Hope Squad
Use the guidance in Focus Area 1B to set short-term (one-year) goals that will help you reach your schoolwide vision. Use these goals and your rubric scores to determine which areas to prioritize in your action plan. Below, you can create action steps based on your priorities.
An SEL team meets regularly with designated roles and responsibilities. Students, families, and community groups are consulted when teams are making decisions that would directly impact them.
Hope Squad
Foundational SEL learning opportunities have been provided to some key stakeholders (staff, families, and community partners). Members of the school community have a general understanding of SEL and its impact on students’ development.
The SEL team and school leadership engages in consistent two-way SEL communications with all stakeholders including staff, other schoolwide teams, community partners, families, and out-of-school time providers.
A shared vision for schoolwide SEL has not yet been developed.
The SEL team is beginning to assess needs and resources.
Funding for schoolwide SEL has not yet been discussed and prioritized.
Staff engage in high-quality professional learning multiple times throughout the year to develop their skills for cultivating supportive, equitable learning environments and promoting SEL for students. These professional learning opportunities are aligned to the school's SEL goals and scaffolded to support staff based on their roles and current knowledge of SEL.
Meaningful opportunities for staff to reflect on and develop their own social, emotional, and cultural competencies are available multiple times throughout the year. These opportunities include structured activities that support staff in practicing self-care and examining their mindsets and biases.
The SEL team and school leadership regularly reviews their approach for fostering community, shared purpose, and collaboration among staff. Staff have dedicated time for collaboration. Staff norms or shared agreements guide respectful interactions, effective collaboration, and an inclusive staff culture.
Leadership and staff regularly model social, emotional, and cultural competencies in their language and interactions with most staff, students, families, and community partners. Staff efforts and contributions are sometimes acknowledged.
Teachers have not yet prioritized the use of inclusive, relationship-centered, and culturally responsive practices to create supportive classroom environments.
The school has not yet dedicated time for students to learn about, reflect on, and discuss SEL competencies through developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive instruction.
SEL standards/goals are clearly embedded in academic learning, and students regularly share their perspectives on how social and emotional competencies connect to what they're learning. Teachers actively engage students in co-constructing knowledge and making meaning of content through classroom discussions and collaborative structures. Teachers use intentional strategies to foster student ownership over their learning, including connecting their perspectives and experiences to instruction.
Leadership and staff are familiar with students’ cultural backgrounds, life circumstances, and the local community context. Instructional materials offer diverse representations of culture, race, gender, and other identities. SEL practices provide opportunities for some students to learn about cultural differences.
The SEL team meets regularly to plan school climate improvement efforts and is beginning to collect climate data. Schoolwide norms, shared agreements, routines, and procedures support the school's SEL vision and climate.
The school is implementing with fidelity an evidence-based SEL program and practices across all grade levels, and providing ongoing implementation support to staff. Program and practices are aligned to the school's SEL vision and goals, and are culturally and linguistically responsive to students. The SEL team regularly uses data on fidelity of implementation to inform planning.
Staff honor and elevate a broad range of student perspectives and experiences by engaging them as leaders, problem-solvers, and decision-makers, offering ways for students to shape SEL initiatives, instructional practices, and school climate. Students regularly initiate and lead activities, solutions, and projects to improve their classrooms, school and the broader community.
The school provides a continuum of supports that meet the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral needs of all students. The SEL team has created common language and aligned all student supports and related programs and initiatives with schoolwide SEL goals and priorities. Each year, the SEL team takes stock of all supports and is strategic about how to improve integration in the coming year.
Discipline policies and practices promote SEL, including providing opportunities for students to reflect, problem solve, and build positive relationships. These policies and practices take into account students’ developmental stages, cultural backgrounds, and individual differences. Data demonstrates that these practices are used consistently and equitably in the classroom and throughout the school.
School staff have multiple avenues for ongoing two-way communication with families, inviting families to understand, experience, inform, and support the social and emotional development of their students in partnership with the school. This partnership includes family participation on the SEL team and meaningful opportunities to learn more about and contribute to SEL in the school.
The school has developed strategic and aligned community partnerships to support schoolwide SEL. The school and community partners are familiar with one another’s approach to SEL and have worked to align and integrate supports where possible. These partnerships lead to increased student and family access to a broad range of community services and expand the professional learning opportunities for SEL.
The SEL team does not yet use implementation data and disaggregated outcome data to track progress toward SEL goals and monitor outcomes. Staff do not yet have the time and skills necessary to engage in cycles of continuous improvement.
The SEL team has not yet identified a structured and ongoing process to collect, reflect on, and use data to inform school-level decisions.