Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
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Description: Learn evidence-based tools and techniques that will help you stress less, focus more, and feel more calm. In this 10-day mindfulness challenge we will share a variety of practices that promote healthy management of anxiety, present-moment awareness, and overall wellbeing. The goal of this 10-day Challenge is to kickstart a mindfulness practice for those who are new to the idea and to offer new exercises and approaches for all participants, even those with established practices. We encourage you...
Description: Headspace offers free access to K-12 (primary-secondary) teachers and supporting staff in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Whether you’re feeling inspired to connect more with your students or you’re looking for a new way to bring calm to your classroom, Headspace can help students build healthy habits that last a lifetime. Better focus, less stress, and happier thoughts are just a few minutes away.
Description: Journaling can strengthen your well-being because it allows you to build intention, reflection, and mindfulness into your life. It’s fairly easy to start a habit of journaling. You don’t need a lot of time or supplies for journaling, and you can choose from many different forms of journaling to discover a journaling practice that works best for you. Here are the key well-being benefits of journaling and how to get started journaling for well-being.
Description: Mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, act, make choices, and relate to others. Mental health is more than the absence of a mental illness—it’s essential to your overall health and quality of life. Self-care can play a role in maintaining your mental health and help support your treatment and recovery if you have a mental illness. About Self-Care When to Seek Professional Help What to Do in a Crisis Featured Videos...
Description: Reflection is a key component of professional growth for educators, but making time for meaningful self-reflection can feel all but impossible amid the flurry of the school day. The end of the year provides a great opportunity to look back on standout moments with students, reflect on challenges you’ve overcome, and celebrate a year’s worth of growth. Most teachers are exhausted by May or June, but carving out a little time for taking stock now while it’s fresh in your mind...
Description: Schools and families can promote and foster kindness all year. These ideas are simple day-to-day acts of kindness to enable our schools, communities, and state to be a kinder, safer, healthier and more inclusive place to live, work, learn and play. The Kindness Classroom Resources include videos with discussion questions and a kindness book list (elementary).
Description: The SEL Innovations series aims to help the field imagine new, more expansive and equitable approaches to SEL and wellness to ensure that all children, adolescents, and adults feel safe, supported, and seen so that they can thrive. This report focuses on the conditions and guiding actions to foster authentic school-family partnerships.
Description: The holidays are an exciting time for children, and we often work overtime to make them live up to our kids’ expectations. But they can be challenging for kids, too, when all those things they look forward to — free time, sweets, presents, cousins! — can get overwhelming. This week we round up resources to help prevent festivities that are supposed to be fun from being stressful instead. Big family get-togethers can tax kids’ ability to behave. Talking to relatives...
Description: Families are a child’s first teacher and an essential factor in the cultivation of social and emotional competencies throughout a child’s life. When schools and families work together, they can build strong connections that reinforce social-emotional skill development. In fact, research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home. This discussion series was developed to support schools and community partners that wish to engage parents...
Description: In the video, "Getting to Know Your Brain: Dealing with Stress," test your knowledge about stress and the brain. Also learn how to create and use a “stress catcher” to practice strategies to deal with stress. In the video, "Guided Visualization: Dealing with Stress," Dr. Krystal Lewis, a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher in the NIMH Intramural Research Program, explains what stress is and describes the parts of the brain that handle the “flight-fight- freeze”...
Description: How you feel can affect your ability to carry out everyday activities, your relationships, and your overall mental health. How you react to your experiences and feelings can change over time. Emotional wellness is the ability to successfully handle life’s stresses and adapt to change and difficult times. Flip each card below for checklists on how to improve your health in each area. Click on the images to read articles about each topic. You can also print the checklists separately or all...
Description: From the time you’re born, your relationships help you learn to navigate the world. You learn how to interact with others, express yourself, conduct everyday health habits, and be a part of different communities from those around you. Positive social habits can help you build support systems and stay healthier mentally and physically. Flip each card below for checklists on how to improve your health in each area. Click on the images to read articles about each topic. You can also print the...
Description: Everyone wants to be valued and have a sense of belonging in their community. The need for valued belonging is true for students in a school community as well. Although belonging is equally important for all students, students with significant cognitive disabilities are less likely to experience a deep sense of belonging. Developed to directly address the creation of school communities in which each and every student is included in all aspects of everyday school...
Description: To support member districts in implementing best practices for trauma-informed instruction, Hanover has developed this toolkit on trauma-informed instructional practices that can be implemented at the elementary and secondary levels. Specifically, this toolkit provides guidance and evidence-based practices that building-wide teams can use to develop a plan for working with teachers on trauma-informed instruction for the upcoming school year.
Description: This practice guide, developed in conjunction with an expert panel, distills contemporary early childhood and preschool education research into seven easily comprehensible and practical recommendations. The guidance will help to prepare young children to benefit from the learning opportunities they will encounter in school.
Description: Schools can provide parents and caregivers with information about essential services that help their children achieve success. There is a positive relationship between family engagement and student performance in school. When families are actively engaged in their children’s academic career, their children are more likely to do well in areas such as academic performance and school behaviors, and to have a positive attitude toward school.
Description: This webinar, featuring Drs. Donna Sacco, John Hoover, and Tracy Spies, illustrates considerations for implementing data-based individualization (DBI) with ELs that accounts for their unique academic, social, behavioral, linguistic, and cultural experiences, assets, and needs. They share why it is important to (a) deliver instruction that represents culturally and linguistically sustaining best practices, and (b) distinguish the needs and assets of learners to improve progress (i.e.,...
Description: Getting along with others, paying attention, following directions, making responsible decisions, and managing emotions are challenges for many students who require intensive intervention, and may be linked to difficulties with executive functioning, communication, behavior, and academic learning. In this webinar, presenters Mara Schanfield and Zach Weingarten shared an overview of how social emotional learning (SEL) relates to intensive intervention and offer sample strategies and resources for...
Description: This toolkit was created to help raise parent awareness about school connectedness and its role in supporting student health and emotional well-being, and why family engagement both in and out of school is important. It is a resource for CDC Healthy Schools partners, education leaders, and other collaborators. Partners and schools can use this toolkit to let parents know how healthy and supportive school environments increase resiliency and improve students’ overall health and academic...
Description: This guide outlines a four-step program evaluation process that provides a framework for coordinating SEL programs that are feasible, appropriate, and effective.
Description: This research report summarizes recent surveys conducted from over 15,000 respondents on student and staff SEL competencies, awareness and confidence, impact of SEL instruction, and SEL support and training.
Description: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - Beginning July 16, 2022, 988 has been designated as the new three-digit dialing code that will route callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. When people call, text, or chat 988, they will be connected to trained counselors that are part of the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network. These trained counselors will listen, understand how their problems are affecting them, provide support, and connect them to resources if necessary. The...
Description: The transition to college can be hard on kids’ mental health. Teenagers living away from home for the first time may experience academic stress while also trying to make new friends, build routines, and stay physically healthy. All these changes at once can be overwhelming for college kids. Parents can help kids prepare for these emotional challenges before college starts. First, try to avoid solving problems for your teen. Instead, let them know that you empathize and you’re there...
Description: In this recorded webinar, Carla Mazefsky, Ph.D., discusses emotion dysregulation, or difficulty managing the intensity and duration of emotional reactions, in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This talk covers the landscape of emotion regulation research in ASD and highlights key findings from the Regulation of Emotion in ASD Adults, Children, and Teens (REAACT) Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Topics to be covered include the assessment of emotion dysregulation in ASD, the impact of...
Description: The following books provide strategies for expressive writing that can help to improve health, deal with trauma and increase well-being.
Description: The California Healthy Minds, Thriving Kids Project features a series of free videos and print resources for parents, educators and students, all available in English and Spanish. Developed in partnership with the state of California, this project promotes children’s emotional health and teaches essential coping skills through five topics. The videos feature the voices and lived experiences of caregivers, teachers and kids today. Videos for the elementary school age group use a whimsical...
Description: This Warm Line is a peer-run service for residents of Virginia. They offer this support line for individuals, family members, and other concerned parties who would like someone to talk to, or who request community mental health resources, or who have specific questions about their recovery journey. The peers who answer this Warm Line listen with compassion and provide non-judgmental support. The peers at MHAV are not licensed professionals, medical providers, or legal advisers. MHAV’s Warm...
Description: Developed in collaboration between VCU's School of Social Work and the Partnership for People with Disabilities, LEAP provides training on healthy relationships and information about preventing abuse to adults with disabilities. LEAP was developed by a multidisciplinary team that included people with disabilities and their families, along with representatives from domestic violence, child advocacy, social services, health, LGBTQ+ and disability advocacy agencies. People with...
Description: The Shared Commitment and SEL Curriculum Frameworks were created alongside a team of teachers, counselors, parents, administrators, and other educators from across the state. Each was created to support the implementation of Virginia’s Guidance SEL Standards. The following resources are intended to assist school leaders, teachers, and other educators in implementing social emotional learning in their school buildings and classrooms. Educators are encouraged to confirm alignment with the...
Description: PEATC has developed a toolkit to help guide parents through the process of discussing Sexual Health and Wellness with their child. The toolkit covers topics such as sexuality, self-care, relationships, social skills, and boundaries.
Description: These notes can spread some positivity—self-adhesive and perforated—these notes can be peeled off one at a time and posted anywhere a grateful recipient will see them.
Description: This section contains social skills tips for early Education (pre-K & kindergarten), Elementary School (grade one through five), Middle School (grades six through eight), High School (grades nine through twelve) and Life After High School.
Description: NASET’s Behavior Management Series is a unique guide for all teachers in helping to understand what their student’s behavior really means and how to identify and resolve the issue. This series offers teachers the insight into the inner dynamics, conflicts, fears, symptoms, tension, and so on of students who may be experiencing difficulty learning or behaving in the classroom. This series is like having a psychologist in the classroom, and assists teachers in fully...
Description: This site covers the following topics: Behavior Basics, Toddlers and Young Children, Managing Big Emotions, Common Behavior Issues, Behavior and School, Strategies for Managing Behavior, Mental Health and Problem Behavior, and Treatment for Problem Behavior.
Description: Children who have experienced trauma may find it more difficult to regulate their emotions and behaviours than other children. Understanding the impact trauma can have on brain development can help inform practical responses to these children’s needs. This short article describes how practitioners can use strategies that help calm children’s bodies in order to help calm their minds and emotions – specifically, the Regulate–Relate–Reason approach.
Description: This resource highlights seven key challenges to providing school- or program-based mental health support across early childhood, K–12 schools, and higher education settings, and presents seven corresponding recommendations. The appendix provides additional useful information, including (a) numerous examples corresponding to the recommendations highlighting implementation efforts throughout the country; (b) a list of federal resource centers;...
Description: Current Coronavirus Guidance for K-12 Schools and Child Care Programs is provided by the Virginia Department of Health. This guidance includes information about COVID-19 screening and at-home testing resources available to K-12 schools.
Description: Embedding social and emotional learning (SEL) into instruction is a powerful way to help students connect and engage in learning. According to CASEL, one of the leaders in schoolwide SEL, explicit SEL instruction requires “consistent opportunities for students to cultivate, practice, and reflect on social and emotional competencies in ways that are developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive.” Critical to that approach is sharing with our students the why behind SEL...
Description: The purpose of this brief is to provide recommendations to district and school leadership teams on how the components of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) can be used to prioritize staff health and wellbeing.
Description: IECMHC is a prevention-based approach that pairs a mental health consultant with adults who work with infants and young children in the different settings where they learn and grow, such as child care, preschool, home visiting, early intervention and their home. Mental health consultation is not about “fixing kids.” Nor is it therapy. Mental health consultation equips caregivers to facilitate children’s healthy social and emotional development.
Description: Ready is a National public service campaign designed to educate and empower the American people to prepare for, respond to and mitigate emergencies, including natural and man-made disasters. The goal of the campaign is to promote preparedness through public involvement. Ready asks that individuals: stay informed about the different types of emergencies that could occur and their appropriate responses make a family emergency plan and build an emergency supply kit, and get involved in your...
Description: A panel of instructional leaders discuss the inclusion of Students with Disabilities (SWD) in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Instruction.
Description: NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Virginia provides YouTube videos with yoga instruction covering a variety of topics, including: Yoga Ed. x NAMI Virginia: Chair Yoga for Children: What Is Yoga? Yoga Ed. x NAMI Virginia: Chair Yoga for Children: Why Do We Do Yoga? Yoga Ed. x NAMI Virginia: Chair Yoga for Teens: What Is Yoga? Yoga Ed. x NAMI Virginia: Chair Yoga for Teens: Why Do We Do Yoga? And more...
Description: To engage families in social-emotional development, teachers and school administrators can’t just send home packets and to-do lists. They need to create strong relationships, partner with families on goals for their children, and receive and provide ongoing support. Start by learning about families. Use surveys, open houses, or phone calls to find out about family composition, special skills, concerns, and likes and dislikes. This knowledge can help teachers connect with families on a...
Description: This document is designed to guide the Program Leadership Team around considerations for supporting children, families, and staff as they return to the program. The guidance includes Pyramid Model practices you know and encourages you to think about those strategies from a trauma-informed perspective. While the leadership team may not know who among children, families, and staff have or are experiencing trauma, a trauma-informed approach guides programs in providing a safe and nurturing...
Description: With the passage of American Rescue Plan (ARP), states, districts, and schools now have significant federal resources available to implement evidence-based and practitioner-informed strategies to meet the needs of students related to COVID-19, including students most affected by the pandemic and for whom the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequities. This guidance document is intended to be a resource for states, districts, schools, and teachers as they reopen schools safely and support...
Description: The Virginia Social Emotional (SEL) Guidance Standards (PDF) are now available to all Virginia school divisions. While the 2020 General Assembly required the VDOE to develop the guidance standards for SEL, Virginia school divisions are not required to adopt them. Local school boards may choose to adopt all, or portions of, the Virginia SEL Guidance Standards as part of their own local policies, and/or use them as guidance as they implement SEL programming based on the needs of their...
Description: Unfortunately, students with disabilities are often not fully considered in SEL initiatives. NCLD has been working hard to change the course of SEL to ensure it is developed in a way that is inclusive and equitable. We are excited to announce the release of these resources to help ensure more inclusive and equitable SEL. This work builds on the previous report co-authored with 7 other organizations: Exploring Intersectionality: Understanding Student Identity to Promote Equitable Social Emotional...
Description: The High Leverage Practices (HLP) Highlight Tools were developed to acquaint educators with the key components of each HLP in order to begin implementation into their instruction and strengthen inclusive practices with students. Each Highlight Tool contains a brief description, video clips, suggested activities and a Plan of Action activity teachers can implement with students to help get them started. As teachers become more acquainted with HLPs, additional resources are provided to help extend...
Description: Well-being is an umbrella term including the psychological, cognitive, social and physical health of ALL students. All students, from those who have experienced trauma to students with disabilities and beyond deserve a safe and inclusive learning environment. Social emotional learning is utilized to teach needed skills and build resilience for the students and the school community. Additionally, the education system must always support staff and families and create a partnership in order to...