Creating Systems for Future Readiness

Key Points

• What does it truly mean to be future ready? How is social and emotional learning at the heart of future readiness and future-ready schools? Three experts discuss these questions in CASEL’s second webinar in our three-part series “Thriving in Tomorrow’s World,” which explores how to create systems that prepare students for the future.
• Our three experts offer insights into how schools and districts are integrating a more robust notion of future-readiness—one that integrates SEL and social and emotional well-being—into the definition of student achievement and growth to help expand the notion of future-readiness beyond traditional notions of career success.
• From integrating SEL into classroom instruction, to developing robust “Portraits of a Graduate,” to using competency-based assessments, they explore education trends and efforts that embrace and promote a more robust notion of future-readiness for students.

Thriving in Tomorrow’s World Three-Part Webinar Series: Part 2 Recap

How do we prepare a generation for a world that is more complex, globally connected, and technologically advanced than we have ever experienced?

CASEL’s new three-part webinar series, Thriving in Tomorrow’s World: Learning Spaces for a Future-Ready Generation, dives into this critical question. Leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers explore the vital role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in future-readiness, along with systems-level approaches and classroom strategies that can equip students with the skills they need for success in a rapidly shifting world.

In this second installment, Karen VanAusdal, Vice President of Practice, was joined by a panel of experts to discuss how to create education systems that embrace and support more robust, adaptive, and supportive notions of future-readiness.

• Katherine Prince, Vice President, Foresight & Strategy, KnowledgeWorks
• Heather Wines, Supervisor of Social-Emotional Learning, Prince William County Schools
• Dr. Sharon A. Hoover, Co-Director, National Center for School Mental Health

Watch the recording of the webinar below, or read on for key takeaways and video clips from the conversation.

What are some productive ways to shift our definition of future-readiness in terms of how we approach student development and achievement?

Wines:

Hoover:

“I think that historically, the conversation around readiness has really centered on those college and career pathways. I mean, where are you going to college and what are your test scores and how many AP classes have you taken or career tech programs have you engaged in? … We can’t just focus on academic achievement. We have to really think about some of the other facets that go into readiness. And our business leaders and our colleges tell us this. They don’t simply want students who have taken lots of AP classes or have certain test scores. They want graduates who are able to make effective decisions. They want graduates who can form healthy relationships and have interpersonal skills and contribute meaningfully as adults. That’s tied to their mental health and well-being. When we think about preparing our students for the future as education systems, we really need to be thinking about making well-being a part of that educational ecosystem.”

Prince:

“More and more school districts and states are using portraits of a learner or portraits of a graduate to help articulate what learners know and should be able to do when they graduate. And those portraits often take a really broad view of future-readiness, focusing on transferable skills that we know are going to provide, you know, the foundation for adapting as the world shifts.”

What are some ways that you are seeing that systems are meaningfully embedding a focus on future readiness?

Hoover:

Wines:

“[My team] has created this tool that’s called a student vision profile. It’s a personalized view of each student’s post-graduation readiness. It’s designed to help our students and families really engage in that post-secondary planning. It takes data points from all different kinds of things. It embeds things from our career and college planning, the student’s GPA, their test scores, graduation status, and even looks at things for workforce readiness and college, our state college statistics. And it helps our families have this tool that they can look at when they are trying to navigate how choices that they make right now impact their future. It’s really great.”

Prince:

“Competency-based assessments really elevate the focus on transferable skills: those skills that apply across many kinds of content they will encounter in work, in other aspects of life that support us in being successful across the disciplines. They’re specifically assessed in competency-based assessments, so students are aware of what they’re trying to develop and what they need to work on next. That means they’re also developing a kind of metacognition around those skills. This can also kind of help with culture and learners’ sense of belonging because they shift the focus from sorting and ranking.”

What trends are you seeing around schools and learning that you think most connect to SEL?

Prince:

Related Posts:

• Designing Learning Spaces for Future-Ready Students
• SEL Week 2025: 5 Stories About How SEL Builds a Foundation for the Future
• How Can States Prepare Students for the Future? The “Portrait of the Graduate” Helps Set the Vision

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