Beware SEL Overkill

Early in my administrative career, I significantly downplayed the importance of Social Emotional Learning (SEL).  My basic premise was essentially that there are too many children who leave our system unprepared to participate adequately in the economy and achieve adult independence.  Until educators start assessing students properly and can ensure that all students learn, grow, and leave our system with the necessary skills to be employable and productive, then, well, there are only so many hours in the day, so we're going to focus on literacy, critical thinking, writing across all content areas, and, most importantly, assessment.

I also felt, as I sometimes do today, that the realm of SEL is more comfortable for teachers and, at times, provides a shield from truly reflecting on instructional practices and the extent to which students are achieving academic proficiency 

However, I made a huge mistake.  I committed the mortal sin of leadership that I caution everyone against.  I turned this discussion into an either-or proposition.  And, it is not.  Both sides of the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) triangle, academic and social-emotional, are equally important.

As I continued to learn and grow in my own leadership, I realized that I was wrong.  If we were going to to have strong student-centered Professional Learning Communities that shift the focus from what is being taught to what is actually learned, if we are going to provide feedback to teachers based on the Danielson Model, if we were going to ensure life ready graduates, it became clear to me that positive relationships with students is the key to all learning.

Initially, when the P21 Framework was first established, many educators began the journey of trying to understand the difference between dissemination of content to mastery of skills, and the 4Cs of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication became part of the modern lexicon.  However, in Deep Learning, Michael Fullan extends the 4Cs to the 6Cs and adds character and citizenship as critical attributes for success in life.  And this is partially where my thinking began to evolve.  I personally shifted from a sole focus on college and career readiness to a realization that education should be about life readiness.

As my leadership teams deepened their collective understanding of how to lead a system focused on life readiness, it was obvious that a whole child focus is a prerequisite for realizing this aspiration.  Our teams partnered with the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), and deepened their understanding of what rigor and relevance looks and feels like in schools and classrooms.  One thing that Bill Daggett, the founder of ICLE said in his keynotes that resonated with me that I'll never forget was, "You can't get to rigor without relevance, and you can't get to relevance without relationships."  Or as Fullan has said consistently, relationships first.

Everything began to come together.  I began to understand how 3C:  Engaging Students in Learning (student engagement) drives excellent teaching in all components of the Danielson Framework.  I now prefer Eric Sheninger's concept of student agency or George Couros concept of student empowerment to the term engagement, but the general premise is the same.

I became an advocate for SEL which is embedded in the everyday experience of all children and adults in the system.  I am still not a fan of what I call "program as panacea," and it will take a lot of persuading to convince me that one can buy a magic pill to "fix" SEL or anything else, for that matter.  But my commitment to whole child development is reflected, I think, in the fact that my previous district was named the Illinois Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development's Exemplary District for Whole Child Education in 2019.

All that being said, I think it is important to issue a word of caution.

As we enter the 2021-22 school year, fresh off the pandemic and one of (if not the most) challenging years in the history of public education, there is great optimism that come fall, schools will more closely resemble pre-pandemic norms.  With that optimism comes an awareness that students will come to us with increased social emotional needs, for a wide variety of reasons, which will further exacerbate the recent trends that began well before the spring of 2019.

Anyone who has been around in this business for any period of time will tell you that things are cyclical.  If you recall the self-esteem movement of the late 70s and early to mid-80s, then you will also recall 1987's A Nation At Risk, which led to a movement toward privatization (vouchers), Clinton's Goals 2000, the perhaps the most overwhelming bipartisan piece of legislation in history in 2002, No Child Left Behind.  Educators generally failed to internally acknowledge the public's desire for accountability, so external forces took care of that for us.

Deja vu is coming soon if educators do not adequately balance both halves of the MTSS triangle.

There is a national, organized, political movement afoot that targets local school boards, and if districts are not extremely judicious in how they navigate these waters, expect that these groups will use what I call unfinished learning, but what many refer to as learning loss, as a means to suggest once again suggest that public schools are failing.

Should that happen, the pendulum will again swing back to the No Child Left Behind Days and the voucher wars, which are already escalating.  Both halves of the triangle means that the academic half cannot be neglected for the SEL half.  It has never been either-or, and it cannot be now.