By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

During their meeting on Jan. 26, the Lake Orion Community Schools Board of Education was joined by district educators at the elementary level to discuss their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programming.

Carpenter Elementary Principal Adam Weldon and elementary teachers from around the district; Kate Dimeo (Webber Elementary), Melissa Kilgore (Carpenter Elementary), Jennifer Villwock (Paint Creek) and Jacqueline Stuart (Blanche Sims Elementary) presented information on the current program to the board.

“In Lake Orion, we pride ourselves in educating and supporting the whole child, not just the academic piece. As adults, we know that different life events are going to take place and impact us and they impact us in different ways. We also know that it will impact our emotions and how we handle or manage our emotions plays a huge factor in how we process, move forward and grow from these life events. This can be hard for our students,” said Weldon.

“As educators, we know that when a child enters our classroom, if we don’t care for and understand and grow the emotional piece, the academic piece is very difficult to achieve. So, SEL helps provide a foundation for our students to comprehend their emotions, to feel those emotions in a healthy manner and to demonstrate empathy for others. It also opens a door for academic success to occur through the successful management of our emotions.”

In order to develop a SEL program, educators start by looking at the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning or CASEL. CASEL itself is not a program, it is a way for districts to organize their thinking around SEL and is a foundation for districts to use evidence based SEL strategies, Weldon said.

Within CASEL, there are five core competencies (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making) which surround SEL at the center. These five areas are what are taught and applied at the various developmental ages.

In the fall, district staff dug deeper and analyzed these five core competencies to gain further understanding.

“Each one of the core competencies contains multiple dispositions such as with self-awareness: identifying one’s emotions, examining prejudices and biases, experiencing self-efficacy, having a growth mindset, etc. These different dispositions help provide further focus and guidance for us as educators to be intentional with our lessons as needed,” Weldon said.

One of the biggest issues facing the program is time, with many teachers expressing that time is already an issue and that adding yet another program to their list would mean having to remove something else from it, Dimeo told the board. Another issue was the lack of flexible, yet consistent, programing from school to school at the elementary level.

“What’s happening, what we’ve just seen Nov. 30, is that in an instant, your whole situation can change. So, whatever program you have in place has to be flexible enough that we can pivot and reroute at an instant,” said Dimeo.

As district educators began brainstorming how to create this program themselves, they developed the Social Emotional Read Aloud or SERA Project.

“What we did, was we took our Language Arts curriculum and basically combined it with Social emotional Learning. So, that now when we do read alouds – read alouds because they’re really great literature, read alouds because we’ve thought about the literacy components that go into that read aloud,” Dimeo said. “We’ve also picked them for reasons that relate to Social Emotional Learning, for opportunities that we’re going to have to discuss with kids these core competencies and the dispositions. All of it is built into that CASEL framework so that we have some common language to talk about it.”

How it works is teachers select books from a list that have already been pre-organized by the core competency. Teachers select which book to use in their classroom based on what those students need. Teachers then have access to questions that have already been provided that will guide the class in discussion.

Later, in writing or reading, students revisit the books but examine them through a different lens (that of a writer or a reader, for example).

Books are selected for a number of different reasons, including that they relate to the grade level that they’re being introduced to, but also for being culturally relevant, said Villwock.

In Villwock’s kindergarten class, students started the year reading All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman.

“We were able to do an activity to get to know our friends, to talk about how even though we might look different or sound different or have been at school before or know friends in the classroom or maybe don’t know friends in the classroom, all are welcome in this space – the safe space of learning,” Villwock said.

Classes can revisit these lessons and discuss themes, vocabulary words and deeper topics that come up in society today.

For each core competency, teachers are given a set of questions that were designed by the district. The questions ask students to analyze, discuss, weigh different options and interpret, Stuart said.

Teachers can choose books based on which competency they would like to cover or they can choose a competency based on the book selected. Teachers throughout the district have access to the same questions and material.

To highlight the programs successes, Stuart added that she has seen the books she has introduced into her classroom (Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev and Jabari Tries by Gaia Cornwall) being discussed and applied by students outside of the classroom as well.

“We had some recess issues a few weeks ago and when I pulled the kids in after recess to talk about it, there were some kids being left out. This book (Strictly no Elephants) kind of talks about not leaving anybody out,” Stuart said. “One of my students said that ‘friends never leave anyone behind just like in the story Strictly No Elephants.’ So, organic conversations evolve from reading these books.”

As is typical with LOCS programing, data drives many of the decisions and structure of educational programs. Because of this, the district utilized a SAEBRS (Social, Academic, Emotional Behavior Risk Screener) Screener. The screener was administered through Fastbridge Learning to first through fifth grade students and completed by the teacher.

“It really isn’t different than what the teachers have been doing all along in terms of the Skills for Successful Learners on their report cards, but it just gave a more official tool for that, for the teachers to be able to assess this with their students,” Weldon said. “It is a screener; it is not a diagnostic.”

Along with the screener, fourth and fifth graders also completed a student assessment, mySAEBRS.

“It took them about 10-15 minutes. There was no pressure, I didn’t have anybody upset. It was easy, it was quick, it was just part of our morning one day and it was easy to navigate,” Kilgore said. “It was very beneficial for us teachers because we were able to put what we thought and what they thought and see if there was any commonality.”

The SAEBRS data is used in the district to help drive and inform instruction, Weldon said. The data helps show how effective the program is, while also showing what individual schools and students need.

“There are times, as we know with individuals, adults or students, what we see on the outside doesn’t always match what is on the inside. So, with fourth and fifth grade, they have a little more deeper understanding of those emotions and it allowed us, where, what we see, maybe: ‘oh the kid’s doing great, they’re thriving, everything is good’ and we’re able to look at data and go, ‘hmm, we need to assist this child a little bit because they have a little more emotional stress than what we understood.’ That was beneficial for us,” Weldon said.

Districtwide data shows that, by the SAEBRS assessment, the percentage of “at-risk” students at the elementary level is currently at just 13 percent, seven percent below the district goal of less than 20 percent.

“That’s phenomenal, because when you think of what we have all dealt with and faced as families, as a community and as a school district the last couple of years, to still be above that threshold of being below 20 percent, that’s excellent,” said Weldon. “That means that we were doing SEL, not quite as defined and focused as what we’re implementing now, but we were already doing it and focusing on the whole child.”

The data broken down by building showed that the six elementary schools ranged from between just two percent at risk to 24 percent at risk.

“What that tells us is that there is a need for individualized and differentiated support as determined by student needs,” Weldon said.

Each elementary building has their own individual SEL team that consists of the building principal, family-school coordinator, social worker, psychologist, classroom teacher and a specials teacher. This team looks at the data and provides input to determine necessary steps forward.

The district is expected to administer the SAEBRS screener again in the spring, hoping to see the at-risk number decrease. If not, the flexible programing will allow for teachers and staff to re-adjust quickly, Dimeo said.

The board is expected to hear similar presentations regarding the social emotional learning at the middle and high school levels in upcoming board meetings.