How to Be an Effective SEL Coordinator

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is crucial to students’ success, and the SEL coordinator role is a significant leadership position that involves working with the entire school community to ensure that students’ social and emotional skills are being developed in systematic and coordinated ways. Increasingly, schools (and districts) are designating staff members to be SEL coordinators, in function if not in title. Most often, these are school counselors, master teachers, school psychologists, or social workers.

Despite the importance of the SEL coordinator job, there is very little professional preparation for the position. From conversations with experienced SEL coordinators, I have compiled some guidance to help those in the role or with that set of responsibilities, or those aspiring to work in that role.

Gather Essential Resources

Prepare yourself: Find someone with more experience to serve as a mentor or sounding board—someone who knows the research—and attend training to build your leadership skills. All of this will increase your knowledge and understanding of SEL and help you to become the best SEL coordinator you can be.

You can find a mentor by reaching out to Character.org and contacting a school in your location that is a State or National School of Character or Promising Practices award recipient. Similarly, you can contact info@SEL4US.org to get connected to those carrying out SEL near you. CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) and Edutopia are always updating research on SEL, but the most accessible summary of research, especially the connection of SEL and academic subject areas, can be found in short issue briefs at the home page of SEL4NJ. The newsletter of the Urban Assembly schools and the Academy for Social-Emotional Learning in Schools are reliable sources of training opportunities for SEL coordinators.

Develop your elevator pitch: Create a 30-second statement about what SEL is and why it’s essential that staff and administrators be on board. Here are sample pitches from two SEL coordinators.

• “SEL involves five skills that all students need for success in school and life: self-awareness, social awareness, emotion regulation, relating to others in groups, and ethical, responsible decision making and problem solving.  SEL is an approach that we should adopt- not as an additional class, but as the framework for our school culture that should be infused into all academic and social arenas of our school. Studies show that if SEL is implemented correctly, suspension rates go down and academic achievement increases because the SEL provides students with the tools they need to concentrate on learning and achieve academically and improve safety and discipline in the schools.“ 
• “Can you remember a time when you were in school and you needed someone to talk to?  A time when you couldn’t get any work done because your emotions were in the way?  Our students are going through difficult, challenging, traumatic situations. To handle these and everyday school demands, they need social-emotional learning (SEL) skills-- self-awareness, social awareness, emotion regulation, relating to others in groups, and ethical, responsible decision making and problem solving. Focusing on SEL can help us synergize our various programs so that we may effectively increase our students’ social-emotional skills and character.  I’m not saying it will be easy, but the resources are there, and we owe it to our kids.”

Get top-down support: Make sure that building principals and/or superintendents support your SEL efforts. Don’t avoid winning them over… you can’t succeed otherwise.

Get staff support: Let teachers know why it’s important to bring SEL into the school and how they can easily integrate it into their daily routine. (This teacher- generated repository of SEL lessons may be helpful.) Start by identifying a small group of staff in your school already aligned with the ideas of SEL or even already enthusiastically carrying it out in some way.

Embody SEL In Your Work

Be flexible: Staff will be more receptive if they’re not forced to do something. Instead, collaborate with staff and give them the opportunity to implement SEL in their own style, coordinated with the work of others.

Create enthusiasm: Plan events centered on SEL that will engage students and staff and create a buzz in your school. This will help create support and acceptance of this new schoolwide program.

Think big, but work small: Have a large picture of what you want to accomplish, but take small steps toward this goal. Start with a pilot in a place that is likely to be successful. Remember, SEL is not a Band-Aid to fix one or two problems; rather, it is a way to change your school’s culture and climate.

Develop and Nurture an Infrastructure

Create an SEL committee: Committee members should be dedicated administrators, teachers from each grade, and child study team members. Find ways to get input from parents, students, and community members.

Present a clear vision to your school’s staff: Let them know what the goals are (monthly, yearly, and beyond), what they can do to help accomplish these goals, and what the end result will look like.

Create an SEL culture in your school: To do this, have a common vocabulary; have student-created signs, posters, and banners in the hallways; and select weekly or monthly character-related themes to focus on schoolwide. Some schools rename hallways and other areas for SEL skills or core school values. Discuss SEL at all staff meetings.

Integrate SEL in all areas of the school: This includes all academic classes, specials, extracurricular activities, assemblies, lunchtime, etc. It will require planning time to happen successfully and not chaotically.

Operate In a Spirit of Continuous Improvement

Retrain staff yearly: To maintain the SEL culture in your school, retrain staff on a yearly basis, so that SEL is activated in everyone’s memory. Also, bring new staff into the fold by ensuring their commitment to SEL when hiring, and provide training to new staff members.

Evaluate your efforts: Evaluation is essential so that changes can be made to improve upon what already exists. This can include surveys about the school culture and climate; SEL and character surveys; interviews with students, staff, and parents; and examining discipline records and inviting other schools to visit and give feedback.

Advice from an SEL Coordinator

Here's a brief summary of how to successfully implement school-wide social-emotional learning.

Start by getting your true believers together. Help teachers truly understand SEL, and then ask them to integrate these skills into their specific subjects. Look together at the curriculum and see how SEL fits into it.

Have an SEL exchange newsletter so teachers can contribute examples of how they have integrated SEL into their lesson plans. This gives the teachers who don’t understand or are resistant a clear example of how to integrate SEL into their everyday activities.

Taking on—or being given—the responsibility of serving as an SEL coordinator for your school provides you a chance to influence the social and emotional skill development of every student. Don’t push yourself to be in too much of a hurry. Bring yourself and other staff members along gradually, and your gains will be greater and more sustainable than if you try to accomplish too much too soon.