[Music] the office of social and emotional learning congratulate schools that have earned CPS supportive school certification and celebrates their strong multi-tiered system of supports for students supportive schools are really the places where you walk in and you can feel automatically that the culture is warm welcoming it's productive the students in the building feel safe they feel connected both to each other and to the adults in the building we have an exemplary supportive staff and community of stakeholders we saw that there was a need to really support our students on another level outside of what we were doing academically our goal is to make sure that 100% of our students are college and career ready we felt like we really needed to put some additional supports in place in order to meet all of those needs and that missing piece was really that social-emotional learning piece for us it started with really having a strong SEL team they basically solicit others to participate on the team as volunteer once the team comes together then they plan their professional development for the year we attend monthly meetings with our network SEL and we bring that information back and provide professional development to the teachers they are giving us strategies that we can use with our classrooms oh we spent this year really motivating the teachers keeping them empowered giving them help when they need help we all did spent the first week or so getting to know our students through classroom building activities and that created positive relationships school to me has always been about nurturing students rather than just teaching them you can't teach them anything if you don't know them we look at it more of being proactive so we're putting the things in place so that we do not have to deal with the issues that sometimes take away from the instructional time behavior issues absenteeism and also with referrals to the office students are spending more time in class and more time in class equals more instructional time we all have school norms collectively SEL is spoken through our student work it's learning how to self-manage and problem-solve and use critical thinking we literally live SEL here if someone was visiting they would seek common language our students know how to walk and conduct themselves in the hallway so how we line up how we enter the building how we get our lunch that we say good afternoon that we say please that we say thank you and they understand that from pre-k through eighth grade that these are the expectations today we learned why it's important to check our assumptions especially when you have your strong emotions why is it important to check them sometimes when you may and you make a decision you don't know what you're doing or you just don't be thinking you just act when we first started out we started out with 2nd stuff and second step was a program that we felt that they could really implement on the ground floor getting to really know and understand the social emotional learning standards with fidelity by writing her diary um that her mom had bought her so even today if you have something that you're going through what do we do you can still pour out all your emotions in your journal how is that an excellent way to manage your emotions from there we started doing lesson integration we wanted to show that this was something you can do without just having a program and that it would be actually intertwined into our entire curriculum so it just comes natural when you're talking about characters today with Sharon Draper's book fired from the rock as we were talking about the main character Sylvia and how she had to manage her emotions going through this difficult time so it just seemed natural to me to kind of weave them together I'm thinking about how the students are going to react to the certain challenges that the characters are facing and they can see that okay well this is social-emotional learning and it's a everyday kind of thing I really enjoy teaching SEO it's embedded throughout the day it's not separate for us I find time for a during reading during a read aloud during a math talk working in cooperative groups today's topic for our Monday mentoring group is using emotions as a guide to decision making with the Monday mentoring program that's really taking us to a different level because it ensures that every student in the building has a relationship with someone other than just they're classroom teacher the students filling at home or this being a safe environment for them one of the things that we really push is really understanding their emotions and how emotions impact actions decisions and consequences taking responsibility for self responsible decision making and goal-setting these are things that you know the students have to own themselves and so we do a lot of that with Monday mentoring let's try to be still like a statue okay our minute to relax [Music] so yoga is through mindful practice and that's a component of our social emotional learning we received professional development on it as a staff some team-building activities for us enhancing like their listening skills their communication skills so it's really building that community just something that you're stressing about that you want to let go many times we talked about having our journey where we write stuff down because sometimes we have to get it out children need to have strategies in place to solve problems and control their emotions when there's a disagreement we come up to the classroom and we solve that disagreement whether it be has a whole class or in the peace center if we need to talk about a little more then we'll spend that time we have peer supports and so they may be referred to the Peace Center or some restorative conversations if a student needs individual time by themselves each classroom or even the library the gym we have what's called a Peace Center it's just a little corner in the room that the teacher has set aside where these students can calm down and in each Peace Center it's what's called a calm down bottle it's just a water bottle with glitter in it and they shake it and they watch the glitter fall and it calms them down and it works we have a lot of partnerships with different agencies so it may be a referral to universal family connections which provides our on-site counseling and off-site counseling when we're meeting their needs of tier 1 tier 2 level then it really doesn't escalate to the need for 2 to 3 services do you have a friend oh you're right relationships are very key and for us it starts with our relationships as adults with one another we're modeling those appropriate behaviors for our students and also our interaction with our parents today is the kickoff of week of the young child so guess what I have some love notes from your parents we had parents write love letters and their children which we displayed out throughout the school and I don't think people realize how much what that does for a child it says Jada keep on doing a great job in school I am very proud of you and love you very much love dad this love note is for Micah you are so nice and sweet I love you love mommy but the way we speak to each other the way I speak to colleagues the way I speak to children the way students talk to each other we need the same skills that the students need in order to be successful so the first thing to discuss on our agenda is red nose day in addition to wearing our colors do something else till I show that pride or marcus garvey you have a lot of students they've actually grown up in this SEL environment so they're training the younger students to be more involved so they know what to say they know what to look for they know what to show I just feel like it's an integral part of what we do kids are more responsible they actually take charge of their own learning they become excellent speakers and they can solve their own problems you can't really have success on the academic level without meeting their social emotional needs it's necessary to really have a holistic approach to the needs of our students in order to have a very productive school for more information and guidance on becoming a CPS supportive school visit the office of social and emotional learning knowledge center page or send us an email