating community buy-in. Many schools are already coming around to the idea that mental health needs to be bolstered early in school, so try to leverage existing support within the district.

Develop Data Use Agreement

It is critical that you work with the school district administration to understand their data use agreement if one is in place. This will guide your strategy as you leverage various data points to secure further community and stakeholder buy-in.

Data Use Agreement Template (PDF)

Pilot Program

In order to pilot your strategy, focus your efforts on a school that has shown the most interest, need, and capacity for updated SEL curriculum. This allows you to test the feasibility of your program, while gathering data to showcase its efficacy. It further allows you to engage more stakeholders along the way, ultimately developing more buy-in.

Request Data

As the curriculum is piloted, request data from the school district in order to track progress toward your goal and inform changes to implementation. Further, this data can be turned around for key stakeholders to show progress and increase buy-in.

If you choose to implement either Inner Explorer or Panorama, you will have to request to access the data. Panorama data can be provided by the school district, while the request for Inner Explorer data must be made to the company.

Collect Qualitative Feedback

Coordinate feedback sessions for each quarter of the school year, allowing school support staff, teachers, educational assistants, and administrators to review documents, activities, and ideas surrounding the overall SEL curriculum. At each of these sessions, you should facilitate and provide administrative support, coordinating agendas, handouts, and other supplies needed for meetings. These sessions allow you to leverage the teacher’s voices and collect qualitative data, providing you the information needed to improve the program and leverage for further buy-in.

Feedback Group Application (PDF)
Feedback Group Announcement (PDF)

Showcase Results

Utilizing teacher testimonials from feedback groups and data collected from the pilot program, it’s crucial to showcase the curriculum’s progress to school district administration and key stakeholders in meetings, such as for strategic planning and budget planning. This builds on your ability to garner buy-in from the community and school leaders, and further benefits your ability to obtain direct financial support for the program.

Assessment One-Pager (PDF)

Tip: When determining the school to pilot the program, consider medium sized schools where there is no active leadership change occurring, staff turnover is low, the school counselor/social worker has an interest in mindfulness, and where the need to address behavioral issues is moderate.

Coordinate Long-term Contracts

Once you’ve garnered enough support from school district administration, you should focus on coordinating contracts between the SEL program(s) and school district to ensure the long-term viability and sustainability of the curriculum.

Set up Automated Payment Procedures

Set up funding mechanisms that make automated payments which are engrained in district fiscal policy. Through regular meetings with school administration, you should coordinate a policy that outlines the share of payment your organization will contribute each year, with the school district increasing its share over time to allow for a gradual budget impact. This will aid in fully embedding the curriculum within the district, ultimately increasing the sustainability of the strategy after you are no longer involved.

Note: The Coalition was able to assist RUSD with their fiscal policy and the long-term embedding of the curricula by paying for the first year, then reducing payment by 25% each year to allow for a gradual budget impact on the school district.

Develop Online Tracking System

You will likely have data coming in from multiple sources – individual schools, districts, and the SEL programs you work with. To streamline this data, you should create an online tracking system that combines all of this information, allowing you to measure progress over time and compare across schools. This process will further inform your effort to continuously improve the program based on annual review of trends.

The Coalition was able to assist RUSD with their fiscal policy and the long-term embedding of the curricula by paying for the first year, then reducing payment by 25% each year to allow for a gradual budget impact on the school district.

Challenges and Tactics to Address Them

Navigating successful strategy implementation can be complex, and obstacles may arise that set your plan back.

List of Challenges & Tactics

Every school you work with will have varying levels of experience with SEL, meaning some are more engaged than others. The following section includes common challenges faced when coordinating with local schools to implement an SEL program, like Second Step or Inner Explorer, and tactics recommended by the Collaborative for Children’s Mental Health to address them and pave the way for successful implementation.

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Lack of Engagement

Some schools or classrooms may have challenges in implementing the curriculum with fidelity. This has the potential to skew data or reflect a nonfunctional curriculum. To motivate teachers to conduct the program with fidelity, showcase the success other classrooms or schools have had through teacher testimonials. Another way to encourage participation is to hold raffles for the schools or classrooms who have completed the curriculum to a specific degree, with the winner receiving SEL materials for their classes.

Tip: This is also an opportunity to leverage the school administration’s Strategic Plan to assist teachers in how they can report out more effectively.

Shared Vision

Disagreements may arise over which SEL program to pursue. If the school already has a program in place, there may also be disagreement over whether to continue with that program or find something that works better. When there is a lack of shared vision, it is best to remain flexible, open-minded, and that you place the perspectives of the school district atop all others.

Data Collection

Often, you may experience delays in receiving data from the companies who operate the SEL programs or from the school districts themselves. Whether data use agreements change because of staff turnover or schools are apprehensive to release data, take a compassionate approach to using it. Always run your data use plan by your administrative contact within the school or district for an explicit sign-off each time you intend to use data. You must be flexible to the potential of these changes and understanding of the concerns schools have over their data security.

Tip: If you are conducting a survey, consider the timing in relation to other surveys as well as when attendance data is collected by the state. Be sure to conduct your survey after state attendance data is submitted in order to reflect as accurate a count as possible.

Moving from In-person to Virtual

In the event that in-person instruction is not possible, teachers will need to quickly adapt to virtual settings. When choosing your SEL curriculum, consider programs that can be easily administered online.

SEL Statistics

1,200+

school staff participants in over 3 years

5,000

participants across 179 events for parent education

86%

of parents agree or strongly agree their knowledge about SEL increased

Best Practices

Through the process of implementing their respective behavioral health strategies, each AHW-funded coalition recorded its lessons learned to help other organizations implement similar strategies in the future. Tried-and-true best practices also enhance the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes. The following section includes an insightful list of learned best practices the Improving Children’s Mental Health recommends other organizations employ to steer their strategy towards successful implementation.

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Adapt to Curriculum

If schools already have an SEL curriculum in place, avoid overburdening them with new and additional material; instead, focus on improving the work already being done. Spend time evaluating the current curriculum to identify its weaknesses, then base your strategy around filling those needs.

Feedback Groups

Holding quarterly feedback group sessions throughout the school year allows you leverage teacher voices to collect qualitative data. It is best to provide school staff with an application to develop their own small groups of 4-6 that will commit to these quarterly sessions.

Feedback Group Application (PDF)
Feedback Group Announcement (PDF)

Reach Out for Assistance

If the SEL program you use in the curriculum isn’t resonating with classrooms, consider reaching out to the company for assistance to see how they can adapt to better fit your needs.

Panorama is a very adaptable program which can be flexible in suiting your community’s needs. Different schools may be looking to address different core competencies and serve specific demographics – this is something Panorama is able to adapt to in order to assist in reaching your SEL goals.

Culturally Appropriate Curriculum

Take the needs of your community into account when deciding where to focus your efforts, to ensure the curriculum is culturally appropriate and relevant to the times. Not every core competency to SE development applies to every group demographic the same and some programs will be outdated. Some children might need more focus on relationship skills while others require more focus on responsible decision-making.

Curate an Adaptable Curriculum

Be sure to choose an SEL program that can be conducted both in-person and virtually to avoid delaying the SE growth of students in the event that virtual instruction is needed.

Highlight Strengths

In anticipation of meetings with school district administration where data is reviewed, consider that not every data point is going to look favorable, especially in the early stages. If you’ve already seen success in implementing the curriculum in other schools, plan to showcase that success to highlight the benefits of improved SEL curriculum.

Pilot Program Evaluations

While one school is piloting your curriculum, it’s important to provide an evaluation survey, asking teachers their views on usage of the programs in their classroom. The weight a teacher’s opinion carries is insurmountable in influencing change in schools. You should use the data provided in these teacher evaluations to justify the next steps in your strategy – whether that be expanding the program or revising it.

Continuing Education for School Staff

Professional development opportunities for school staff provides them the knowledge to design teaching strategies, classroom environments, and interactions with students that improve youth SE health. Students in classrooms with SE competent teachers are better able to manage conflict and emotions, develop intrinsic motivation, cooperate with peers, and communicate effectively with others.

Parental Education Opportunities

Increasing opportunities to learn about childhood SE development for parents of 4K-5th grade students creates a link between the home and schools and provides parents the skills to foster further SE development in their children.

Tip: If parental education opportunities are already occurring, take stock of what’s being offered by each school and find opportunities to assist.

Teacher Evaluations

Requesting open-ended survey responses and holding interviews with teachers provides them the opportunity to share feedback that reveals the pros and cons to the curriculum, allowing you to improve upon it going forward.

Constant Communication

A regular communication cadence with school teams is best in order to make decisions about programs, evaluations, data needs, program and training needs, and more. Being in constant communication with the schools reflects that you are always looking to help, especially when issues and challenges arise.

Inner Explorer was initially piloted in just one RUSD school, but due to overwhelmingly positive feedback from staff, the entire district funded its implementation in all elementary schools. The district has seen the highest level of Inner Explorer implementation across all districts in the United States.

Resources Needed

An understanding of the broad time and financial costs involved in the implementation of an SEL program will assist in determining team member roles and responsibilities within your organization and prevent unexpected delays or shortages that could hinder progress. Whether financial or time-based, successful adoption of the programs will incur costs, such as marketing, meeting coordination, and data evaluation. The following is a breakdown of the costs that can generally be expected when planning and implementing an SEL program.

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Programming and Outreach Costs

Social Media ads
Mailings

Time Commitments

Marketing and Outreach: 5-15 hours/week
Coordination Support: 20-25 hours/week
Evaluation: 40 hours/week
- Development of Evaluation Tools
- Data analysis and Reporting
- Feedback Collection
- Presenting Results