 Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today for this one hour webinar. My name is Sarah Creechman and I'm the Founder and Executive Director of Transforming Education or TransformEd for short. At TransformEd, we partner with schools and districts to support educators in fostering the development of the whole child so that all students, particularly those from underserved populations, can thrive. I'm also joined today by my co-facilitator, Hannah Milnick, who's a research analyst and Policy Advisor at Learning Policy Institute or LPI. LPI conducts and communicates independent research to improve education policy and practice to advance equitable and evidence-based policies. Today we'll talk a little bit about the benefits and challenges of integrating social emotional and academic learning in the classroom. We'll hear also from the panel of practitioners from across the country about how they're supporting teachers to create socially, emotionally, and academically rich learning environments. I'll kick us off with a brief overview of the research that supports integrating social emotional learning, or SEL, with academics. Then Hannah Milnick from LPI will present findings from a recent case study that focuses on integrating SEL into teacher preparation. And following Hannah's presentation, our three panelists will share their perspectives on the topic of social-emotional and academic learning in the classroom. So we'll hear from Jennifer Conception, a teacher at Lakewood Tech EQ in Sunnyvale, California, Colleen Galvin-Laby, an SEL instructional coach at Boston Public Schools, and Kayla Morse, the manager of teaching and learning at Edvestors. After that, we'll open it up for a discussion with our panelists based on the questions submitted by all of you. And as a reminder, if you have any questions for the panelists, you can use that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit those at any point during the session, and we'll address as many of those as we can when we get to the discussion portion. If you want to engage with other attendees in discussion, you can use the chat button also at the bottom of your screen and type in that chat box there. So without further ado, let's start with a quick overview of the research that supports integrating social-emotional learning, or SEL, with academics. So over the past few years, the National Commission on Social-Emotional and Academic Development, or SEED, which was housed at the Aspen Institute, convened dozens of leading researchers and educators, and Aspen mystifies the key takeaways from decades of literature on psychology, neuroscience, human development, and related fields. Meanwhile, LPI and several of their collaborators were working to articulate what we know about the science of learning and development. Both groups came to basically the same conclusion that the cognitive, social, and emotional parts of our brain are inextricably linked with one another. And another way to say that is really that all learning is social and emotional. So the research is clear on this point. When we engage students as whole people, when we design learning environments that acknowledge the interconnectivity of those various parts of the brain, then students are more likely to succeed academically and more likely to thrive in college, career, and life. When students feel safe, their cognitive energy can be directed towards learning instead of towards that fight-or-flight response that we all default to when we feel unsafe. And when learning is connected to students' social or emotional experience, whether through strong relationships or because the content itself feels relevant to students' own lives and identities, then students are more likely to engage deeply and more likely to retain that learning over time. Now, this is true for all students and it's even more salient for students who are struggling in some way. Students who have learning differences, students who feel marginalized socially, those who have experienced trauma, and so on. Here's a quote from the Science of Learning and Development Initiative that kind of sums up the research here. The developing brain expresses its fullest potential when affective, cognitive, social, and emotional development are intentionally integrated. Education designed for this kind of integrated, comprehensive developmental experience will accelerate student learning, skill development, and the expression of each child's potential. At Transformad, we've worked with schools and districts that serve over a million students across 20 states. And almost all of our partners have said some version of the following. We've seen the research, it's really compelling. We want to act on it, but how? How do we integrate social-emotional development with academic and cognitive development? Now, there are a lot of resources out there for how to do SEL, quote, unquote. But most of them are not well-integrated with students' cognitive and academic development. And there are some curricula that do integrate academic and social-emotional development, but by definition, those curricula are specific to a particular grade or subject area. And so we felt that there was a gap in the field. So my team at Transformad created an SEL integration approach that aims to be a bit more universal. So our SEL integration approach provides high-level guidance for educators on how to embed social-emotional development with academic learning in the day-to-day classroom. It's flexible enough to be adapted to a variety of grade levels and content areas across K to 12. And it incorporates the latest research on social-emotional development, as well as the science of learning, and the core tenets of strong pedagogy overall. So it's not a curriculum, it's not a thing you buy. It's really a way of thinking about good teaching that acknowledges the interconnections between the cognitive, academic, and the social-emotional aspects of development. Now this can be used in conjunction with an existing SEL framework, because it's really about the instructional strategies we use in the classroom, not the specific social-emotional competencies that we're supporting students in developing. So whether you use the CASEL-5, the US Department of Education's employability skills, the SEED Commission's new framework, or something else, all of those tend to focus on the what. What competencies do we want young people to call today? Our integration approach really works with all of these and focuses on the how. How do we integrate SEL into the classroom day to day, integrated deeply with academics? So let's walk through the approach together. The basic idea is that in any classroom on any given day, an educator needs to be thinking about all six of those different components in order to effectively integrate SEL with academics. So we start in the top left and then move clockwise. We know that great educators often begin by building a supportive classroom environment, an environment that's conducive to learning, a space where students feel safe and supported and connected to one another. And that goes hand-in-hand with strong relationships. As relationships between educators and students and also students and their peers really help set the tone in the classroom. Next, we have explicit instruction around social-emotional and metacognitive skills. That might happen through a formal curriculum or through more discreet lessons that get pulled into academic coursework at the right moment. Now explicit instruction is where we're naming specific social-emotional competencies and we're talking about what is that competency, why does it matter and how do we really develop it? This explicit instruction piece is what a lot of people jump to when they hear SEL, but it's really just one component of the whole picture as you see here. So if we continue clockwise, we also need to think about how we as adults are modeling these skills for students. We say that social-emotional skills are both taught and copped. So setting a positive example in the classroom and throughout the school day is really important. Finally, we wanna make sure that students have opportunities to practice these skills. So one type of practice opportunity happens in pre-planned ways that are deeply embedded with the academic tasks. So for example, we might use a group project as a way to intentionally practice social skills at the same time as students are working on academic content. But another type of practice comes through those teachable moments that inevitably arise in the classroom. That might be a student getting frustrated with an academic task or a conflict between peers or something else. So what does all this look like in the classroom? Recently, one of my colleagues was visiting a school and the teacher said, I'm sorry that you're here today. Yesterday, I was doing SEL, but I'm not doing SEL today. And I was struck by this comment because given everything we just talked about, that is the deep connections between social-emotional development and academics and what's going on in the classroom day to day, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to say that we're doing SEL one day, but not the next. And ultimately, I think this teacher wasn't giving herself enough credit. What she meant, of course, was that she wasn't doing explicit instruction on social-emotional skills that day, but she was doing SEL in a number of other ways. She was creating a supportive classroom environment. She was modeling strong social skills for her students. She was giving students opportunities to practice goal-setting in the context of the academic work that they were doing and so on. So I think the best way to really bring this to life is through concrete examples from the classrooms of expert educators. That's why we asked our three panelists to join us today to tell us more about what integrated social-emotional and academic development looks like in their schools and districts. So before we get to the panel, I'm excited to turn it over to Hannah Melnick of Learning Policy Institute, or LPI. Her recent case study on Lakewood Tech captured this idea of integrating social-emotional and academic development so well. So we'll hear a bit more about that for Hannah now. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much, Sarah, for that introduction. I am, as she said, Hannah Melnick in the Learning Policy Institute. And recently, my colleague Lorea Martinez and I conducted a case study of how social-emotional learning is being implemented in a couple of teacher preparation programs in California. We, similarly to Sarah, had heard that there's just a real hunger out there to learn about the how of SEL integration with academics and other parts of the school day. And so Lorea and I set out to study what a couple of programs were doing. And one of those programs is at Lakewood Elementary, now called Lakewood Tech EQ. It's an elementary school in the Silicon Valley in California. And we chose to study it because it has an explicit focus on social-emotional learning. It's a very diverse school. And they were in the midst of doing some teacher training for the whole school related to SEL implementation. So we spent several days on site at Lakewood Elementary interviewing and doing focus groups with teachers and administrators and most importantly, observing in the classrooms to see what was actually happening. And what we were really struck by was the way in which Lakewood teachers and staff were integrating SEL into the fabric of the school. They teach SEL explicitly, especially at the beginning of the year. But when you walk into a classroom, you see SEL really intentionally embedded in their work. This graphic, which is a part of a graphic that's in the full report that Lorea and I wrote is give some examples of what it looks like in the classroom when teachers are integrating SEL and kind of builds on the framework that Sarah already introduced. So let's zoom into a couple of examples of what we saw. One thing we noticed was that students develop relationship skills such as communication and collaboration through structured group work. When Lorea and I walked into a fifth grade classroom at Lakewood, we saw this in action. There were fifth graders were wrapping up a project on regions of the world. And when we were there, they were watching themselves in small groups on their laptops, having done a group presentation recently that was videotaped. And we saw a group of three boys, for example, grading themselves and each other on a rubric, looking at how well they had demonstrated knowledge, made eye contact with the audience, worked together. And they were actually being pretty tough on themselves saying, yeah, we demonstrated some knowledge but we could have done better in this way that took a level of self and social awareness that it was unexpected. And not surprisingly, probably to you, those skills were taught by the teacher. So we also noticed at Lakewood that teachers identified the social and emotional competencies needed for academic work and then incorporated them into the lesson plan. So an example of this fifth grade lesson, the teacher has spoke to us afterwards and said, actually in the beginning of the year, her students had really struggled to work together as a team to communicate with one another. And so she had taken time out of the day to build those team skills, to model positive communication through short fun activities. And it really showed in the academic work that students were doing. So what does it take for a school to not just teach SEL here and there but to really integrate it into their daily practice? I'm gonna speak to three components and then our fantastic panelists can give some specific examples. So one thing that was really important in Lakewood's context was principal leadership. Here in this photo, you see Pam Chang, Lakewood's principal and they're really lucky to have her for many reasons. But one is that she deeply understands the importance of social and emotional learning and has made an explicit commitment to it, to her staff, to the students and to their families. For example, as Jen can speak to, one of our panelists is a teacher at Lakewood. They have made an SEL part of the school's mission. Pam is also very explicit in giving her teachers permission and time to take, for SEL, especially at the beginning of the year, but then throughout. Not all teachers feel like they have permission to take time from academics to teach SEL, even though they are deeply integrated. And then finally, Pam puts her money where her math is, is a principal. She allocates training and resources to SEL. And I should say too that the Sunnyvale School District has been extremely supportive in providing those resources and making sure that SEL is a priority. So another critical aspect to how Lakewood has come to have a very strong focus on social and emotional learning is its teacher leadership and training. That came through very clearly at Lakewood when we were in conversations with folks there. It's a lot of the work started with some teacher leaders who were intentionally implementing social and emotional learning in their classes as individuals, and the principal took note. Connected those teachers with some training, specifically for cooperating teachers, those teachers who mentor student teachers in their pre-service. And that training was provided by the Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child. Workshops, the cooperating teachers were able to attend workshops while their student teachers covered their classes. And they were discussing like a framework for thinking about SEL integration, the brain science behind it. They workshop strategies for using in their classrooms and how things were going over time. And what started to happen was that they were able to start sharing those practices with other staff at the school who were in the training through various leadership opportunities, through their grade level team meetings, through professional development allocated for sharing strong practices throughout the school. And by 2016, the whole school staff was actually very interested in learning more. Whereas some had maybe started skeptical about SEL, they had seen that it was working in some of these classes. And so they adopted whole school training similar to the cooperating teacher training, also by the Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child. And that has really formalized the work that they're doing and created a common language across the school. So finally, I think it's very important to note that all the work that is being done at Leekwood has really had a focus on adult social and emotional learning first. They recognize that staff perceptions about themselves and their students affect teaching and learning. And so in trainings, teachers are really focused in other staff on examining their biases. Individualized coaching is provided with a focus on SEL. They have district coaches, some of whom are trained in SEL and some of whom are participating in Leekwood's current staff training on social and emotional learning so that whether a coach is observing for behavior or math, they are looking at the social and emotional competencies needed to support students in that lesson. And finally, staff wellbeing is really seen as integral to teachers being able to support students socially and emotionally. So the principal and the district staff has focused on SEL as a teacher retention strategy. They're connecting teachers to one another through mental health bodies system. For example, they have adult communication norms to really practice what they preach. So I could give many more examples, but I think it's best if we let the teacher, the practitioners on our panel elaborate. So I'm gonna have now to Sarah who will introduce them. Thank you, Hannah. That was really helpful grounding in the research and in that case study of Leekwood in particular. So we're excited to have three panelists who can share a little bit more, including Jennifer Concepcion from Leekwood. Jennifer is a kindergarten teacher at Leekwood Elementary or Leekwood Tech EQ as it's now known in Sunnyvale, California. She's taken on a variety of leadership roles throughout her career, such as a PVIS lead, a school board member, a cooperating teacher for Stanford and San Jose State University and a consultant for the Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child. We also are joined by Colleen Galvin-Laby, who is an SEL instructional coach at Boston Public Schools. And Colleen's been an educator for 17 years, holds five professional licenses, K to 12 in Massachusetts. She's currently pursuing an administrator's license and Colleen is dedicated to advancing education practices that foster social-emotional development and cultural competence in school communities. Finally, we're also joined by Kayla Morse, who's the manager of teaching and learning at Edvesters. Kayla's a fierce equity warrior for liberating mathematics, teaching and learning. And she sees mathematics as a vehicle to build social-emotional skills. Kayla's served as an elementary teacher, a teacher leader and a math facilitator also in Boston Public Schools. So our attendees submitted some really thoughtful questions when they registered for this webinar. So I'd like to kick it off with a few of those and as a reminder to everybody on the line today, please feel free to submit additional questions for this discussion that we're opening up now, just using the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen. We'll address as many of those as we can. So to kick us off, several attendees have asked, what does SEL integration look like in your school or in schools you work with? Can you give us some concrete examples? So Jennifer, I'd love to turn to you first to get us started. Thanks, Hannah did a great job giving us a lot of details about my school, but she's definitely right. We started off with our partnership actually with the Center of Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child and it was a few teachers that started developing their SEL lens and we became basically the leaders of the SEL integration. And I mean, it took a lot of buy-in and a lot of time, but when our staff started to see the benefits of SEL practices and the SEL lens, we started to integrate like a few things every year. And it was great to have Pam, our principal who's like very supportive and she allowed us time to coach in classes to give ideas how people observe us using SEL in the classroom. But like for example, our first thing that we started was common corners. Every classroom in our school has a common corner where kids can practice how to do communication, how to be self-aware of their feelings. And that was really helpful for the first year to just have kids practice what they're learning from our SEL lessons. And then the next year, we just did a lot more lessons on both mindset and very explicit about changing our vocabulary, using the power of yet, things like that. And so changing not only the staff's vocabulary and how we address challenges, but also how the kids see challenges and how they persevere. And then after we did growth mindset, we started doing mindfulness practices after recess where kids can calm down. And just seeing mindfulness as kind of an intervention to prevent anything that's coming from recess, coming back into the classroom, how we can calm that down and get kids' minds ready for learning. And then this year, we have a really strong focus on morning gestures and learning meetings where we can really get to know the students and those relationships and see each student as kind of an individual and avoid those like generalizations and biases and also examining our biases. And so along the last four years, we've been having a lot of explicit PDs, especially for us as a staff, because like Hannah mentioned, it's really important for the staff to be modeling all of these things to the students. And you can't teach SEL if you're not taking care of yourself and practicing it yourself. So that was really crucial. And I think that our P by S team, which eventually became the SEL support for our staff was really helpful in this implementation because our staff felt like they had someone to go to if they felt like they didn't know how to do SEL in their classroom. So there is about a group of four or five of us that would be the people that they go to. And they're like, I have a problem with sharing in my classroom. Do you have any ideas? Or I noticed that my students are having a hard time communicating. Do you have any lessons that you can share with us or can we come observe you? So it made it a lot less intimidating. And it seems like a community effort to be integrating SEL in our school. Thanks, Jennifer. That's really helpful to hear. Colleen, can we go to you next? Hello, hi. So very similar. I think I'm a little bit different because I work in a lot of different schools. So I see that it definitely looks different. Every school has its own culture, its own climate. But some concrete examples of what SEL integration looks like include school-wide goals of SEL. So in Boston Public Schools, we have SEL standards. So even schools who are not necessarily implementing an explicit curricula can use standards either as the school-wide goals as around like an instructional focus with say a different standard focus each month. And then in classrooms, teachers spend time integrating SEL goals using standards that are based around the competencies to integrate into their academic lessons. One school in particular, the entire school, kindergarten through eighth grade, part of the instructional focus is around writing. So during common planning time, each team of teachers uses the SEL standards to integrate an SEL goal that has to do with either collaboration or working with a diverse group of partners. And that's part of it's built into whatever assessment is going to be at the end of that culminating task to show what they know in writing and the SEL goal. So it's pretty powerful and certainly integrated. The schools that I work with also have an SEL leadership team. So there are many different indicators, much like what is shown on the transforming head. You know, it's about building that climate and culture, integrating signature practices around SEL that also coincide with how we know adults and children learn, right? Creating predictable patterns in the classroom, opportunities for children to listen to one another and speak to one another, thoughtful modeling and certainly a commitment by the school leaders to invest in resources. And most especially, time and space for the adults to learn through professional development. Thanks, Colleen. Kayla, how about you? What does SEL integration look like in the school that you work with? Yeah, so just like Colleen, with the zeroing in on math initiative at Vesters, we work across several schools throughout Boston. So we work deeply with seven schools where we provide off-site coaching to our math teachers and our principals. And also they come to us throughout the year for professional development. And so when integrating social-emotional learning, we have to first recognize that our students and teachers are not blank-slate. They come in with experiences, beliefs, and expectations about what teach family learning looks like. And we believe that you can't completely teach content without examining how you experience things as a learner. So when we look at it through that lens, we design our professional development because we are a math-focused initiative. We do math all the time, but the way we focus on social-emotional learning is we reflect on what did that feel like as a learner? Talking to our teachers grade K through A, and also what felt successful, what made you feel anxious? What was helpful in the learning of my facilitation or what was not helpful in that facilitation? And so we step back from doing the math and actually think about what it feels like as a learner because all of our experiences impact how students experience us as teachers. We also have our teachers and principals go through what we call a math autobiography, where they give us a history of their learning or their history of being math learners. And so thinking about kind of what are the things that impact when I go into a classroom, what do I value, what am I looking for? What's going to make me anxious? How do I think? How do I problem-solve? First, taking that metacognitive look and also that self-awareness is the first step in how we started integrating social-emotional learning into our professional development and even our coaching of teachers on site at school. Thanks, Kayla. So we have a lot of people who are interested in the implementation challenges. And I was thinking, maybe Colleen, we could start with you. We have one person in particular who is asking about how to overcome misconceptions about what social-emotional learning is amongst staff. Yep. So that's a great question and I get this question all the time. So again, it really does have to start with the adults, right, and much like Kayla was just mentioning, there are already experts in the building. However, everybody has, there's different access points, right, for each adult learner as well. So there really does have to be an investment in professional development for the staff as a community of learners first. And I would say that's probably one of the most important things in order to address, you know, misconceptions or what it is, right? Because some people think it's just about an SEL curriculum where we're saying that's just one piece of what an integrated approach looks like. It's one piece of it. I think the other implementation challenge is certainly, you know, even once you get some buy-in and people on board and some learning and belief, there's certainly enough research now. We're very lucky, you know, we know that it works when it's done effectively and implemented as a staff and as a school community. So implementing it in the classroom can only happen when we give time and space for collaboration and opportunities for the adults to practice and learn. Otherwise, you know, it's people are out on an island by themselves and, you know, we all have seen those magical classrooms like what are they doing down there? Being able to share best practices within the building, much like we visit classrooms to learn about guided reading or writing or a math focus, you know, to have those inquiry cycles that include new practices really important for the adults in the building to be able to learn and grow. Because again, everybody has a different access point and different areas of expertise. And when it's looked at like that, it also can uplift the community professionally. Jennifer, I know you've had some implementation challenges too, and so you've been working with some of the issues that Colleen mentioned. Can you speak a little bit about what that's been like at Lakewood? Jennifer, I think you're muted. Oh, sorry. Say again, thank you. When I started implementing FDL, I was probably one of three teachers on staff. I was doing staff because we were part of the cooperating teachers working with us and are reaching and teaching the whole child. And I definitely had colleagues looking at me going, like, oh my goodness, there goes Jen's class crying in the corner or she's letting them have extra time to communicate. And I was just like, oh my gosh, you guys don't know the importance of this. But when they started seeing how my students reacted to each other and how their relationship felt, a lot of teachers started asking questions and like, oh, how did she get the students to solve their own problems? Or why didn't she, the one outside solving the problems for the kids, they're doing it on their own? And that was just like really assuring for myself and my other colleagues, my other two colleagues that were doing these things. And then my principal started noticing and she was like, well, maybe we should start implementing this. And this is when we were starting to talk about what focus we wanted as a school because now we're a school of choice. So then that's when we came up with our focus of tech and FDL integration because we realized that FDL isn't just in person, it's also using technology. So that's when we explicitly started having PDs with the whole staff. And then we also made it so that the leaders were actual colleagues and not coaches because then the teachers didn't feel as intimidated to ask for help. They're like, I could just ask my neighbor, like, how did you handle this? Or can you give me an idea for how to teach communications in a presentation project with groups? So it didn't feel like it was coming from the top down but someone that was at their level that was struggling with them. So I thought that that, I mean, you have to be patient. It took a few years for people to be like, okay, what you're doing is not a waste of time but an intervention for all kids, not just the kids are, you know, struggling with the high fliers. It's actually benefiting the whole class but it definitely took a lot of just like teachers seeing the benefits of FDL. And then the principal finally being like, oh, this is great, I love this stuff. There's people that want to coach, people that want to teach, people that want to share. And then that made the community a lot stronger. Yeah. Thank you. And Kayla, you work with a variety of people. What are the common challenges that you've seen? Yeah, especially working in a specific content like mathematics. A common belief out there is mathematics is the one content area that is the exception for integrating FDL. And I totally disagree with that statement. And that I think is the biggest implementation challenge is sending the message that math is not just about calculating and getting right answers. And that I would even go further to say that it's not just about solving rigorous problems. It's a lot about like looking for entry points and thinking about as a learner, what do I know about this so far? Where have I seen this before? How can I enter into this problem? And we think about castle social emotional competencies that's directly linked to self awareness. And if you think about like, if I started to solve one of these rigorous problems and I am working towards it and then something about it's not right, I need to course correct. And a lot of times I talk to many teachers they'll say like a student started this and they knew it was wrong, but they just complete, they just went on with their trajectory of solving. And a lot of times that comes because students don't have the self management skills. So like when I started something, if this is not correct, I need to change my path or my what we call our solution pathway. And so making that explicit for students and that's an example of just self management as well. But we make this explicit for students. I was with a couple of teachers that have a problem solving routine in their class. That's not just like, underlining the keywords, figure out the operation. It's pretty much like read the problem. Where have I seen this before? If I haven't seen something quite like it, what does this remind me of? So it really forces students to pause and think about what are my connections here? And to think about where have I found success here before? And then also like if I have a solution pathway to always check on solving, does it still make sense? Is it still getting me to my intended solution? And if not, it's okay to change it. And I worked with a teacher last year who had just posted her goal for her class with how to, when students are stuck, how are you independent in getting yourself unstuck? And I saw students referencing that problem solving routine that was posted on the wall throughout the entire year. And even when I would ask them, what are you working on there? Like I tried this and then I realized it didn't work. So I know that I need to try something else. And just like it was mentioned before that some of these skills like yes or caught because some of them have to be taught and slowed down and surfaced for students. I mean, sometimes generalize it in the math community is like checking your work, but we need to get in the habit of while students are working that they're constantly thinking about their problem solving. And so the biggest challenge that I've had so far is like how to raise some of those skills that often seem invisible or that are just happening to teachers that they're explicit and how do we teach into those for students and make them explicit, put them on the wall, make them a part of your learning objectives for the day. And just as Jennifer said, like at first, it might be a little shaky, but then you'll start to see the fruit of that labor and start to see your students as independent problem solvers, independent learners, which I think is one of the key outcomes to doing the social emotional learning work. That's great. So much of what all three of you have said just really resonates. You know, I hear bits and pieces that are thematic across all of those around building buy-in and doing the explicit instruction, but also making sure that students have chances to practice that in real and applied ways. So thanks for those really concrete examples. We've gotten a handful of questions that kind of get at cultural responsiveness and racial equity and SEL. So Emily put it this way, how can educators explicitly teach social and emotional competencies in a way that builds on the lived experiences, strengths and assets that students bring from their homes and communities in the classroom? Colleen, can we start with you on that one? Yeah, sure. I know someone else is going to talk about Zoretta Hammond's text, but I really can't say it's cultural responsive teaching in the brain. I do highly recommend that as a resource. I think all adults that work with children should read it. That's just my own opinion. So when we're thinking about social and emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching, you know, where they really intersect is really about the relationship, right? Or what Zoretta Hammond calls social learning partnership. Everything we do as educators, in order for it to be effective, whether you're working and coaching adults or you're working with children, if there is no trust, it's not going to work. It's nothing's going to happen. So building the relationship is the most important thing. And just like we would teach anything, you know, you need to know the background of the students. You need to be able to build on the assets of language and culture in your classroom and the gifts that each child brings. That's what makes teaching so fun and exciting and also different every year. You know, curriculum is curriculum and it's great to use as a guide, but it's around the skill of the teacher is what makes anything culturally responsive. But whatever the teacher is teaching, that teacher has to have those skills really build in time to get to know each child that they're teaching or each adult that they're working with. And in that way, they learn about their assets of language and culture and how best do those children or adults learn. And that's where the real work lies. But again, the intersection between culturally responsive teaching and social and emotional learning is all about the relationships. Thanks, Colleen. Kayla, do you wanna add some thoughts on this? I know it's a topic you have thought a lot about. Yes, and I totally agree with everything that Colleen said about Zoretta Hammond's but culturally responsive teaching in the brain that has anchored a lot of our work with our teachers in the last couple of years. In the way culturally responsive teaching at SELR connected is they both require as Colleen said, introspection for both the teacher and then the student. And they both challenge the status quo about what learning looks like and that affirms that all of us have to commit to learning and even unlearning what we think teaching and learning looks like. And specifically in the work that we do around culturally responsive teaching and mathematics, as Colleen said, it's all about the learning partnership. And I know we're taking a deeper dive in that chapter of Zoretta Hammond's book with a subset of teachers this year about what it means to give five feedback conferences and asset-based conferences with students. And oftentimes when we look at our data across our schools, we often see a subset of students that aren't progressing at the same rate as other students. And when we sit down and talk to those students, they already have said, oh, I'm not a great math student. And this is in third grade, third and fourth grade. They're already counting themselves out as mathematicians. And so the work that we're doing with that subgroup of teachers is looking at the role of feedback in basically affirming the mathematical identity of a student. And so you can affirm a math identity of a student without releasing them from whether something is right or wrong because there are different ways of showing up mathematically that's not about calculating correctly. Like if I can look at something and easily see the pattern and try to generalize that pattern, like that is a mathematical attribute. And also if I tried something and it didn't work the first time and I come up with another solution and or I can critique the argument of someone else, these are all mathematical practices and attributes that we don't often affirm. A lot of times we affirm, we usually say, good job for showing your work or good job at getting that answer. Sometimes we don't quickly. And so sometimes we're affirming things that have very little to do with what real mathematicians do in the real world. And so our work is looking at how can we make sure it's specifically for our students that sit on the territory of the learning academically and socially, how can feedback be something that happens multiple times a week that they're getting affirmed to them that they are a mathematician and specific in how that works. And also Zoretta Hammond has this quadrant. So if you're not able to read the whole book, she and the learning partnership piece is just one part of the quadrant. But another part of the quadrant is about community building and growth. And a lot of times we think about students are affirmed in their math identity by teachers, but a lot of it happens student to student. Students can already perceive who's smart in the room or who is deemed as an mathematician or not a mathematician. And so we work with our teachers also and like how can we promote every student as being a valuable contributor in the math space and doing it genuinely sincerely because students often can tell when it's just happening just because but how can we really change the notion of who is smart and who has status in the math classroom by changing what we affirm in our classrooms. And so they're all interconnected and I would say if I had to choose one resource about how to dig deeper, it's a short read, valuable across content. She has a literacy background, but as a math educator myself, I saw so many connections in the work. Resounding praise for the same resource from both of you. So that's a good tip, right? Jennifer, I wanna turn to you here. I know you've talked a little bit about the training that your staff got. And I'm curious if that connected to cultural competence or even to what Colleen described is that the piece around figuring out how to build relationships because that's a core element here. Yeah, we actually just recently had a PD probably two weeks ago and it was about basically identifying your own narrative and being aware of like your own, what you come with in the classroom, your own biases and also encouraging us to do this with our students. And a lot of the teachers were a little bit uncomfortable because some of the questions do talk about very touchy subjects, you know, like social class, racism, things like that. And then if you're thinking about SEL, you can't have these kind of conversations be productive if you're not practicing SEL in your classroom. So that was something that was a big aha for us or like, oh my goodness, we like examined the history of education and what it was created for and what groups benefit from our education system and things like that. And our staff has just blown away and we were just like, how are we gonna bring this to our students? And then we had to really think about like, if we have a strong class community and we have those practices where we can listen to each other and communicate clearly and have an understanding that differences are okay. And if you don't have something yet that we can work towards it, all of that was all, you know, foundations of SEL practices. And it was a really moving and very inspiring PD but we're definitely still working on it. And we're trying to find opportunities to share how our lessons are going in the classroom because it is just two weeks out from when we had this PD but it was very moving and very inspiring because we really all want to try having this kind of conversation in our classroom but it is something that's difficult and a lot of educators don't know how to approach this and there are those things that I hear where FEL is kind of whitewashed in a way. And so it's like having those kind of conversations with the staff and saying like, why do we feel this way? How can we change our practices? Is it really whitewashed or not? And I think I also agree with Colleen and with Kayla about the Redez book, it's amazing. Like everyone should read it. It's a great place to start. But you do have to have FEL in the classroom in order to have these types of conversations. And to see each kid as an individual. That's really what you want to, but it boils down to and building those relationships with those kids. Cause when you know a kid really well, you can meet their needs and praise them for what they bring to the classroom. Thank you all. So Jennifer, you said you're gonna come back together to talk about how it's going. And that makes me turn to our next question about FEL assessment. A lot of people want to know what are you doing with assessing social and emotional competencies and how have you seen the assessment used successfully? And I think Colleen and Jennifer, it sounds like you may have had different experiences with that. So I mean, I asked both of you first Colleen and then Jennifer, if you want to follow up. Yep, in my experience, I've seen it in the kind of several different ways. I mean, in Boston public schools, we have the climate survey, which is given to different stakeholders, including parents and teachers. So some schools use that as part of some data to inform that that's in their own schools around culture and climate. I've also seen schools use various different assessments and then use FEL to kind of move the needle. So whether that's around attendance, outreach to families or family engagement practices based on different school-based FEL data collection. As a part of, I'm part of a grant, a Wallace grant. So I've had the opportunity to be a part of the partnership for the FEL, partnerships for FEL initiative or what we call Pacelli. So we're working in schools that are piloting some more formal FEL assessments. One of them is CellWeb and then another one more well-known here, especially in Boston and some other Boston schools use it. Use it is called the HSA, which is the holistic student assessment. So again, those are more formal. However, they're not used district wide or anything like that. What I've seen mostly is teacher created SEL assessments based on, again, the students in their class and whatever SEL goals that they are integrating throughout their day. So units of study data increase cycles. Great, thank you. Then for how about you? How has SEL assessment been used at Lakewood? What's been your experience? In the beginning of our journey on the SEL integration, we wanted a way to kind of justify or prove to the district that this was beneficial. So we really wanted something data-driven. So we did attempt to use DESA, which kind of followed, it's aligned with a CASEL framework. And it basically is a survey on each student and their competencies in each of the areas. And so when we used it, we found that it was very time consuming and that it basically just told us what we already knew about our students. So we felt like it wasn't really worth the time to use that assessment. It's a great assessment if you are just starting to have no SEL lines and it has really great lessons. We found that the tools were more helpful than the actual survey itself. So we decided not to use that as a staff. And now we're using a lot more surveys. Just like Colleen said, we do a lot of school-wide surveys that compare us to other areas around the country. And then we also use more monthly data collection through our PBIS team because we're already looking at behavior. We find out where the gaps are in our teachings and where the behaviors are occurring that need support. And so every month our PBIS can get together. And just recently we noticed that there was a lot of racism happening in fifth grade. And so now we're providing ways to do lessons in the fifth grade classrooms to support that and have those conversations in the classroom. Last year we had a really big issue with first graders pushing and not using the words. So then we had a really explicit lesson with all the first grade classrooms about how to use your words and say, stop, I don't like that. And to, you know, express how they feel when people do think to them that they don't like. So that's how we're using our data. And it was really beneficial because it's built into our school system already. So we don't have to find anything else to add on to our load. It was kind of like a nice melding of PBIS and SEL support. Thank you. Wonderful, thanks to you both. I think we have time for one last question. And I want to go to Kayla first. For all three panelists, would love to hear your thoughts on, what's a piece of advice you have for colleagues on how to get started in this work? How to get started on integrating social, emotional and academic development? And if there's a tool or resource that goes with that, that's great too. And we can share that in the chat box as well. I would say as it has been shared throughout this webinar is to first start with self and consider what biases, beliefs that we all bring to our learning. And then think about like, what challenges us when we think about that? And why? And what does this benefit in my teaching? And then one more concrete thing of like, what especially math teachers can use right away is integrating the standards of mathematical practice into your lessons every day. And so I didn't get a chance to talk about it, but stands of mathematical practice to me are the vehicle in which social and emotional learning can really brought to the surface. And they're a part of every whatever standards that you ascribe to in whatever state that you're in. But they're, aside from the objective, so if my objective is multiplying fraction, there's also a way in which we expect students to engage with that work today. And so just as if you would post your class or your learning objective for the day, also post how you expect students to engage with that work today. So could it be that today I want them to understand the approaches of other students by listening, questioning, and communicating their thinking. And posting that up just one makes it explicit for students, but it also shares with students that this is important to you as a teacher. And that it's not just about the content, but it's how we engage with the content. And the more and more we can make that explicit, it becomes more real for our students. And then so not only are you assessing as a teacher how well that student did in that standard, how also are they showing up in practice as a mathematician? And also, if we've noticed that we're not really great at asking each other questions. We kind of get up there, we show and tell, and we're done. And that can be a point of improvement for the entire class. And then having the students actually reflect on their work in that day. Like you talked about thoughtful modeling and also practice opportunities for students. After you've given the chance for them to practice these standards of mathematical practice during the class, we need to spend time to actually reflect on them and reflect like how well did I do in that today? Did I explain my thinking? And also something that just popped on the screen is that what I love to work with my teachers about is how do we affirm the math identity of our students? And this is an example where we just ask like, how do you learn math best? And students like put where they thought and then we dug into that a little bit more. Like is it asking questions when you're stuck? Is it asking questions to clarify? Who do you ask questions to? Is it just your teacher? Is it your peer? And so having that experience, I had a teacher do this at the beginning of the year and she really got a chance and she developed the structure of her classrooms and her math blocks based off of what the students, how the students said they learned best. And then also another example, and I'm just going to try to change the slide. Here we are. Is we have a routine that we love with the teachers that we work with called where's the math? And what we do is we take pictures of things that students see every day, whether they're in the classroom and also it's a way to engage parents. What are things that you see in your home or in your neighborhood? And what we do is we maximize these. So where's the math showing up in this classroom? I know one picture I posted with teachers, I ride blue line trains every day. And so, and I put up the train times and also the questions that students asked were how frequent the trains come? What time do you plan on getting to your destination? Will you be late? And so that's a lesson on a lap time. And so what we do is we do this with a starting point for students to affirm the math that they see is not just in a textbook or on a worksheet, but math is in their lives every part of their day and even in their homes. And what it does is it gives value to students' families as well because they do math, we all do math all the time. And students engage with this work. As you can see here, the post-it notes are questions that the students put up in response to each other's work. And so this is just one routine that we can use. And this is taken from a white paper on cultural responsive teaching by Mark Ellis. That's also on the resource page because a couple of other routines that support cultural responsive teaching and social-emotional learning to build independent learning. Thanks so much, Kayla. With that actually mentioned of the resources, I'm gonna have to say that this is, we've had time for our panelists today. Actually wondering, Colleen, though, and Jennifer, if you're able to just type in a couple of parting words in the top box. So I do wanna make sure that we get your final thoughts. And before we sign off today, I wanna extend a big thank you to all of the participants who have been joining us and asking great questions and then to all of you as panelists and presenters for your insights today. We really appreciate it. As Kayla mentioned, we have some great resources available on our website, websites and then also some of the resources that we have shared in the chat today. And we're gonna be sharing those resources as well as the recording of this webinar via email very soon with you all. So again, we appreciate you all for tuning in and talking about this important topic and we really hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's great. Thank you.