Putting SEL Into Practice

When SEL is integrated into all the settings that impact students, creates the kind of learning environments where all students thrive academically, personally, and socially.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is most effective when it’s woven into all students’ educational experiences. More than a single lesson or activity, SEL is integrated across key settings where students live and learn: classrooms, schools, homes, and communities. We call this systemic SEL implementation. 

How does systemic SEL appear in different settings?

In the Classroom

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Students spend the majority of their school day in classrooms. Students thrive, learn, and grow when they experience:

  • A supportive classroom climate that helps students to feel emotionally safe, part of a community of learners, motivated, and challenged. This type of environment creates a strong foundation for students to engage fully and take academic risks. 
  • SEL instruction through evidence-based SEL programs that provide consistent opportunities to cultivate, practice, and reflect on social and emotional competencies. CASEL’s Program Guide offers information about programs that meet rigorous research standards.
  • Academic instruction that integrates SEL, so students have opportunities to practice and reflect on social and emotional competencies, such as perspective-taking and developing a growth mindset, while learning academic content. The two areas are mutually supporting, as student engagement activates motivation to learn in a positive feedback loop. 

Resources and professional development opportunities for classroom SEL:

In the School

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All parts of the school—from the cafeteria, to the hallway, to the playground—offer students opportunities to practice and reinforce SEL. Several factors contribute to schoolwide SEL:

  • A supportive school environment with strong and positive relationships 
  • Adults in the school who help shape this environment by practicing and modeling their own SEL 
  • Policies that weave and integrate social and emotional development with other priorities and goals (academics, family/community engagement, staff retention, discipline, etc.)

The 10 indicators of schoolwide SEL offer benchmarks toward full implementation. 

Resources and professional development opportunities for schoolwide SEL:

In the District

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SEL should pervade every aspect of a district’s work—from the superintendent’s office, to academics and core priorities, to the classroom. It is a unifying thread to help bring together district priorities, impacting central office staff, school leaders, teachers, students, and families.

Districts can center SEL in strategic planning and in the ways the central office operates, sets policies, budgets for resources to support implementation, provides professional learning, and enacts a vision and long-term plan for implementing, integrating, and continuously improving. SEL practices.

Resources and professional development opportunities for districtwide SEL:

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