Social Emotional Learning

What is Social Emotional Learning (SEL)?

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. (retrieved: https://casel.org/what-is-sel/ 9/3/2021).

We believe these foundational skills will help prepare our students to be successful members of our school community, future workplace, and in life.

Social Emotional Learning and Career Education & Work

In 2018, the PA Department of Education (PDE) launched the Pennsylvania Career Ready Skills to support students in navigating relationships between family, school, post-secondary education and/or career in preparation for life as a global citizen.  These skills are foundational for successful learning and engagement in our school programs (including academic and extra-curricular involvement) and are necessary for developing learning, empathy, emotion management, friendship skills and problem solving.

In SDST, we utilize an evidence-based curricular resource called Second Step for Grades K-8 to construct purposeful learning for our students and to continue to foster a sense of belonging for all members of our community.  At Enfield Elementary, Erdenheim Elementary and the Springfield Township Middle School, there is a scope and sequence in place to organize the structure for instruction in these units of study. Each school has established individualized, developmentally appropriate strategies to integrate social-emotional learning for their students.  Faculty members have participated in ongoing training and professional learning, along with coaching, support and collaboration from school counselors, social workers and school psychologists to establish their framework and approach.  

Enfield Elementary School

Classroom instruction integrates the social and academic framework from Responsive Classroom.  Responsive Classroom is a student-centered, social and emotional learning approach to teaching and discipline. It is comprised of a set of research, and evidence-based practices designed to create safe, joyful, and engaging classrooms and school communities for both students and teachers.  Classrooms integrate four domains of Responsive Classroom:  Engaging Academics, Positive Community; Effective Management; and Developmentally Responsive Teaching.  The Core Belief in Responsive Classroom is that students need to learn a set of social and emotional competencies—cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control—and a set of academic competencies—academic mindset, perseverance, learning strategies, and academic behaviors.

Erdenheim Elementary School

We have worked to create a robust program of instruction where we integrate the components of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and the school pillars of Perseverance, Respect, Integrity, Dependability, and Empathy (PRIDE) through Spartan PRIDE Time (SPT) daily. During SPT, our students receive 30-minutes of daily social-emotional learning that focuses on our pillars of PRIDE. To foster these concepts, we provide lessons and activities to help build application of these skills throughout and across the student learning environments. Similar to other subject areas, teachers use a variety of supplemental resources including picture books, videos, and discussion activities to support student learning and mastery of content across settings. 

Springfield Township Middle School

We use Advisory time as our vehicle to deliver social and emotional learning curriculum to our students. All homeroom teachers are also advisory teachers, and each homeroom buddy will participate in advisory lessons with their designated homerooms. The middle school will use the Second Step curriculum to deliver social and emotional learning to our students.