Overview:
One high school improved student engagement and emotional well-being by refining its SEL implementation through student voice, targeted faculty training, and a more relevant, flexible curriculum.
High school can be a very stressful time in a student’s life. Academic stress, social anxieties, and the journey to discover who they are as individuals can result in a perfect storm that leaves students feeling overwhelmed and ill-equipped to navigate these challenges. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) can equip students with the tools to flourish academically, socially, and emotionally.
Where We Started – Year 1 of Implementation
Like many high schools coming back from the pandemic, Littleton High School was facing a challenge; students were reporting higher incidences of stress and anxiety and were having difficulty managing those emotions. During the spring of 2023, a team was assembled to explore formal SEL curricula to teach these skills to students. After choosing a program, the team held training sessions for faculty on the curriculum and offered follow-up coaching sessions. In September 2023, the faculty began teaching the curriculum during our Advisory period; the plan was to follow the track that utilized 15 sessions throughout the school year. Students would receive consistent instruction while still allowing some autonomy for faculty during our weekly Advisory period, which they wanted to preserve.
Throughout the course of the year, we surveyed students and faculty to get feedback on the program. We also conducted focus groups with students and faculty to hear more about their thoughts.
The students were asked questions about the fidelity with which their Advisor followed the program, their experiences learning about the topics, their level of participation and their perception of the effectiveness of the program in learning SEL skills. Students reported there was variation in implementation among Advisories; some Advisors were more consistent than others.
HS Student: “I think it {a more consistent approach} would be more helpful.”
Students also reported feeling that there needed to be student voice involved in the curriculum because they felt some of the content didn’t necessarily apply to our school.
HS Student: “We need participation but also student leadership, and for the curriculum itself, it should have student input.“
HS Student: “I think just keeping it updated and relevant through the student voice is going to be really helpful.”
Several faculty members participated in a focus group as well. They were asked how closely they followed the schedule for lessons, what their experience was teaching the lessons, what student participation looked like, and what their perception of the program was. The faculty reported following the schedule for Advisory but felt that as they became more comfortable with the content that they modified the curriculum a bit due to it feeling repetitive.
HS Faculty: “ We kind of adapted as we went. “
HS Faculty: “We did the same {modified the curriculum}. We didn’t break into small groups, they felt more comfortable speaking as a {larger} group.“
Faculty members also shared concerns about relevance of some of the context to our specific setting which made it more challenging to get students to engage in the lesson.
HS Faculty: “I did not think it was very user-friendly in the sense that we’re a small school and I think a lot of the activities in each lesson were definitely geared toward a bigger school where kids maybe didn’t know each other or just even a large class.”
When asked about the ease of use, most faculty members shared that the program was easy to use. One faculty member shared that her success with a lesson was contingent upon whether she reviewed the lesson beforehand.
HS Faculty: “I think the ease of use was directly tied to how much time I had to preview. The days I had no time to preview it was clunky and difficult but that was on me because I didn’t preview it.”
What We Did – Year 2 of Implementation
At the end of the school year, two members of the SEL Team decided to create lessons using the curriculum and incorporating student and faculty feedback. We combined lessons, eliminated the videos which the students felt were not relevant, and created school-wide monthly challenges related to SEL. The new schedule would have lessons being taught once per month, though the content for the 15 lesson track would be included. Each lesson identified the objectives and SEL skills being covered, as well as a review of the previous month to provide some continuity so it didn’t feel like each lesson was being taught in isolation. Advisories discussed the previous months’ SEL challenge, and students were encouraged to share how they met the challenge. The goal of these challenges was to create a culture in which we could develop school-wide conversations about SEL on a more consistent basis, rather than just when the formal instruction took place.
The first thing we decided to do, based on both faculty and student feedback, was to have our first lesson teach students what SEL actually is. When asked, students reported not knowing what SEL skills are.
HS Student: “Helping people, asking people how they want to be helped (Do you want advice or do you want me to listen?).”
HS Student: “Is it kindness?”
Upon the completion of the faculty focus group, the members began talking about training, and it became clear that many of our faculty members were unaware of the CASEL Competencies. We haven’t had training on SEL in a few years, but even veteran faculty members, who had been at previous trainings, reported a lack of knowledge of SEL.
HS Faculty: “We’ve never been trained in this, so no wonder we didn’t know what the skills were.”
To move forward, we decided that specific training, especially given that we have had many new faculty members join us in the past few years, was necessary before beginning the new curriculum. We used our first building-based professional development day to train the faculty on SEL. We reviewed the CASEL competencies and identified specific behaviors students should be able to demonstrate related to each of the five competencies. Additionally, we provided examples of instructional strategies to teach the competencies so students are not only receiving instruction during Advisory. We also spent time showing the faculty what the new curriculum looked like and took them through the first lesson. Having each grade start the program by learning what SEL specifically is was a good way to get both students and faculty using the same language. This also helped frame the purpose of using a formal curriculum more clearly for both students and faculty.
In considering other faculty/student feedback, the structure of the lessons was changed to respond to the concerns about repetition in the curriculum.
HS Student: “Overall, I could see value, but it gets repetitive, same structure, same activities, little bit different lesson.”
HS Faculty: “It seemed very repetitious, same thing over and over.”
The curriculum provides several games for students and faculty to build connections but they were similar games, so it became boring for students. Because we were taking the content directly from the curriculum, we were able to mix up the games and provide more variety for students. We also added a game that students often see on the internet: “Am I the Jerk?” This was rolled out as a fun activity in one Advisory, and the students had a very positive response, so this was added into the curriculum and scenarios that our students are actually dealing with helped create the prompts. For example:
Am I the Jerk?
The Situation: You get into a heated debate with someone on social media. They resort to personal insults and name-calling.
The Question: Are you the jerk for responding in kind, or should you disengage from the argument?
Prompts such as these allowed students to have spirited debates on a topic about which they are passionate and experiencing while building SEL skills. We also eliminated videos from the curriculum; the faculty reported they were awkward because the majority of the students didn’t find them relevant.
HS Student: “Like they’d have a video where they’d interview some high schooler. I think the idea is like ‘Oh look, it’s a high schooler like me’ except the high schooler is saying stuff I’ve never heard anyone in real life say, and so maybe that’s their experience, but I don’t feel that way.”
Following the first couple of lessons, we heard anecdotally that the faculty felt more positively about the curriculum after the changes we made. We decided to get more formal feedback and surveyed the faculty in November. Results of the survey indicated the modified curriculum was providing a much better experience for faculty, and they were seeing more student participation in their Advisories.
HS Faculty: “My students (seniors) are definitely more engaged!!”
HS Faculty: “It’s very easy to implement, and the students seem to enjoy it more.”
HS Faculty: I like that the whole school is doing the same challenge each month.
The Road Ahead
Despite our progress with the new way we are teaching the curriculum, we still have work to do. There are still some faculty members who are not fully on board with providing formal instruction in SEL, and some who are still struggling with discomfort in teaching skills outside of their content area. Additionally, there is a concern that our Advisory schedule (Monday mornings) is not the best time to be teaching SEL.
HS Faculty: “My advisory really does not want to do the lessons. Since it requires some personal sharing, I don’t think everyone is comfortable doing it. It has helped that we are doing it less often. I find that doing (an SEL lesson) on Mondays is difficult.”
More training may be needed to help faculty feel more comfortable with teaching SEL skills. While our faculty is skilled at “pivoting” during their own teaching, this may not be second nature to the faculty when teaching SEL. We will continue to ask for feedback from stakeholders to be sure we are maintaining student and faculty agency. We need the faculty buy-in so students will engage and invest. We believe that these skills are of utmost importance for our students; we are not just teaching SEL skills, we are teaching life skills. Students must be equipped with these skills to be productive members of society in their post-graduate lives.
We’ve placed a priority on SEL and have included it in our school’s Portrait of a Graduate. In a society where students are used to interacting via electronic devices rather than in person, it’s critical that these skills are explicitly taught so they have the tools required to fully participate in post-graduate education and work experiences.
Author Bios:
Kelly Clenchy: Experienced Superintendent with a proven track record of success in the primary/secondary education sector. Skilled in Educational Consulting, Educator/ Administrator Evaluation, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, and Strategic Planning. A student-centered leader who empowers students, educators, and administrators as a strategy for continuous systemic improvement. Strong operations professional with a Doctor of Education – EdD focused in Curriculum, Teaching, Educational Leadership, and Learning from Northeastern University.
Tracy Turner: Tracy Turner has been a clinical social worker for more than 25 years. She has worked with numerous school districts providing mental health and social-emotional support. Additionally, she has worked with children of all ages, from pre-school to high school. Among her other roles, she has been a special education teacher and is passionate about creating inclusive spaces for students. Currently, she is a School Adjustment Counselor and a Massachusetts Independently Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) with a Doctor of Education focused on K-12 Leadership from Northeastern University.
