This monthly series of thought leadership webinars addresses ten key aspects of high-quality systemic SEL. Key Takeaways:
Creating the conditions for students to engage in SEL requires schoolwide and classroom learning environments that are supportive, culturally responsive, and focused on building relationships and community.
Incentivizing districts to support school and classroom environments is an approach that requires guidance and criteria for funding to expand resources for districts who are creating those conditions.
Taking a collaborative inquiry approach to developing supportive school and classroom climate begins with an initial root cause analysis to unpack to understand the experiences that students have in school. From that analysis, school leaders and teams can implement SEL strategies fostering a strong school climate based on the needs that were addressed in the root cause analysis.
Keynote Speakers
Camille FarringtonManaging Director & Senior Research Associate, UChicago Consortium on School Research
Michelle JacksonHigh School SEL Support Manager, Office of Social & Emotional Learning, Chicago Public Schools
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Camille Farrington
Camille A. Farrington is a Managing Director and Senior Research Associate at the UChicago Consortium. She is a national expert on academic mindsets and the measurement of psychosocial factors in academic settings. Her research focuses on understanding how learning environments provide opportunities for positive developmental experiences for students, how young people make sense of daily schooling experiences, and how school structures and teacher practices shape students’ beliefs, behaviors, performance, and development. Camille is passionate about leveraging the science of learning and development in K-12 schools, identifying and disrupting inequitable structures and practices, supporting the ongoing growth and development of educators to lead profound change in schools, and ultimately transforming the daily schooling experience and life outcomes of educationally marginalized students and communities. Her book, Failing at School: Lessons for Redesigning Urban High Schools (2014, Teachers College Press), outlines one approach to equitable school redesign. All of Camille’s work is informed by her fifteen years’ experience as a public high school teacher. Working or not, Camille attempts to split her time as evenly as possible between Chicago, the best American city, and California, which is hands down the best state in the land.
Michelle Jackson
Michelle has worked in Chicago Public Schools for what feels like a lifetime (but that's only because her mother is a CPS teacher). For 17 years she has worked in and alongside schools to help cultivate safe and supportive learning experiences tailored to the needs and cultural identities of students. Michelle is a graduate of The University of Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University.
