Education Week - October 11, 2021 - 16

in the school to change the climate to be more studentcentric. "
Some
aspects of creating school climate can be
harder to tackle than others. Schools' dress codes and
conduct manuals, for instance, can convey a quiet
authoritarianism that undercuts some of the values
schools purport to care about, like fostering citizenship
and independence.
Similarly, said Yeager, it's all well and good to say that
you support students to have a growth mindset to, for
example, overcome shyness or loneliness.
" But if you're in the kind of school where there are few
opportunities for you to feel like a worthwhile person-
there's no leadership opportunities, no clubs, if there are
no affordances for real contributions to community or
peer group-it's hard for you to believe that things can
improve for the better, " he noted.
The good part, the SEL leaders say, is that teachers will
get on board with these efforts if school leaders convince
them it will support the outcomes they care about.
" When you have an SEL classroom, students want to be
there and it's less work for you; and more importantly, it
creates the kind of student behavior you want, and turns
the classroom into the kind of classroom you want it to
be, " Imwold said.
One way to show high schoolers you're serious about
creating a positive climate? You don't necessarily have to
create your SEL initiative from scratch, Anderson said,
but you do need to let the end users-students-weigh in
on what they want and need from the efforts.
4. Don't neglect extracurriculars and other
out-of-classroom opportunities to let students
lead.
From devising cheerleading routines, building the sets
for the school musical, athletic scrimmages, and the
studio arts, there are tons of opportunities to build in SEL
learning competencies beyond the classroom.
" We find [students] develop so many of these
competencies through the extracurriculars and they
frequently talk about their experiences in extracurricular
opportunities, " said Imwold of KIPP NYC. " That's where
I developed social awareness or self awareness; I realized
I was not a football player, and I found my people through
theater, and that became the defining experience of my
time in high school. "
Similarly, said Pinkard of Aspen, " don't make
the mistake of assuming all of this learning is in the
classroom. The SEL experiences that we're describing
require students to be in places to engage each other
outside the classroom, and with adults and community
members outside the classroom.
" If you want your students to give a speech about
something that's important in their community, you can't
expect that to just come out of their head or simply be
composed in the classroom, " he said.
The District of Columbia's " Our City " cornerstone
looks at the city's neighborhoods and how their residents
can advocate for better services through their advisory
neighborhood councils, Washington's most local level of
government. It concludes with students interacting with
the commissioners at a municipal building.
And the Oakland, Calif., district uses capstone projects
that require students to interview community members and
researchers or conduct surveys to explore a social problem.
5. Consider peer mentoring programs.
Saul Vargas, a 2020 graduate of KIPP NYC high school,
has a unique insight on what works for high school-age
students: As a peer leader, he and a partner regularly met
with underclassmen in groups of about 12 students about
how to make the big transition to high school.
" We talked a lot about organization, about making
friends and reaching out to teachers-just learning how to
manage yourself and be independent, because you're in
transition from a place in middle school where your hand
is being held, " he said in an interview. " In high school, you
either do the work or you don't. "
Peer mentoring of this sort is an approach that checks
off a few SEL boxes at once: It gives one group of students
an opportunity to lead, while helping younger students
exercise their SEL skills in an authentic way.
The charter school's program was sometimes more
prescriptive than Vargas would have liked-he wasn't a big
fan of icebreakers and preferred sharing his own challenges
and solutions with students. But he found the experience
ultimately powerful-especially when he found success
mentoring students who were struggling.
Vargas' proudest moment was speaking with a student
who was struggling with motivation and filing assignments.
Vargas helped her see the work as an investment in herself,
rather than something to please adults.
" One of the problems with her specifically was that she
felt that teachers sort of undervalued her and didn't think
she was good enough to perform and talking to her about
that and convincing her that you don't need
external validation to do well, " said Vargas, now entering
his sophomore year at Princeton University. " In the next
two to three quarters, her grades improved. She started
getting 80s and 90s ... and it felt like a successful moment. "
Samara Fraser-Wellington, now a junior at the school,
also sat on its restorative-justice team, where she helped
resolve interpersonal issues among students.
" Sometimes you have to sit and listen to things you don't
necessarily agree with yourself but you have to still figure out
how to help them, " she said. " So I think that was the hardest
part when I first started. I think the most rewarding part is
knowing what they get out of it, knowing I was able to help
them, and hearing people say thank you. That makes me
smile. "
The programs do take some work to set up. Students will
need some training and guidelines: KIPP used an extra
class period and a summer retreat to help its peer leaders
learn how to model a lesson and host a dialogue. n
Coverage of leadership, summer learning, social and emotional
learning, arts learning, and afterschool is supported in part by a
grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this
coverage.
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 13, 2021 | www.edweek.org
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Education Week - October 11, 2021

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