Define Team Member Roles and Responsibilities

Defining clear roles and responsibilities helps ensure that everyone on the team feels a sense of ownership and knows how best to support the work. It’ll also help create productive team meetings and share the work equitably.

Heading the team is the SEL team lead, who plays a critical role by:

• Fostering a supportive, motivating team dynamic.
• Keeping the team on track with meetings, goals, and action items.
• Building the team’s capacity to carry out the work and continuously improve.
• Modeling, advocating for, and communicating about SEL to school stakeholders.

“Team lead” is not synonymous with “decision-maker.” Instead, the team can be most productive using a democratic decision-making process with feedback from multiple stakeholders.

In addition to the team lead, you may want to consider designating:

• A school-family partnership lead to serve as a liaison to families and ensure their voices are represented in team decisions.
• A data lead to guide the team in tracking data and progress towards school goals and improvement planning.
• Student member(s) of the SEL team to ensure that the perspectives of their peers are represented and elevated.

While these leads will remain constant throughout the school year, you may want to rotate other roles and meeting responsibilities, such as facilitator, notetaker, timekeeper, etc.