The Jamesville-DeWitt Central School District recognizes the importance of prioritizing supportive, culturally sustaining and equitable learning environments that promote the social and emotional competence of both students and staff. The district has made social and emotional learning (SEL) a focus for our staff and students in prekindergarten through grade 12. We are working with administrators, teachers, families and outside agencies to create a learning environment that responds to the needs of adults and students and how to teach social skills that are appropriate at each grade level.
What is social and emotional learning (SEL)?
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions.
There are five core social, emotional competencies that include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making.
What is J-D doing to foster SEL?
Metro Center Partnership
The district is working with officials from New York University’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (Metro Center) to enhance staff members’ understanding of, and practices in, inclusiveness and cultural responsiveness.
Through its partnership with the Metro Center, teachers who were nominated internally and by community members have been trained as “Lead Learners” and are focusing on how race, identity, power and privilege create educational barriers that then lead to educational inequities for marginalized students and families. In addition to the Lead Learners, the 35 members of the District Curriculum Council, which includes administrators and such staff as resource leaders and department chairs, also went through the training, for a total of 64 staff members participating in the Metro Center partnership.
Second Step
The district’s three elementary schools have adopted the Second Step program, which provides strategies for staff to implement social-emotional learning into the existing school curriculum and day. Students learn strategies for recognizing and self-regulating their emotions and to self-calm, as well as how to better manage conflicts with each other.
Positivity Project
At J-D’s middle and high schools, students and staff are actively involved with the Positivity Project, a national nonprofit that focuses on empowering students to build positive relationships and become their best selves.
Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System (BIMAS-2)
To help school officials make effective plans to meet students’ social emotional learning needs at the school, class and individual levels, the district screens all students three times throughout the school year using the Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System 2 (BIMAS-2). The BIMAS-2 is a brief, repeatable multi-informant measure of behavior and social emotional learning. It is not considered a diagnostic instrument, but it will help identify students who might be at risk or in need of further assessment and monitor the effectiveness of system wide interventions that are put in place.
Upon the completion of each assessment period, building teams review the data to identify each students’ social emotional strengths as well as across building, grade and classroom levels. Next steps then include the delivery of social emotional lessons and activities within classrooms, social skills groups, lunch bunch groups and individual student support provided by the school counselors, social workers or school psychologists.