Integrate SEL into Lesson Plans

Educational reform is a school building by school building effort. Each school has its unique culture, heroes, resources, challenges, low-hanging fruit and long-term possibilities. A workshop that introduces a school staff to SEL in every lesson plan is the initial inspiring event; building momentum and structures that sustain change is the ongoing work of administration. Combining tools of organization development and educational reforms with intentional administrative support not only make every lesson plan improve with SEL, but provides a roadmap for all future efforts to build a more thriving school culture.

The first parts of a lesson, from greeting students through Do Nows and reviews of prior lessons are critical to academic success. This workshop takes a close look at that first part of the lesson, and the many tools and routines teachers can employ to prompt and support the SEL skills that their students need to navigate the initial jump into academics.

This is the comprehensive approach to SEL in every lesson plan. Educators will be introduced to the brain science and child development that supports student achievement, consider their own priorities in establishing an SEL foundation in their classes, and build a lesson plan infused with SEL that begins when the students enter the room and informs every moment of the lesson all the way through assigning homework and saying goodbye.

This middle of the lesson, the introduction of new skills and content followed by the opportunity for students to practice and apply their new skills and content, is a rich territory to integrate SEL skills. In fact, there is much evidence that the human brain cannot fully reach mastery in academics in the absence of social and emotional competence. This workshop provides tools for teachers to prompt and support their students SEL skills as they grapple with and explore new ideas and skills that form the heart of most lesson plans.

Every educator implicitly guides students in their SEL development. This workshop is the first step in transforming implicit and random efforts into explicit and intentional efforts to build SEL skills in any classroom. Educators will leave with a clear sense of their own SEL priorities and a guide for infusing those priorities into their lessons.

Formative assessment is not a quick quiz–instead it may be the most important time for students to apply their SEL skills to communicate their thinking, so that teachers to have access to the still very fragile understanding that students are holding in the moment. This workshop will provide teachers with various tools for formative assessments, supported by the SEL prompts that encourage students to feel safe to share what they know, and what they still need to know. Formative assessment can also be part of a predictable and calming closure of class, one that reviews and reinforces the academic and SEL skills the students have exercised throughout the lesson, providing a calm transition to the next task of the day.

Conflict is inevitable; the ability to manage conflict and develop wisdom from conflict are learned skills. This workshop will help participants develop and expand their abilities to talk through differences and find common ground.

The single most important task of school staff each day is to rebuild a climate of exquisite respect, so that all students have their best chance to succeed as learners. This workshop explores the many essential ways to achieve this condition in schools.

People don’t change; they grow. Students with challenges grow in idiosyncratic and often unpredictable ways. In this workshop we will consider the diverse ways students learn, the opportunities to stretch the environment for atypical learners, and share many tools to help teachers hang in through the ups-and-downs of student development.

Schools are at the intersection of infinite need and finite resources. Everyone feels the pressure. This workshop will look at the institutional stress experienced by students and by staff, and offer tools, protocols and concepts to help build support, relationships, and a more successful learning environment.

The last thirty years of brain research have given us a much better idea of how students gain knowledge and skills. In this workshop participants will be given a short review of that research and be shown simple ways to adjust pedagogy to improve student learning.

We can inculcate in students a belief that they all have immeasurable intelligence, and that each of them can learn and grow through a lifetime of pursuits. This workshop moves participants from theory to classroom practices. Workshop participants will become versed in the latest brain science, and how to bring that amazing and wondrous knowledge to their students in every day conversation. We will investigate daily rituals and routines that deepen student beliefs that their thoughts are worthy. We will examine ways to set up lessons and units that expand the possibilities for students to know themselves as learners by building strategies of effort. We will consider the critical opportunities throughout the day to give students feedback that enhances their confidence. This workshop is not about a lesson or a trick to get students to try harder; it’s about the very meaning of teaching and learning, and how schools and classrooms can be transformed.

There is a little bit of magic when co-teachers combine their strengths in a classroom. Co-teaching magic is more likely to happen when teachers, and their leadership team, share terminology, best practices, and expectations. This workshop provides a dive into co-teaching models, lesson plan objectives, shared interests, and ways of handling student difficulties.