SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING NEWS
SEL - SERVICE LEARNING - CULTURE & CLIMATE
April 2021
Community - Connection - Care
Spring Into a New Beginning
“Belonging: Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.
Spring season is here and that means a new start. The earth comes back alive in the spring. This month, the Social and Emotional Learning and Character Education Department through the newsletter welcome a new start and celebrate spring by honoring the great people of Guilford County Schools. The connections and care that all educators, support staff, students, parents, and community members have shared and created has opened the door for an educational community that honors belonging.
Author Brene Brown, in her quote highlights how belonging “is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.” The accomplishments and goals that our district has made and will continue to make throughout this momentous school year are huge and amazing. To continue reaching goals, being innovative, culturally responsive, and inclusive, it is important that belonging is centered in our school, community, and instructional choices.
Belonging builds resiliency, self-efficacy, agency, identity, and purpose. Belonging allows for students and educators to fulfill their ultimate potential. This month’s newsletter provides resources and examples of how to cultivate spaces where students and staff can feel they belong in the school community. Please use these resources to boost your own professional knowledge as well as your school’s learning environment through the SEL competencies of self-awareness, social-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
The SEL and Character Education department would like to encourage you to embrace the symbolism of spring and utilize the useful tools and resources in the newsletter to promote a sense of belonging within your school community. As we move toward a return to normalcy there are still a lot of challenges that our community face. Never has it been more important that our community spaces, such as our schools, are safe and inclusive for all identities and cultures.
The SEL Spotlight
Northeast Guilford HS
Bluford-Peeler
SEL Team
SEL Quick Wins - Belonging
Circle Time - We talk about circle time often. Its a great place to have conversations on a variety of subjects. All time during circle for students to share who they are. Ask questions, particularly when noting differences. Teach your students to be inquisitive about each other.
Be a model. Some student (and adults) tend to shy away from or even tease someone who looks or acts differently. Be a model for your students in the way that you ask questions, engage with, and appreciate differences. Do this even among adults. Your students are watching.
Expose your students to a variety of people. It is important that students see themselves in school, classroom, curriculum. But, it is also important that they see others. Use books and materials that represent diversity. This is not just diversity as it relates to race, but diversity in the ways people live, work, play, and go about their lives.
Engaging SEL Activities
Focus: 3 Signature Practices
Description: How do we go from an understanding of social and emotional learning to implementing SEL in our schools and daily work? In this activity, school staff can learn about the 3 signature practices for SEL, practice SEL skills, and identify strategies to support SEL implementation in their classrooms.
Here is the electronic version of the SEL Playbook:https://schoolguide.casel.org/uploads/2018/12/CASEL_SEL-3-Signature-Practices-Playbook-V3.pdf
Overview of the 3 Signature Practices: (should take no more than 3-4 minutes; just hit the highlights)
- Welcoming Inclusion Activities are brief, interactive experiences that bring the voice of every participant into the room, making a connection to one another and/or to the work ahead, with each perspective-laden, culturally-rich voice being heard, respected and learned from.
- Engaging strategies are inherently infused with SEL, vary in complexity, include reflection and processing time, and consist of sequential steps that are facilitated to support learning individually (like the use of “turn-to-your-partner”) and collectively (for example, “Socratic Seminar” and “Jigsaw”).
- Optimistic Closures may be reflective about the learning, help identify next steps, or make connections to one’s own work.
Product: Staff will work collaboratively in small groups to examine 1 SEL strategy and create their own strategy as a team to briefly present to the staff. (10-15 minutes)
- This template is located on pages 48-50
Staff may use the playbook to find exemplars for their group’s particular strategy. Pages 57-58 have key examples for the classroom that may also guide staff through their process.
Keys suggestions to prep for activity: Can be adapted virtually by using breakout rooms or channels.
- Place staff members in vertical groups of 5 (6th, 7th, 8th, Encore and Support/Classified Staff)
- Place 6 folded sticky notes or index cards in a zip lock bag for staff to randomly pull out their assigned signature practice. (2 index cards/sticky notes should have welcoming activities, another 2 engaging practices and the last 2 optimistic closure)
- Provide staff with anchor charts and markers to create their own strategy. Have staff use pages 48-50 to create their product.
- Provide staff with the electronic playbook via email. Encourage them to bring their devices
- Print 2 copies of page 48, 2 copies of page 49 and 2 copies of page 50 (6 pages total) to provide to groups.
- Page 51 can help staff identify a SEL focus. Staff not being able to identify a SEL focus should not prohibit them from completing the other components of the activity. I will help make the SEL connections where needed.
Educators Pick- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn
• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.
Reading Corner for Students
Elementary: Ashleigh's New Normal
After finishing kindergarten and first grade, Ashleigh thought she knew all the school rules and procedures. She loved the school routines that made learning fun and she was eager to start a new school year. However, just as she was learning about second grade, what she thought was a normal school day changed. The COVID-19 virus made its way into her world and nothing was the same. This book explores Ashleigh’s “new normal” as she learns how to adjust to remote learning.
Middle School Pick: Echo Mountain
After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie.
Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands, and determined to help her father she will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as “the hag.” But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal.
Historical fiction at its finest, Echo Mountain is celebration of finding your own path and becoming your truest self. Lauren Wolk, the Newbery Honor– and Scott O'Dell Award–winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea, weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of families.
High School Pick: The Girl who Drank the Moon
Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is kind. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Xan rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. As Luna’s thirteenth birthday approaches, her magic begins to emerge—with dangerous consequences. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Deadly birds with uncertain intentions flock nearby. A volcano, quiet for centuries, rumbles just beneath the earth’s surface. And the woman with the Tiger’s heart is on the prowl . . .
Positive Behavior and Bullying Prevention
The SEL Department continues to make strides in sharing and providing bullying prevention resources with all GCS to help improve student’s physical and emotional safety at school. Unfortunately, children with disabilities are disproportionately affected by bullying. Therefore, to help students achieve their full potential, PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center has shared 5 important facts to help students with disabilities.
"Although only ten U.S. studies have been conducted on the connection between bullying and developmental disabilities, all of these studies found that children with disabilities were two to three times more likely to be bullied than their nondisabled peers. (Disabilities: Insights from Across Fields and Around the World; Marshall, Kendall, Banks & Gover (Eds.), 2009.)"
https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/students-with-disabilities/
The Media Center
Quotation Station
GCS SEL Newsletter Feedback
Our Team
We are always here to serve you. Please do not hesitate to reach out to a member of our team if we can provide any support. To find out which SEL Specialist is assigned to your school, click here. http://bit.ly/SELSP
LaTrayl Adams, MS
Social-Emotional Learning Specialist
adamsl2@gcsnc.com
Lisa Brenner, MSW
Director of Social-Emotional Learning
brennel@gcsnc.com
Cynthia Brown, M.Ed
Social-Emotional Learning Specialist
brownc2@gcsnc.com
Tawanda Carpenter, MS
Positive Supports and Bullying Prevention Coordinator
carpent@gcsnc.com
Shan J. Carter, MPA
Social-Emotional Learning Specialist
carters6@gcsnc.com
Jacob Hicks, MS
Service Learning and Character Education Specialist
hicksj@gcsnc.com
Sherry Rogowski, Ed.S.
Positive Culture and Climate Coordinator
rogowss@gcsnc.com
Tinisha Shaw, MS
Social-Emotional Learning Specialist