In attendance: Wendy, Randi, Steve, Krichanna, Maya, Tony, Anecia, Nicole, Archana, Megan, Adrienne, Amy, Sacha, Hannah, Jennifer, Charles, Susan, Cathy, Kelly, Jared Public Forum Attendance: Carolyn 1
Three years ago, the life piece was introduced; that is where SEL lives. These are the district initiatives and where SEL lives in BSD. 2
SEL is the interpersonal skills and Patty Shelton (Social Studies Developer) leads the commitment to the commitment to the community through social studies. 3
In Bellevue we are using the five CASEL competencies to provide a framework for our work related to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). This last fall we are beginning the third year with our instructional initiatives and this works lives in the Positive and Productive Life piece of the instructional initiatives, but also impacts academic success and college and career readiness. https://youtu.be/dqnn9qwoo1m The video is 6 minutes and further describes each of the CASEL competencies. 4
Intention setting 5
Minutes located here: http://www.bsd405.org/get-involved/advisory-committees/highschool-social-emotional-learning/ www.bsd405.org Get Involved Join a Committee District-Wide Committees High School Social & Emotional Learning John Norlin Assembly at SHS on June 3 rd from 8:50-10:30 in the PAC at SHS InspirED: Megan, Sacha, Hannah have been experiencing with InspirED Megan Has been reviewing resources, sees a lot of connections to mental health unit, hard to fit into semester long course Hannah Doing lessons in drawing and painting classes, surveyed students to see what they needed 1 st period: Energized & Motivated, group jump and connected to artist Hard to make them feel authentic.how does this fit into my curriculum? Needs to feel genuine. Sacha Used with poetry, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, bio-poem, great timing with ELA curriculum 6
Minutes located here: http://www.bsd405.org/get-involved/advisory-committees/highschool-social-emotional-learning/ New correspondence via HighSchoolSEL@bsd405.org: Jakob P. (student) would like to offer support/assistance Carolyn S. (parent) would like to be on committee; email response given regarding committee formation process being closed. Jakob will be an Interlake ASB officer for next year. Ask for his help in leading a focus group at Interlake? Maya & Susan think that June would be best for Interlake. Jennifer can lead focus groups now, because it fits with her curriculum (BHS). Need to gain voices from all schools; Newport, International, Big Picture Carolyn wants to be involved in this work How can we collect parent voice? Focus groups? Additional parents who were not selected for our committee. Jennifer has a BHS student interested in the work. Will invite student to participate in public forum. May need to consider committee meeting times to ensure that students are not missing instructional time. How can we be mindful about the equity involved with including students in our work? Focus Groups? Students joining in public forum at meetings? 7
See next slide 8
This is what we were initially thinking, but we have learned a lot from the middle school process. Our goal is to adopt a tier 1 (for all students) SEL curriculum. Tier 1 curriculum, then goes to Instructional Materials Committee (IMC) and then to School Board for final approval. Two big decisions; a curriculum and then the how. We need to slow down. First step is finding what we are going to pilot. Who teaches SEL? How do we build something that we can integrate with equity and SEL? We need to build a cohesive and collective model. We re going to be strategic and think about this in a new way. There is a connection to all that we are doing and we need to be intentional in our work. It s going to take time. We need to take into account the culture of the school. Can t be something that is coming from the district. Where is the school in terms of readiness? What is the readiness of the teachers? How can we recognize and learn from others? If teachers can t do it, then we can t expect students to do it. The students are ready and desperate for it! Students need opportunities to speak for themselves, what they need. SEL starts with parents. Parents are putting a lot of pressure on their kids and the kids are stressed. Kids are opting for health online to free up schedules to take more AP classes. 9
Next meeting: Develop criteria What about the various programs that CASEL collaborating districts are using that are not yet CASEL evidence based? IMC is very interested in how involved teachers, students and parents are in the curriculum adoption process. How can we keep connecting this work to the five CASEL competencies? Technical fixes vs. adaptive fix (equity work) We are striving to make an adaptive fix (takes time). A curriculum is a technical fix. We re need to change mindsets of all of the adults (SEL, PBIS, PPL). What does it take to get teacher ownership over this work? Teachers need to feel like they have autonomy, leadership, authority. We need to be thoughtful. Give the teachers the time to really think about it (can be expensive). Staff need to internalize this work personally and professionally. Focus groups can help us to define why we are doing this. It s about the discovery! As a committee do we have to adopt a curriculum or could we adopt a SEL framework? What are we already doing in our buildings? What does success look like as a result of what we recommend? How are we going to train teachers? Intentional. Parents? All school staff? 10
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Conversation: Is SEL health? Families opting out of health classes for online to free up space for AP, IB offerings. Students need SEL embedded across all four years in high school. One semester isn t enough. We want students to experience balance. Need to change culture; how people interact with others, themselves, a way of being. Belonging and Becoming summer reading? (To be purchased by Wendy and Randi for Committee to read) Mixed messages from various stakeholders. Need alignment. Common message regarding BSD instructional initiatives. Can t teach what you don t have, can t give what you don t have our teachers are the models. 12
Committee Member Role Attend scheduled meetings Serve as a communication link to the community they represent Disseminating important information deemed necessary from the committee work Gathering their voice to bring back to the committee Assist in collecting data regarding the instructional materials under consideration Through a consensus process, make a formal recommendation for the Instructional Materials Committee Members & Responsibilities The committee includes parents of current high school students (3), high school teachers (6), high school counselors (2), high school administration (3), Supervisor of Equity, Supervisor of Gifted, Behavior Specialist (Special Education), ELL Developer, English Developer, Health Developer, Secondary ITCL, and Athletic & Activities Director. SEL Curriculum Developers (Wendy Powell & Randi Peterson) will facilitate the meetings. Committee members will: Attend scheduled meetings. 2015-2016 January 26 th, February 23 rd, March 8 th, April 26 th, May 26 th, and June 7 th 2016-17: tbd Serve as a communication link to the community they represent Help facilitate informational and focus group meetings with buildings, students, parents 13
and community members Exact number and method (survey, in person, etc.) to be determined by the committee Shared message dedicate a few minutes at the end of each meeting to develop summary statement. How can we foster communication with parents? Via PTSA newsletters? PTSA Facebook pages? High School Leadership Looking for a high school teacher to take on leadership from project pay. (agenda item for May meeting) 13
Due to lack of time today, we will review these at our next meeting Articles What Kind of Ecosystem is Your School? (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-kindecosystem-your-school-maurice-elias) This article discusses how schools are ecosystems and changes in one part has an impact on every other part. It s got a list of rain forest animals with descriptions of the role they play. It might be interesting to think about who might be examples of each type of animal in your particular school. How to Implement Social Emotional Learning at Your School (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/implement-sel-at-your-school-elias-leverett-duffellhumphrey-stepney-ferrito) The article describes seven activities that should be part of SEL integration. In looking at the list, I think that many buildings have already been doing these kind of activities, perhaps for different purposes, over the past several years. It could be another useful exercise to think through where this kind of work is already happening at your school so we that as a team we can think about the best way to support those teams in working with SEL. The seven activities are: 1. Build a school infrastructure that can support SEL 2. Assess how well-coordinated your school s SEL programs are 3. Assess your school s culture and climate 14
4. Articulate shared values, themes, and essential life habits 5. Provide constant and ongoing opportunities for students to practice SEL skills 6. Improve faculty readiness to teach SEL 7. Connect to those who are walking the walk 14
Wendy will email out to determine readiness of each school for this possible opportunity for staff to share thoughts around SEL 15
May: articles and criteria work June: schedule out future meetings BOOK STUDY: Belonging & Becoming http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/belonging-andbecoming 16
Our outcome message from today s work. 17
Hi everyone, my name is Elaine Fouche and I m a senior at the International School here in Bellevue. I first just want to thank you all for being here today, I think the work you re doing is really important. Every senior at International is required to complete a Senior Project. You have a lot of freedom surrounding what you want to do, but it has to be something that involves the community and has a learning stretch for the senior. So I m here to talk to you all about my own project and what I ve learned. I hope this will be interesting food for though and maybe be influential for your SEL curriculum. 18
I started brainstorming for my project at the end of junior year, and it really took me a while to narrow in on what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do something I was passionate about, and gender equality has always been extremely important to me, so I decided I wanted to incorporate female empowerment into my project. I then decided to focus on empowering girls ages 10-13, as that s when kids really start to notice gender and girls also experience a huge drop in confidence around that time. Somewhere along the line, I came up with the idea of using a board game as a platform for my message. I was really trying to think of a way that would get kids thinking and learning without realizing it, and I also wanted it to be fun. I knew this was going to be challenging, but I don t think I knew just how difficult combining these two totally different fields of game design and feminism would be. I also had never designed a game board before, and I grossly underestimated how hard that would be. I found a great mentor, who s actually here today. Her name is Julie Metzger and she s a registered nurse and a puberty class teacher. She is an amazing person and I was so lucky to be able to work with her throughout my project. 19
A huge part of my project was the research phase. I spent about 4 months researching gender and game design. As part of this research, I read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. This book was transformative for not only my project, but my perspective and outlook on the world. It was this book that led to the idea of risk taking. I learned that risk is what leads to opportunities, and girls are taught to avoid risks while boys are taught to embrace and really dive into risk taking at an early age. In Sheryl s book, she talks about the risks she took and how they paid off. She also talks about how hard these risks were for her because of her gender and the things she had internalized. I was captivated by the idea that the best way to reduce the gender gap is to empower women to fight back against it. Of course, sexism is a systemic issue, but it is easier to empower girls than it is to change a corrupt system that has been oppressing women for such a long time. I wanted to be a part of this movement and I realized if I could inspire even just a few girls to take more risks, I would feel accomplished. As soon as I learned about this risk taking concept, I began to pay attention to different things in my own life. I noticed how my class ASB was only boys. I noticed how girls in my PE class didn t run as fast as they could, while the boys did. I noticed when girls didn t raise their hands if they weren t sure of the answer, and boys were willing to bet on themselves. In my Government class we had a mock election, and the boys absolutely dominated. They spoke their minds while the girls were too afraid of the consequences to take a stance. 20
I strongly believe that teaching girls to avoid risks is a huge reason these pie charts look the way they do. Imbalance in risk taking leads to imbalance in workforce. There was a study done that found parents are 4 times more likely to tell their daughters to be careful and stay safe after they ve fallen or had an accident, whereas parents are more likely to tell their sons things like keep trying you ll get through this. I think this then translates to adulthood. Girls learn that the risk of scrapping their knee is an ok reason not to do something. Women think getting rejected or embarrassed is an ok reason to not apply for a job or ask for a raise or stand up for themselves. A big part of the lesson I taught after the girls played the game was about practicing risk taking. If you think of risk taking like a muscle, it has to be warmed up. Raising your hand or auditioning for a solo can be great practice for bigger risks you need to take later in life. 21
I met with a lot of different board game design experts who helped me brainstorm different ways to teach risk taking. I had a few prototypes, but the feedback I got from the experts and a focus group of girls I play tested with helped me decide on the final game. (Explain how to play game) 22
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I presented this game in 4 different classes (2 at Eastgate, 1 at Spiritridge, and 2 at Chinook). I started my lesson by having the kids take a survey on their outlook on risk taking. They then played the game for about 10 minutes. Then, I had a volunteer group play the game in front of the class in a slightly different way. I had one team always choose option 1, and one team always choose option 2. This way they could really see how much further option 2 got you. I had a few kids comment on what they saw, and connected the game to risk taking. I gave a quick presentation going into more depth about the importance of risk taking for girls, and then had them take one last survey that was pretty similar to the first one. Here s some of the before and after date from those surveys. I truly don t believe I would have gotten the results I did if I had just talked at those girls for 30 minutes. Having them play a game and experience and learn for themselves was huge. Not only did it effectively teach them what I wanted to get across, the message will be more ingrained in their minds. As a student, I can attest to how important interactive learning is. Lectures are great, but being able to work with others on something that is tangible is invaluable. 24
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