SEL Self-Assessment

We cannot be expected to build our students' SEL skills if we have not yet worked on our own. This activity provides a facilitated process walking your staff through the SEL Self-Assessment, a tool designed to facilitate independent reflection of one's own social emotional strengths and areas of growth.

Your school's SEL team will use the Self-Assessment and facilitation process outlined below to cultivate a space where staff can engage in personal exploration and growth. At a personal level, this activity will allow staff to reflect on their own skills, make a plan for personal growth, and engage with colleagues about their progress. At a school level, this activity will provide school leaders with data that will help them identify an appropriate entry point or focus for school-wide adult SEL work.

Note: It is essential to complete this activity as an SEL team prior to implementing it with a large group. The steps outlined below are appropriate for both settings.

Provide a Call to Action

As illustrated by Greenberg in Figure 1. below, ensuring students social emotional and academic outcomes requires that teachers have a strong SEL foundation. This visual helps to reinforce how school culture and climate begins with Adult SEL and how when we address all aspects of school climate ,teacher well being is positively impacted.

Figure 1, is adapted from the article linked below which also contains more information on the importance of Adult SEL.

Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of educational research, 79(1), 491-525.

Frame the Activity

If this activity is to be effective, staff must be vulnerable and introspective. The framing of this activity is imperative for ensuring staff feel comfortable and supported. A strong framing will build trust, identify the context of the activity, provide background on the tool, and discuss equity considerations. Each of these concepts are described in greater detail below.

Set Expectations

• Ensure that staff understand that the Self-Assessment and reflection process is not evaluative. This process is confidential; anything shared in the room should be held confidential unless otherwise approved by staff. This tool is first and foremost designed for personal reflection and is not intended for peer to peer feedback or team level assessment.
• There are no right or wrong answers to any of the questions.
• Deep personal reflection may elicit feelings of self-judgment or strong emotional responses. While this is not the objective of this activity, be ready to note how you are feeling and thinking as you work through the process. Remember that as we grow personally we must also treat ourselves with kindness and understanding knowing that self-awareness brings the promise of opportunity.

Identify the Context

• Acknowledge that we are all multidimensional people with several identities; we may show up differently in different settings.
• Your responses to each question differ from context to context. For the purpose of this activity, we are asking staff to reflect on how they show up at work.

Provide Background on the CASEL Self-Assessment

• The tool was developed by CASEL, including some key researchers in social emotional learning. If staff are interested in learning ore about this tool they can reference the citations available in the footnotes of the Self-Assessment.

Discuss Equity Considerations

• Our personal definitions of social emotional learning are inherently bound to our cultural values, experiences, and identities. There are countless ways one might define or demonstrate these skills.
• This tool is not meant to provide comprehensive understanding of one's own social emotional learning skills, but to provide one perspective. As staff work through the Self-Assessment, they may consider adding skills they feel are missing or making note of skills that don't resonate with them. This may lay the groundwork for a fruitful discussion during the reflection.

Complete the Self-Assessment

Now that you have set the stage for the activity, hand out the Self-Assessment Instruct staff to think about their experience at school over the past month. You may adjust this time frame if it does not work for your staff. If, for example, your staff are completing this activity at the beginning of the school year, you may encourage them to think about the first two weeks of the current school year or the last month of the prior school year.

As staff read each statement, have them respond to the three-point scale (rarely, sometimes, often) to rate themselves by simply marking an "X" in the appropriate box. If a statement does not apply to them, encourage them to draw a line through the rating box, and if they feel that a skill is missing from the assessment, invite them to add it to the list. If possible, provide staff approximately 15 minutes to complete the Self-Assessment. Though staff meetings tend to have full agendas, a large block of time is imperative for deep personal reflection.

Facilitate Self-Reflection

After completing the Self-Assessment, staff will identify strengths and opportunities for growth. Staff can choose how they do this. For example, staff may identify their greatest strength by identifying which competency has the greatest proportion of "often" responses or by selecting the skills that resonated most strongly with them. There is no right or wrong way to reflect on one's own skills. Before staff begin the guided self-reflection, take a moment to reinforce some of the language or concepts you shared during framing.

Strengths: As you pass out the SEL strengths reflection template, remind staff of the importance of taking a strengths-based approach to SEL.

Opportunities: After staff reflect on their strengths, have them reflect on their opportunities for growth using the reflection template. As staff are reflecting, make sure you are modeling, teaching, and reinforcing the concepts addressed in the framing section above. During this time, consider sharing resources from Adult SEL section of the toolkit with staff to support them in developing their SEL skills.

Foster Conversations Among Staff

If your building has developed strong relationships and staff feel comfortable discussing their SEL strengths and opportunities for growth with colleagues, you may consider facilitating a conversation. One way to do this during a staff meeting is to adapt the "four corners" activity. Rather than labeling four corners of the room with levels of agreement or disagreement, however, you can create physical space in five spaces in the room to align with each of the five SEL skills. First, instruct staff to navigate to the area of the room (i.e., SEL skill) that represents their greatest SEL strength. After everyone has settled, ask for volunteers to identify patterns in the room.

Next, ask staff to discuss their selection with a colleague; they may use their reflection sheets to guide the conversation, discussing why they feel this is their greatest strength, how they manifest this strength at work, and why they think it is important for their work. If time allows, consider facilitating a pair-share model either within shared skills or across skills to both develop a shared language and practice their SEL skills. If there is a true culture of trust among your staff, consider repeating this process with opportunities for growth. Ensure the facilitator of this conversation frequently reinforces concepts discussed in the framing of this activity.

Celebrate SEL Strengths

After completing the activity, find a creative way to celebrate staff's SEL strengths. Consider providing staff with time to make a creative display communicating their SEL Strengths. Rather than using a template, encourage staff to develop their own document so that they can share within their comfort level. Just as our students need reminders and recognition, adults need the same, especially during challenging times of year.

Equity Considerations

Coordinate with your school's equity lead to facilitate a conversation about the cultural assumptions of the tool. Use the following reflection questions to guide your discussion.

• Which of these questions, if any, did not apply or felt inappropriate to you (e.g., culturally insensitive, gendered, racialized)?
• How could you adapt this tool or activity to be more inclusive and relevant for you and your colleagues?
• Which of these skills, if any, do you feel can support equity work in your school? How?
• Which of these skills, if any, do you feel might detract from equity work in your school? Why?

Data Collection

It is essential to do a small amount of data collection during this activity. At minimum, you must collect staff members' perceptions of their greatest SEL strengths and areas of growth. Depending on their level of trust and buy-in your staff to SEL, it is likely that you may want to collect this information in a low-stakes or potentially anonymous way. Below are a few examples of ways you can collect this data.

• Facilitated Conversation: If you choose to use the facilitated conversation model described above, you can use what is called "participatory data collection," in which you simply count the number of staff in each area (i.e., who identified each skill as a strength or opportunity for growth).
• Exit ticket: Provide a small exit ticket where staff can select their greatest strengths and opportunities for growth. Have them place their selections in a collection box or jar on their way out.
• Sticker or Dot voting: Place one page of chart paper for each SEL skill on the wall near the exit. Divide the paper in half vertically, with one side of the paper representing strengths and the other opportunities for growth. Have staff select their greatest strength and greatest opportunity for growth by placing a small sticker or marking a tally in the appropriate column.
• Survey: Send an anonymous survey to staff after the activity is complete in which they can select their greatest strengths and opportunities for growth. Make sure to send reminders so that a sufficient proportion of staff complete the activity.

Data Use

Your team will use the data you collect to identify group-level strengths and opportunities for growth. You will then use your findings to identify the a point of entry to the Adult SEL section of the toolkit that will be most advantageous for your school.