Embedded Files
March 2024
This SEL Newsletter is compiled by the Social Emotional Learning and Restorative Practices Department of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools
A Word of Welcome
A Word of Welcome
We are finishing up 3rd quarter and running full speed toward spring break. Many would agree that 3rd quarter is the hardest stretch of the school year. We are all tired but trying to keep the momentum going. Students and staff alike have a combination of winter fatigue and spring fever. We are very much in the present school year but already starting to think about the next. It is a strange moment of in-between: not quite starting, not quite ending. Balancing the present and future simultaneously can be a daunting task. We sometimes find ourselves saying, "It's too late for that now, maybe next year." But is that true? Is it too late for building relationships and community? For connecting with that family? For meaningful academic progress for that student? What would it look like if we kept an open mind about the timing of change and growth? We challenge you to lean into small action steps that might improve the school experience for your community, here and now.
In our newsletters, we will focus on one of the 5 SEL core competencies and one of the 10 schoolwide indicators each month. In this edition, we will explore the core competency of relationship skills and how relationship skills show up in our interactions with students, staff, and families. We will explore the schoolwide indicator of Systems of Continuous Improvement. We will explore Digital Literacy & SEL Resources, reflect on recent professional learning, and celebrate SEL Day. We will also include updates, announcements, and "SELebrations" so you can stay informed about the wonderful SEL work going on in our district.
We are excited to continue to learn and grow with you. Thank you for being partners in growing SEL in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.
Student Service Providers do an engaging activity to explore the social discipline window during a district professional development session.
5th graders at Southwest Elementary circle up for Morning Meeting. Morning Meeting is a schoolwide practice at SWES, and is a powerful strategy for building supportive classroom climates and positive relationships.
Competency Focus: Relationship Skills
Competency Focus: Relationship Skills
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines relationship skills as:
The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.
Such as:
Communicating effectively
Developing positive relationships
Demonstrating cultural competency
Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving
Resolving conflicts constructively
Resisting negative social pressure
Showing leadership in groups
Seeking or offering support and help when needed
Standing up for the rights of others
Strengthening Relationship Skills in the Classroom
Strengthening Relationship Skills in the Classroom
Here are three strategies to use for strengthening students relationship skills in the classroom. See the full article here.
Strategy #1: Academic Discussions
When students engage in academic discourse, they have an opportunity to exchange ideas, ask questions, and make meaning as part of a learning community. However, the whole group, teacher-led discussions are not equitable. They do not allow all students a voice in the class dialogue. Instead, use small group, student-led discussions, and online asynchronous discussions.
Strategy #2: Collaborative Group Challenges
Collaboration and teamwork are critical relationship skills. Students need regular opportunities to work together around shared tasks that require creative problem-solving, social negotiation, and clear communication. As pictured in the table in the article , there are several strategies teachers can use to engage students in collaborative tasks designed to position them at the center of the learning experience.
Strategy #3: Conflict Resolution Role Playing
Conflict is unavoidable. Students bring their past experiences, cultural norms, personalities, and personal preferences into the classroom. It is essential to help students build empathy for each other and resolve conflicts in a kind and constructive way. Role-playing exercises position the students as active agents in the learning process and provide them with the opportunity to be creative. Role-playing also encourages students to evaluate situations and consider how they might respond.
Relationship Skills Reflection Questions:
What are some conflicts you have seen happening on the playground? How do you think kids could prevent them? Resolve them?
What are some conflicts that you have seen happening in the classroom? How do you think kids could prevent them? Resolve them?
Relationship Skills
Relationship Skills
at Work
at Work
What is a wonderful and challenging thing about work? The people! Relationships with colleagues can be so meaningful and rewarding, and also very complex and difficult. By default, the field of education means you are in the "people business" and working with people all the time. Whether it is a partnership, team, department, or whole school staff, adults also need to work on fostering healthy work relationships with their colleagues.
CASEL refers to 3 pillars to healthy working relationships that also unify the vision of a workplace.
Community: Healthy staff culture and connection
Trust: Developed over time through many interactions
Collective Efficacy: Staff are connected to each other and feel that as a collective unit they can carry out important tasks and reach goals
A school staff that has strong community, trust, and collective positively correlates with how effectively they will carry out school improvement initiatives and have a positive impact on student outcomes.
Community, trust, and collective efficacy do not happen on accident. They happen with intentionality and consistency. Learn more about how to set structures in place to grow community, trust, and collective efficacy with your staff or team!
Click here to learn more about relationship skills and the CASEL Core Competencies.
Schoolwide Indicator: Continuous Improvement
Schoolwide Indicator: Continuous Improvement
Implementing SEL across the school involves a continuous improvement cycle, as described by CASEL. This approach is methodical and intentional, aimed at solving practice issues and enhancing outcomes. Achieving your objectives for comprehensive SEL requires careful planning, executing action steps, monitoring advancements, analyzing results, and, if needed, making adjustments. Incorporate this iterative process into structured team discussions dedicated to evaluating and improving your SEL strategy. Concurrently, consider establishing brief cycles of continuous improvement. These shorter cycles provide opportunities to experiment with fresh concepts or pioneering strategies, maintaining staff enthusiasm for broad SEL initiatives.
Panorama Education as a Tool for Continuous Improvement:
Panorama Education provides tools and services that can support schools and districts in their continuous improvement efforts. It can aid in several key areas:
Surveys and Feedback: Panorama facilitates the collection of feedback from students, parents, and staff through surveys. These surveys can cover a range of topics relevant to school improvement, such as school climate, student well-being, family engagement, and teacher effectiveness.
Data Analysis: The platform offers powerful analytics tools that allow schools to analyze survey data along with other key metrics (e.g., academic performance, attendance). This can help identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for targeted improvement.
Goal Setting and Tracking: Panorama's tools can assist schools in setting goals based on their data analyses and tracking progress towards these goals over time. This feature supports the cyclical nature of the continuous improvement process.
Professional Development: By identifying areas for growth, Panorama can help schools tailor professional development opportunities for teachers and staff to areas that will have the most impact on student outcomes.
Equity and Inclusion: Panorama's tools can help schools understand disparities and gaps in student experience and outcomes, facilitating a focus on equity in their improvement efforts.
By leveraging Panorama Education's suite of tools, schools can more effectively engage in the continuous improvement process, making data-informed decisions to enhance student learning and achievement.
Spring Panorama Survey open through 3/28!
Spring Panorama Survey open through 3/28!
Our spring survey is going on now through March 28! We are asking each family, student, and school-based staff member to complete our biannual Panorama Survey. The Panorama Survey provides valuable insight into the climate and culture of individual schools and the district as a whole. The links to the family surveys will be posted on our district website and stay open March 4 – March 28. Thank you for engaging in this important practice of continuous improvement. Please reach out to your SEL Coach with any questions!
Click here to learn more about the 10 Schoolwide Indicators and how they promote systemic SEL.
Project Wayfinder, our secondary SEL curriculum, is an incredibly rich resource! Use the filters in the Wayfinder Activity Library to help build SEL skills around technology.
Food for thought:
“The digital world is developing with such force and such a pace that you simply can’t ban or control it. People want to be globally connected.”
What about this quote resonates with you or challenges you?
Digital Citizenship & SEL
Digital Citizenship & SEL
We cannot avoid the fact that we live in a digital society. Even more so, we cannot avoid the fact that our students are growing up in a digital society and will enter adulthood in an even more advanced digital society than we are in now! Technology can be a wonderful tool of connection and information; it can also cause a great deal of conflict, misinformation, and even harm.
As educators, we can help our students navigate the digital world by building their SEL skills around technology. Proactive and intentional conversations are the only way we can truly guide students to healthy relationships with phones, social media, gaming, computers, and more. This will continue to grow as we enter the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence). This can all feel a bit overwhelming and stressful, for educators and families alike, but we are not helpless or hopeless. We can set the tone for how to make responsible decisions regarding technology. We can learn with our students. We can be open to conversation and questions. We will not have all the answers, but we can help them find balance, agency, integrity in the everchanging digital world.
Project Wayfinder has several collections for this exact topic. We encourage you to explore these questions and conversations about digital literacy and citizenship--- with staff and with students!
Self-awareness: Are you aware of how you present yourself online? Are you aware of how it affects your mental health?
Self-management: Are you aware of your digital habits? How can you use technology to your advantage to achieve your goals?
Social awareness: Are your information sources reliable? How does your digital footprint affect others?
Relationship skills: How does technology help you feel connected? How does it make you feel disconnected? How do online interactions translate to real life (if at all)?
Responsible decision-making: How do you make the good digital decisions- at school? at work? in your personal life?
Attention, Secondary Teachers!
Attention, Secondary Teachers!
A team at WestEd, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, is conducting an independent evaluation of the SEL curriculum, Wayfinder. As part of this work, they are interested in learning about the experiences, opinions, and perspectives of educators who use Wayfinder in their classrooms. They have created an electronic survey for educators in the district complete. Participation is completely voluntary and should only take 20 minutes to complete. Those who complete the survey will receive a $20 Amazon.com gift card. All information shared will be kept secure and will be de-identified to protect privacy and confidentiality.
If you are interested, please click the following link to complete the survey: https://westedk12enterprise.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0omLT92RuC0Wcbc
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Nicholas Gage at ngage@wested.org.
March Book Picks
March Book Picks
Author: Carrie Finison
Illustrator: Daniel Wiseman
Themes: boundaries, friendship
Don't Hug Doug (He Doesn't Like It)
Don't Hug Doug (He Doesn't Like It)
Elementary
Often when talking about friendships and how to get along with others, we don't discuss healthy boundaries and how to state them. Doug's story is a perfect way to discuss this topic with younger students.
Author and Illustrator: Gene Luen Yang
Themes: team-building, equity, cultural competence, sports, coaching
Dragon Hoops
Dragon Hoops
Adults
While this graphic novel is more advertised towards young adult readers, Gene Luen's Yang recounting of his times as teacher and basketball coach is a fantastic visual memoir on teachers stepping out of their comfort zone. You don't have to be a basketball fan at all to enjoy Yang's story of building relationships with his players.
Author: Ash Parsons
Themes: friendship, relationship-building
Girls Save The World in This One
Girls Save The World in This One
Secondary (9-12)
For students that enjoy some sci-fi and zombie action mixed in with their stories about friendship, this is the book for them! This YA novel follows three best friends that are excited to go to ZombieCon together to take a break away from all of the stresses of high school, only for an actual zombie outbreak to ruin their plans. The girls not only have to save the world, but their friendships as well.
Author: bell hooks
Themes: equity, relationship-building, leadership
Teaching to Transgress
Teaching to Transgress
Adults
bell hooks describes approaches to education in an ever-changing world. Questions of how to address harm caused by bigotry and institutions and how it impacts professionals and students. hooks also addresses how to support disengaged adults and students in education through relationship and community.
SEL Professional Learning
SEL Professional Learning
Highlights from our PD sessions on Self-Awareness, Transformative SEL, and Restorative Practices in March
A huge thanks to the almost 400 educators that attended an SEL training on Tuesday, March 5! We also want to thank all of the wonderful educators who have participated in our two-day Restorative Practices trainings (offered monthly). We have trained over 700 people in the last 2 years! There is still one Restorative Practices training this spring. Register on Kick-Up for our May 9 & 10 training. Adult SEL matters! We must continue to lean into our district core belief that "Adult behaviors affect student outcomes." We hope you will keep learning and growing with us.
SEL Day: March 8, 2024
SEL Day: March 8, 2024
SEL Day in WS/FCS
WS/FCS celebrated SEL Day on Friday, March 8, 2024. Check out the graphic (right) to learn a bit more about the SEL Team and our district celebrated this meaningful day!
Many of our schools celebrated SEL Day on their campuses. The SEL Team led an X Chat (Twitter Chat) to get educators reflecting on the importance of SEL in our schools. The SEL Team also hosted an SEL Day celebration at Central Office for district staff. Over 60 people made their way up to the 3rd floor to enjoy connection, refreshments, and reflection at our 5 Adult SEL stations. It was encouraging to have guests from all departments: HR, Payroll, EC, Instructional Services, Student Services, and more! SEL is relevant in all settings -- how we show up and interact with others matters.
One particularly engaging Adult SEL Station was "Victory Lap" in which participants jotted down a "small win" on a post it. It is important to acknowledge challenges we overcome, and the steps that led us to get there! Here are some of the "victories" our Central Office staff shared.
Even though SEL Day is over, we can still make social emotional learning a lived reality in our district. Here is the SEL Day Resource folder should you want to learn more about ways to promote and grow SEL in our schools and communities!
The SEL Team filmed a short informational video about SEL Day, to spread the word about the importance of SEL in our schools and communities. Each team member also answered the question: What is your SEL Superpower? We encourage you to reflect on your SEL Superpower! Below, Central Office staff celebrate and reflect on SEL Day.
WS/FCS 3 Signature Practices Playbook for Adults
WS/FCS 3 Signature Practices Playbook for Adults
An Adult SEL Resource compiled by the WS/FCS SEL Team
WS/FCS 3 Signature Practices Playbook for Adults: Now Available!
WS/FCS 3 Signature Practices Playbook for Adults: Now Available!
We are excited to share our WS/FCS "SEL Playbook" with all educators in our district. The SEL Team has compiled over 120 SEL openers, engaging activities, and optimistic closures as a resource for all educators in WS/FCS. These activities align with the 3 signature practices defined by CASEL, and foster connection and deeper learning.
The 3 signature practices need to be an adult practice and a student practice. Educators need embed them in staff meetings, PLTs, grade levels, and more. The more we connect and practice SEL skills as adults, the easier it will be to model these skills for students.
WS/FCS educators have access to the digital copy. We hope to create a student signature practices playbook later this spring. We are so excited to share this meaningful resource with you! Please let us know if you need recommendations, tips, or want to share success stories. Thank you for making the 3 Signature Practices a regular part of your adult settings!
SELebrations!
SELebrations!
Check out these highlights of awesome SEL work going on in WS/FCS!
North Area
"Macon Mondays" have kicked off at Carver High School! On certain Mondays throughout the remainder of the school year, Logan will be partnering with a different department to bring professional development to the Carver staff to show how SEL overlaps in so many areas! So far the staff has learned about student engagement strategies with the Personalized Learning Department and depersonalization and verbal deescalation with the Behavior Department.
South Area:
Teachers at Wiley Middle School lean into adult SEL and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy as they create their own affirmations. These affirmations can be used with to model assets and genius to create a classroom and school community that thrives on our collective strength.
East Area
Piney Grove Elementary begins each staff meeting with shout outs and recognitions. This practice makes sure that everyone is aware of the wonderful things going on in their building and heightens their sense of community and belonging.
West Area
5th graders at Ward Elementary School talk about goals and growth mindset during their weekly Second Step lessons. Ward ES has made great strides with implementing their SEL curriculum with fidelity. Ward also celebrated Random Acts of Kindness and SEL Day as a school! Thank you, Ward Lions, for making SEL a priority in your Den!
Closing Thoughts
Closing Thoughts
Relationship skills need to be modeled, practiced, and refined throughout the course of one's life. There is no fast track or easy button to relationships. Humans are wonderful, messy, and complex creatures-- it would only make sense that our relationships would also be wonderful, messy, and complex. Relationships in school, work, and life will certainly be full of learning experiences. Intentionally making positive connections, practicing active listening, and implementing healthy conflict resolution strategies are all meaningful ways to build relationships.
We hope you gained some insight today about how relationship skills show up in our professional and personal lives. Adult SEL matters! Thank you for learning with us today and everyday. It is an honor to serve and support you. Thank you for all you do for your staff, students, and communities.
Thank you from the SEL Team!
Thank you from the SEL Team!
We wish you a wonderful spring break and start to 4th quarter.
We look forward to finishing the 2023-2024 school year strong with you!
Questions?
Questions?
Visit the SEL and Restorative Practices Department website for more information and resources.
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