As a CASEL partner since 2010, Austin Independent School District has often had the privilege of sharing our journey with other school districts from around the country. We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with other educators as we grapple with the complexity of systemic, transformative social and emotional learning (SEL). It is a welcome chance to positively impact the experiences and academic outcomes of young people in our care.
What galvanizes our efforts? We understand that we operate within a system originally designed to standardize, erase, and oppress, and we are working to transform education into a powerful driver of civic engagement, empowerment, and democracy. This focus drives our district’s work toward culturally proficient, transformative SEL, which mirrors the national conversation in the field, moving from lessons in a binder to true consideration of how to disrupt oppressive systems, facilitate educator self-reflection, and galvanize shifts toward ever more inclusive, equitable schools.
We were excited to collaborate in this way with Albuquerque Public Schools in December of 2023, a district in the beginning stages of building systemic, transformative SEL throughout their learning spaces. Our SEL and Cultural Proficiency and Inclusiveness (CP&I) team’s goal was to provide an authentic look at our decade-plus work in the field, showing both our successes and challenges. We also wanted to underscore the importance of adult educator reflection and inner exploration of the CASEL competencies and focal constructs in the context of cultural proficiency, since it is only through adult “inside out” work that we can truly support the social, emotional, and academic development of every student.
Of course, our two days together were framed by the SEL 3 Signature Practices, as our intent was to both model and participate together in the best practice structures offered by CASEL and other important influencers in the SEL and cultural proficiency world. We shared the timeline of our history in the work, and the current signature programs we support and promote as a dedicated SEL and CP&I team. We then invited the Albuquerque educators to engage with us in some of the ongoing, self-reflective “inside out” work that we continually do as a team and offer to the campuses we support. This exploration of our identity and culture allows us to consider how our lived experiences and identifiers impact how we move through the world and engage with others, including our colleagues, communities, families, and students.
We offered a self-paced station experience to explore the frameworks and practices that undergird our work, and presented a panel of district leaders who collaborate with our team to deepen the systemic impact of transformative SEL. On the second day, we visited campuses across the district, interacting with the teachers and students doing the daily practices and experiencing the growth and struggle as we work together to create welcoming, inclusive, academically powerful learning environments.
We then engaged in a consultancy protocol—a structure for problem-solving conversations with colleagues addressing pressing professional dilemmas. We used a consultancy protocol focused on listening to thoughts, ideas, and concerns about implementation from the Albuquerque team, then brainstormed ways to work through structural barriers to districtwide transformative SEL. We intentionally closed with a reflection circle that highlighted our experiences together and crystallized our solidarity in providing welcoming, equitable, challenging, and joyful educational experiences and environments for all our children and families.
The purpose of national collaborations like this is to lift this work for all educators, offering a vision of how to transform education. We can only make it happen by interrogating systems and our internal landscape, and we can only accomplish this in community with our educational colleagues, leaders, and students and their families.
It was a gift to share space and time with the passionate educators from Albuquerque; we grew as a team from our thought partnership with them. We look forward to a continued collaboration with them and everyone who shares the developing path of transformative social and emotional learning—this is the path that supports the educators working so hard to lift up today’s students into tomorrow’s leaders.
The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.
The SEL and CP&I team for Austin Independent School District includes Director Statia Paschel, Social Emotional Wellness Strategic Coordinator Angela Bailey, Student Agency and Engagement Coordinator Kat Kelley, Families as Partners Coordinator Maria Rosas, and SEL and CP&I Specialists Karen Cuevas, Theresa Burke Garcia, Emily Hoaldridge-Dopkins, Colesha Johnson, Courtney Jones, Kenneth Loyde, Katie O’Neil, Edith Rios, Cleopatra Salomon, and Rheanna Randall Sween.
