Social Emotional Learning

SEL can be a powerful lever for creating caring, just, inclusive, and healthy schools that support all young people in reaching their fullest potential. In the context of SEL, equity and excellence refers to every student—across race, ethnicity, family income levels, learning abilities, home language, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other factors—engaging in high-quality educational opportunities and environments that best promote their healthy social, emotional, and academic development.   CASEL

SEL advances educational equity and excellence by:

1. Supporting authentic school-family-community partnerships where young people, families, educators, and community partners work together to plan, implement, and continuously improve strategies and programs to best serve all students in their local context. SEL helps stakeholders develop the skills and relationships to communicate and collaborate effectively across different perspectives and backgrounds.
2. Fostering trusting and collaborative relationships where educators can attune to and appreciate students’ developmental needs and unique strengths; develop deeper awareness of students’ cultures, backgrounds, and learning differences; and create classroom environments that are inclusive of all learners. SEL helps young people and adults learn and practice empathy, perspective taking, and active listening to build deeper connections with one another.
3. Promoting rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction that sets high standards and expectations for all students and actively engages them in developing academic, social, and emotional skills to achieve their goals and contribute to their communities. Evidence-based SEL programs and approaches help ensure all students have consistent opportunities to learn and practice developmentally-appropriate skills that help them thrive.  
4. Applying ongoing evaluation of policies, practices, and outcomes to ensure all students are treated fairly, have access to supportive learning environments, engage in high-quality educational opportunities and programs, and achieve excellence in academic, social, and emotional outcomes. SEL implementation grounded in research and continuous improvement helps drive efforts toward equitable and optimal outcomes. 

By prioritizing SEL, educators, families, communities, and students can work together to develop skills and create learning environments and experiences that more fully nurture the development of all young people so that they can thrive. CASEL