In this Together

Beginning an Adult SEL Program in a Pandemic World

Through their elected governance role, Illinois school board members represent the interests of approximately two million public school children. One of their top priorities is ensuring safety in the schools in their respective districts. With school safety come terms such as “preparedness” and “threat assessment.”

However, Illinois schools had no time for either when on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic. By March 20, all Illinois non-essential workers were ordered to shelter-in-place, and with this executive order came the shutdown of school facilities, placing educators in a position where they quickly had to determine how to provide some form of remote learning. Many found themselves isolated and in a never-before-experienced situation, catapulted into a “brave new educational world” for an unknown amount of time with increasing anxiety and fear due to the pandemic and any personal coronavirus-related events.

As the pandemic endures, mental health experts worry that more and more people would be affected and begin to display the behaviors of post-traumatic stress disorder that include relationship, emotional, and detachment issues. Educators and school personnel are not immune to the pandemic’s consequences. There is no question that some will be affected. That, in turn, has the potential to influence others due to a phenomenon known as “emotional contagion.”

Educators have always been a source of support for students. Their role has become even more encompassing now as they strive to provide stability in an unstable time, supporting the psychological and emotional well-being and safety of students who are in distress.

To be able to do this successfully, they must demonstrate and serve as role models for the skills found in each of the five social and emotional learning (SEL) competency areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. While the Illinois State Board of Education has provided student SEL standards, no standards framework exists for adults, and many educators have had little or no pre-service or in-service training in adult SEL. There has never been a greater need or more appropriate time to create and implement an adult SEL program for all school personnel, including board members, to help them acquire or strengthen the skills needed so they may better cope, personally and professionally, during these unparalleled times. It is a matter of safety.

So how does a district begin creating and implementing a district-wide adult SEL program? And what is the board’s role?

The board’s role in crisis times, such as that of a pandemic, calls for the adoption of crisis priorities and providing support for them. There is no question that health has an impact on what happens educationally. Students model what they see. Therefore, it is essential that all adults who work in or with a school district role model strong SEL skills. This is why a district-wide adult SEL program should be a board-supported crisis priority, which begins with a board resolution stating this. The board should also decide if it, as a board, will participate in the program. Once this groundwork is set, an SEL planning team, ideally five to seven members, should be established to represent all personnel areas and the board. On such a team, roles and responsibilities are designated and the team should provide monthly reports to the entire board regarding program development and progress.

Next, the team must define what it needs to know about people’s needs and skill levels in adult SEL to gather baseline data. The team must determine what questions to ask in a needs assessment survey to obtain that information and agree upon if they will either create their own survey or if they will refer to one that is readily available online, for example:

• Personal Assessment and Reflection — SEL Competencies for School Leaders, Staff, and Adults from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning;
• Self-Assess Social and Emotional Instruction and Competencies from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at American Institutes for Research; or
• Panorama’s Adult SEL Measures from Panoramaed.

While readily available surveys can start the process started immediately, they are not unique to a particular district’s culture and needs and this is why it is recommended that districts create and administer their own survey.

If the team decides to create a survey, it must consider what it needs to know, such as the answers to any or all of these three questions:

1.   How are people feeling during these taxing times?

2.   What are people’s current perceived performance levels in certain skills (as outlined in adult SEL frameworks from Rhode Island, Tennessee, Wisconsin, or Washington)?

3.   How are people coping and practicing self-care?

To uncover how people are feeling, descriptive statements should be provided that ask a person for his/her level of agreement with it. An example of this might be, “During the last week at work, I felt satisfied.” Survey-takers then rate their agreement with this statement using this rating scale such as “highly agree (4), agree (3), disagree (2), or “highly disagree (1).” In a perfect world, all people would respond that they “highly agree” that they have been satisfied at work during the past week. Once all survey-takers are done taking the survey and results are tabulated, the team averages all responses received for each statement to determine the group level of satisfaction (averages can be done by building level or district level). After the statement averages have been calculated, the team performs a gap analysis for each.

An example, for those unfamiliar: If the team has done a district-level average on the sample statement pertaining to satisfaction and the district average is 3.6, that 3.6 is subtracted from the perfect score of 4 (highly agree), and there is a gap of .40. This is not a large gap, so satisfaction may not be something that needs to be addressed immediately. However, if the district average is .75, the gap is 3.25 and satisfaction is something to monitor, particularly if it is one of the largest gaps found within all of the statements. In that case, the team needs to probe more and begin work on strategies and professional development that concentrate on increasing professional satisfaction. The averages and resulting gaps for each statement will provide a collective picture of how people are feeling, which in turn impacts school climate. Research has shown that efforts to improve school climate and to build social and emotional skills are mutually reinforcing.

If the district team wants to know survey-takers’ perceptions of their current expertise levels in certain SEL skills, they can use the skills found in one of the four state adult SEL competency frameworks mentioned above (see link below). Each of those state frameworks outlines the essential skills in each of these areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. Instead of using the skills from just one state framework, the team may also choose to select certain skills from the different areas of each of the state frameworks to create their own district-specific adult SEL skills framework. Once the team knows the skills they are trying to measure, a survey is created. For example, if the team wanted to know about a perceived skill level self-management regarding a person’s ability to evaluate how expressing emotions might affect or influence others, the survey question would read “I am able to evaluate how expressing my emotions might affect or influence others.” The survey-taker would respond by selecting from “highly agree” to “highly disagree” and a gap analysis would be undertaken for each skill statement. Those with the largest gaps provide a prioritized and clear direction as to those adult SEL skills that should be developed first.

To determine how people are coping and practicing self-care, the district team might create a checklist of best practices in these areas and ask survey-takers to indicate those they are using. These results reveal the group’s state of mind and offer a focus for needed employee assistance and resources to enhance well-being.

As champions of public education, board members seek to provide the most secure and safe learning environment possible while bolstering continuous improvement and student achievement. Endorsing, supporting, and participating in a district-wide adult SEL program during these challenging times in education creates essential conditions for continued success. There is no time to waste. We are all in this together and while the pandemic of 2020 caught us ill-equipped in many ways, there has never been a more urgent time than now for a district-wide adult SEL program.

 

Pamela R. Rockwood has 15 years of superintendent experience in Illinois and Iowa. She is the recently retired superintendent of Indian Creek SD 425 and is currently an assistant professor of educational leadership at Western Illinois University. Resources associated with this commentary, including the three assessment tools available online, can be accessed via bit.ly/ND20JRes.