Librarians and classroom teachers, listen up! This is one of the greatest resources you'll find on this website. Created by the Harry Potter Alliance, which is great in its own right, Fandom Forward "helps you bring fan activism to your favorite fandoms with free toolkits and activities to use...with your friends, in your classrooms, or at your libraries. Even if you just want to think about a fandom in a new way on your own, we promise you won't be bored reading these."

The site asks for a voluntary donation of 10 dollars, which seems well worth it considering the scope of each guide...and how perfect it would be to use student interest to deepen knowledge and activism. (Ex. The Dr. Who Toolkit has information and discussion questions on feminism, including the various forms and waves of feminism, and suggestions for ways to take action). Other examples of fandom franchises include Star Wars, Pokeman, and Marvel.

Thank GOODNESS I didn't find this Common Sense media resource page on Social and Emotional Learning until this site was well underway, or I might have changed course, intimidated by its thorough range of excellent resources.

This site provides resources organized by skill, and divided into "Tools to Try," (which includes apps, games, and websites that can inspire courage and perseverance in your classroom) "Essential Info," "Classroom-Ready Resources, and resources "For Families." It also includes a privacy rating for each resource. This is a wonderful jumping off point for an educator or parent.

Another excellent site is Character Lab, which has free research-based guides called Playbooks, which are meant to develop strengths of heart, mind, and will. They include topics like gratitude, curiosity, kindness, and honesty.

The Harry Potter Alliance, which is also the home base for an international movement ("[We] turn fans into heroes. We use the power of story and popular culture to make activism accessible and sustainable") also hosts a wide range of great resources for character and SEL development. The Wizard Activist School (yeah, it's a little bit corny) is well-suited to an advisory/homeroom class of HP fans, also willing to think about topics like conflict resolution, goal setting, and allyship.

InspirED is a one-stop shop for social and emotional learning resources. It provides a wealth of lessons/activities focused around goals like assessing the school climate, brainstorming ways to improve it, etc. It provides more than 80 examples of projects to help build SEL skills.

Best for grades 8-12, and perfect for a homeroom/advisory setting.

Brooklyn school librarian Margaret Tice's CCD Social Emotional Learning Collection is for students in grades K-8, educators and parents. Included are resources for educators on developing an SEL curriculum, books about getting along, feelings, emotions, aggression, empathy, mindfulness, self-awareness, relationships, good decision making, and bullying. Parents and teachers can also find resources here to help guide those important discussions about SEL issues with children. Students can find great reading materials on the SEL topics that are most important.

Margaret Tice's CCD on SEL

Her book list (K-8)

Another model of a weekly email is Angela Duckworth's Tip of the Week. Each one contains 60 seconds of actionable advice in the form of a personal letter. Usually written by Angela Duckworth, the Tip of the Week is always fact-checked and approved by the scientists whose work is highlighted. Read the latest Tip of the Week. These tips could be selectively shared with staff or adapted by a librarian, teacher or mental health professional at your school.

For those of you unfamiliar with psychologist Carol Dweck's theory of Growth Mindset, it is a healthy approach to life and its challenges. David Yeager, a professor of psychology at UT Austin, includes this great quote (photo on left) in his presentation (full 9 min video from the 2019 Educator Summit linked from the end of this article). The CharacterLab website has a page dedicated to Growth Mindset and includes classroom activities and links for learning more.

Want to bring Growth Mindset to 9th graders? There is a free 2-session mini-unit, available through the PERTS foundation. PERTS also provides a Mindset Kit, which is a free set of online lessons and practices designed to help you teach and foster adaptive beliefs about learning.

Adolescent usage of social media relates to SEL as well--it requires restraint to think before posting or re-posting something, we may make thoughtful choices about how to represent ourselves through social media. There are a lot of great resources on teaching responsible and ethical use of social media. My favorite is from Common Sense media: Digital Citizenship lessons and interactive activities. This would work as an entire unit or just a series of a few key, lessons. There are resources for grades K-12.

Hopefully, you've found resources that are adaptable to your circumstances at this point, but if you're looking for additional SEL resources across content areas, Common Sense media has a page with exactly that: "We All Teach SEL: Self Control Activities and Tools for Students."

GooseChase EDU is a web-based platform that creates scavenger hunts for an app of the same name on mobile (iOS and Android) devices. First, teachers go to the website to create a new game with a basic description. Teachers then add missions to their game. (Ex. 1. Define the word "contradiction." (400 points) 2. Create a video showing a contradiction (1000 points). There are pre-made games for many content areas.

The free version of GooseChase EDU is limited to five teams with one active game at a time. This option will be sufficient for many teachers. Best for grades 3-12, though technology is required and you should check the privacy levels to make sure it's a good fit for your setting.

This classroom tool would be perfect for a homeroom/advisory setting. In order to enter, students must share a "secret password," like "I love challenges," or "I'm going to do my best today." The students can either say it out aloud or silently to themselves. The password choices can be decided by the class.

What a great way to reinforce this message and start class on a positive note! Using positive affirmations daily can help reduce anxiety and stress and therefore lead to a higher self esteem.

Another wonderful resource is the tree of contemplative practices created by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. The multiple branches can be seen as ways to practice different kinds of self (and community) care and healing.

For librarians or teachers who want to become more deeply rooted (pun intended) in mindfulness practices, I would suggest learning about becoming certified in MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction). This is an eight-week evidence-based program that offers secular, intensive mindfulness training to assist people with stress, anxiety, depression and pain.

Gina Biegel's website, Stressed Teens, has a number of helpful (and mostly free) resources for teens, teachers and parents. There are free webinars, articles about self-care for teens, and a link to an App, "Take a Chill," which provides tools to help teens manage their stress, and bring mindful practices into a daily routine.

Maybe you're a school administrator reading this site and now feel deeply inspired to bring SEL to your school. Maybe you're a school librarian who has just been asked if you have resources to start an SEL program.

CASEL has a lot of great resources evaluating and comparing SEL programs based on thorough research. Here's the link to evaluating Pre-K through 5th grade programs. Here's the link evaluating MS and HS programs. The CASEL guide to schoolwide SEL Essentials is linked, as are their resources for developing a vision for schoolwide SEL.

CASEL provides many additional resources, like CASEL's Implementation Tools and Resources. This guide gives gives educators an assessment tool to evaluate their school's SEL needs. It also includes a video to inform parents about SEL in schools and provide them with insights into their own parenting practices.

Westinghouse Campus School Librarian extraordinaire, Rachel Green, found that a schoolwide training from the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility (the Restore360 program) was deeply impactful and meaningful for her school community.

Author: Katy Alexander

Link to original article in Rethinking Schools

This article argues for the benefits of sharing authentic moments of honest connection with students. Modeling (within appropriate reason) our own challenges can help students normalize some of their experiences and forge deeper connections and understanding, on a human level.

All Learning is Social and Emotional, by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher and Dominique Smith (2019)

This is the book to have if you’re interested in bringing SEL to your entire school. It outlines the reasons for (and addresses the arguments against) SEL in the classroom, and also provides a brief but thorough overview of the big names in SEL. It offers classroom examples, tools and strategies that teachers can use to guide students’ social and emotional development. The suggestion of the authors is that these SEL skills are integrated into the academics, not compartmentalized or delivered as stand-alone lessons without any authentic context.

This book is perfect for all teachers and administrators who are open to including SEL skills in their classrooms, specifically content-area teachers.

Recipes for Mindfulness in your Library: Supporting Resilience and Community Engagement, edited by Madeleine Charney, Jenny Colvin and Richard Moniz (2019)

This book of collected mindfulness guides from school, public and academic librarians has a wide range of tips and program suggestions. It was especially helpful to see how librarians used their expertise and interests, handled setbacks and challenges, and were able to create successful and popular mindfulness centers or events in their libraries.

From the publisher: As more librarians commit to individual and sustained reflection and practices in their own lives, those approaches can expand to include the communities they serve. This collection offers more than a dozen in-depth examples of mindfulness in action.

I would strongly recommend this book for librarians who want to brainstorm a range of options for what mindfulness might look like in their setting.

Stop, Breathe and Chill, by Beth Stebner (2016)

This book has a lot of quick tips on topics that anyone in grades 6-12 would find relevant, like how to navigate common issues in friendship, what to do when you’re fighting with your parents and siblings, and handling issues at school. With each page of advice, there is also a succinct mantra on the opposite page, which might be a helpful way to focus on and remember that advice. Best for 6-12th grade and to have in a classroom collection, where it could be easily picked up and flipped through.

Everyday SEL in High School: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning into your Classroom, by Carla Tantillo Philibert (2018)

In this new book from educational consultant Carla Tantillo Philibert, you’ll gain practical strategies for teaching social-emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness, and movement to help your middle school students maintain positive relationships, assume responsibility, become bodily aware, and grow into productive, contributing citizens. You’ll find out how to lead students through games, simple yoga poses, breathing techniques, and other activities that are easy to incorporate and help you manage your classroom. (from Scholastic)

This book is especially helpful for librarians or teachers who want to bring SEL to their schools and don't know how to start, what conversations to have with their principals, etc. While it's geared toward high schoolers in name, it is relevant to an elementary or middle grades setting as well.

Relationship Skills 101 for Teen: Your Guide to Dealing with Daily Drama, Stress and Difficult Emotions Using DBT, by Sheri Van Dijk (2015)

This books is a wonderful one for students who are struggling in their ability to maintain healthy relationships or communicate effectively. It includes a “communication style” quiz, where readers can get a sense of to what degree their communication is passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive or assertive. This seems to me an especially useful tool for teachers to introduce, especially in a homeroom/advisory setting, where there are opportunities to develop and reflect on communication skills. There is also some very helpful information about acting opposite your emotion and how to handle self-judgement. This would be a useful book for grades 9-12, used in excerpts in a homeroom/advisory setting or just loaned to individual students.

The NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) is represents the legislatures in the states, territories and commonwealths of the U.S. Their page on Social and Emotional Learning provides information about successful state legislation, related to SEL, as well as state-by-state information on SEL curricula and resources.