In Social and Emotional Learning, we talk a lot about growth mindset–the idea that our brains remain plastic our entire lives, and with practice and work, we can learn new skills and get smarter no matter how old we are. This concept is called “neuroplasticity,” and knowing about it can help both adults and students in education environments feel empowered to work through challenges in the classroom and beyond!

It’s worth noting that this school year in particular, the idea of growth mindset has gained a new meaning as we have navigated work and school in very different, new, and challenging ways. Carol Dweck, an original researcher of the growth mindset concept, was quoted in this EdWeek article talking specifically about how we have had to do some new framing of growth mindset in classroom environments during this past year. She discusses the important role of growth mindset for both educators and learners as a key aspect of disrupting racial biases, tackling injustice, and managing new learning environments:

“It’s not that you give kids a growth mindset and then turn them loose,” said Dweck. “We have to create cultures that support them in using the growth mindset for growth of competence.”

Additional research of college students in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields found that Black, Latino, and Native American students earned significantly higher grades when their professors had a growth mindset regarding students’ abilities. Professors with fixed mindsets about their students’ potential saw larger gaps in grades between their white and Asian students and those who are Black, Latino, and Native American.

“It’s especially important not to use false growth mindset practices that put the onus on the student,” said Dweck.

Saying things like “just try hard,” or “you can do anything,” ignores the realities of the world, she said.

https://www.edweek.org/education/carol-dweck-on-nurturing-students-growth-mindsets-through-protest-and-pandemic/2020/09

Growing growth mindsets

Teachers and parents can help young people build their growth mindset by modeling positive self-talk, giving process-based, student-centered feedback, and talking about the way our brains continue to grow and change as we work on new concepts and challenges throughout our lives. We can tell stories about how we worked through something that was hard for us at first, or how we learned from our mistakes. We can even practice and grow our ability to have a growth mindset! Check out these statements and these strategies to practice growth mindset language and self-talk!

Growth mindset as a system

In our very own district, we have made growth mindset a huge part of growing systemic SEL capacity through our Seed Model Campuses! These campuses have worked hard toward an actionable, equity-centered SEL goal throughout this uniquely challenging year, and we are so excited to share their growth and progress! Each of these 82 awesome, dedicated schools will share their Seed Model journeys at our virtual SEL Symposium on June 17, 2021, focusing on the theme “Stories Have Power: Connect. Transform.”

More information coming soon regarding your invitation to the 2021 SEL Symposium. We’d love to have you join us and flex your own growth mindset muscle.

Finally, May is always Teacher Appreciation Month, and it’s never been more relevant or important than this May to honor the incredible resilience, strength, capacity, brilliance and energy that Austin ISD teachers have poured into their learners and learning environments. Virtual and in-person, in the face of historic uncertainty and epic challenges, teachers have made things happen in ways that we could have never imagined pre-2020. All you amazing professional educators, please take three minutes to breathe and be present and listen to the words of brilliant thought leader and social justice organizer Elandria Williams in the video below. We are so thankful for you!

How will you be growing your growth mindset and celebrating yourself this May? Leave us a comment, or tag us on social media @austinisdsel! And see you at our SEL Symposium 2021: Stories Have Power: Connect. Transform.

The only constant is change, and we’ve all been managing a lot lately. The past year has represented a massive disruption for so many people. We’ve had to navigate many shifts and changes, both on large collective levels and everyday, individual levels. We’ve also done a lot of this navigation with various levels of grief. Whew! It’s a lot, y’all!

There are hopeful signs that life might start having some more familiar aspects soon, and considering a post-pandemic world on the horizon presents yet another set of adjustments. Therefore, we have so many opportunities to practice our SEL competencies – for example, responsible decision-making skills. [Sometimes known as “adulting,” which is a) often hard under the best circumstances for adults and b) important to teach to young people, so they can practice!]

Responsible decision-making is rooted in having a sense of what we value – we can learn to use our emotions as information to help us make choices grounded in our values. Dr. Susan David offers this TED talk about exactly this idea:

She explains by saying,

“Our emotions contain flashing lights to things that we care about. We tend not to feel strong emotion to stuff that doesn’t mean anything in our worlds. If you feel rage when you read the news, that rage is a signpost, perhaps, that you value equity and fairness — and an opportunity to take active steps to shape your life in that direction. When we are open to the difficult emotions, we are able to generate responses that are values-aligned.”

Dr. Susan David, TEDWomen 2017

Elena Aguilar, president and founder of Bright Morning, offers this activity as part of a process to identify and reflect on core values:

When we practice responsible decision-making rooted in our values, we grow our resilience and emotional agility, which in turn increases our ability to make more responsible decisions. This positive feedback loop can help us find our way though the waves of changes and uncertainty, whether in the ripples of daily life, or within a once-per-generation tsunami-scale event.

Responsible Decision-Making in the Classroom

As educators, we have a unique opportunity to deeply consider our choices in our work with learners, and help the young people we encounter process their feelings and tell their stories, even as we process our own experiences. Dr. Ghouldy Muhammad, author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, offers these concrete ideas for making decisions around classroom content and lesson development:

• Out of all the things in the world why are you teaching this? (know purpose)
• Are you energized about the teaching and learning?
• How will your lesson or unit help a child to learn something about themselves or others?
• How will you make it impossible for students to fail?
• How will your lesson or unit help a child to learn new skills?
• How will you change as a result of the teaching?
• How will your lesson our unit help a child to learn something new?
• Remote Learning- What family connection can you make?
• How will your lesson or unit help a child to learn anti-oppression and anti-racism?
• How will this lesson spread and amplify joy? Do you include joy about people of color?
• What texts will you layer to support the learning? (texts matter)

How are you practicing your responsible decision making skills lately? How have your values informed your choices, in and out of educational environments? And, what are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments, and tag us on social media @austinisdsel! Take care y’all.

Last year on March 27th, we celebrated the first annual International Social and Emotional Learning day, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler saw fit to officially proclaim the same day as Austin SEL Day. It was especially poignant to receive this recognition at that time: last March, we were just beginning to navigate a whole new way of forging and maintaining relationships in and out of [virtual] classrooms and social spaces. As the disruption of the COVID-19 global pandemic unfolded, and the parallel pandemic of racial injustice was profoundly exposed, our district, our city, and our world quickly became acutely aware of how essential social and emotional competencies are in this new, unsettling context. Skills like self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, emotional agility, executive functioning, and responsible decision-making stepped to the forefront as we figured out new ways to move through our daily lives while holding collective grief, trauma and uncertainty.

Though we know a lot more about how to “do life” in and out of work and school with a global pandemic a year later, our local, national and global communities still need to prioritize and practice SEL skills in the current socio-political context. So once again, on this 2nd annual International SEL day, the mayor’s office has officially proclaimed Friday, March 26th as Austin SEL Day as well!

On this year’s SEL Day, we can reflect on how our own SEL competencies have grown and developed over the last year, keeping important relationships close for our emotional health and staying physically distant for our physical heath. We can mark and mourn the passing of the lives taken from us by the parallel pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice. We can also gaze hopefully into a near future in which we will share physical spaces with important people in our lives, and share in-person affection with our loved ones.

Social and emotional skills facilitate our capacity to experience and express our feelings in healthy ways during these transitions, keeping us in touch with our empathy as we care for ourselves and each other. They also help us define what was important about the pre-pandemic “normal” that we look forward to seeing again, while identifying and working to change the inequities that were considered “normal” for far too long.

What will you do to celebrate International and Austin SEL Day on Friday, March 26? Maybe you could send a text to a person you’ve been meaning to connect with and tell them how grateful you are that they are in your life. Maybe you could try a new mindfulness practice, giving your brain and body some needed space and breath. Maybe you will facilitate or participate in a classroom or community culturally responsive restorative practice community building circle. Or maybe you will share an idea that builds and celebrates SEL skills for the rest of your community to try! Tag us on social media at @austinisdsel and use the hashtags #SELDay and/or #WeAreSEL – We will do a drawing at the end of Austin SEL day, and you could win some most excellent Austin ISD SEL swag!

Thanks for being here with us in our local, national and global community – we are grateful for you today on International and Austin SEL Day, and always.

SEL fans, it was one year ago that we looked at executive functioning in our March blog post, *right before* a global pandemic changed how we do school and everything else here in Central Texas. In April, after we knew a little bit more about how our work, education, and lives were shifting, we revisited responsible decision making in this new and challenging context. So now, we’ve had 12 months of practicing our executive functioning skills and responsible decision making as humans navigating unprecedented events – what have you learned about yourself and your world? [Thinking about learning, by the way, is called “meta-cognition,” and is an executive functioning skill!]

One aspect of life during a global pandemic and the associated uncertainty is a heightened amount of worry. Studies show that more people have searched for ways to alleviate feelings of worry and anxiety as a direct result of COVID-19, which makes a lot of sense! Just the act of searching for and trying out different methods of noticing our feelings and calming down is a big part of executive functioning, which our Austin ISD SEL department defines this way:

Finding a mindfulness practice that fits into one’s life is a great way to develop these executive functioning skills, as is engaging in play. Playful, unstructured time, just for fun, is an antidote to worry and anxiety for both children and adults. In fact, Brené Brown offers this “dare” to help grown-ups plan for playtime:

Create a play list. Write down three activities you could do for hours on end. Mine are reading, editing photos on my computer and playing Ping-Pong with my family.

Now carve out time on your calendar. Even when I’m busiest, I schedule unstructured time. It’s important to protect playtime the way you protect work, church or PTA meetings.

Play well with others. When my husband and kids made their own play lists, we realized that our usual vacations, which involved sightseeing, weren’t really anyone’s idea of play. So now we go places where we can hike, swim and play cards — things that make us all our most silly, creative and free-spirited selves.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brene-brown-importance-of-play_n_4675625

When we intentionally decide with our executive functioning skills to give ourselves space to play and the grace of self-compassion, we deepen our resilience – our capacity to persevere through difficult, uncertain eras of our lives. Linda Graham, a licensed marriage and family therapist with a focused interest in mindfulness and resilience, offers these researched-based practices to return to the wisdom of our bodies to strengthen our resilience.

How are you fostering play, mindfulness, and resilience in your life and/or classroom? How have your executive functioning skills been showing up for you lately? We want to know! Leave us a comment, or tag us on social media @austinisdsel. Keep on Marchin’ on – we are in it together!

February has traditionally been celebrated as Black History Month, founded by Carter G. Woodson in 1926 as “Negro History Week” and expanded to a whole [albeit short!] month in 1976. Sachel Harris, of The New Teacher Project, writes this in her article “Black History is American History. We Should Teach It That Way:”

Usually, when students learn about Black history in class, their lessons are limited to slavery or the civil rights era. Don’t get me wrong: these are integral parts of our story, and it’s encouraging to read stories that show our strength, perseverance, and ability to overcome so many adversities. I am proud to come from a culture filled with people who were bold and brave enough to fight for our freedom and rights. But in the same breath, I can’t help but feel disappointed that our students are not learning about the vastness of our greatness. After all, we are much more than just an oppressed culture. 

…That’s why Black History Month should not be just a time to celebrate African Americans who have paved the way for us all to thrive. It should be a time to challenge the stubbornly persistent tendency to teach Black History as a footnote to American history. We should commit to telling the complete and vibrant story of a complete and vibrant culture to both students and adults.  

Sachel Harris, Communications Manager, TNTP

Getting curious about stories – sharing stories, seeking out others’ stories, and exploring how our own stories shape our perceptions of our world – is a key path to growing our empathy. Empathy gives us the power to see past our prejudices, biases and filters and connect authentically with the humans around us. In her poem “Turning to One Another,” Margaret Wheatley reminds us to “Treasure curiosity more than certainty” and to “Remember, you don’t fear people whose stories you know.” When we invite and listen deeply to the stories of the children in our classrooms, we grow the empathy and connection of our learning community. When we create systems and structures to encourage story telling and student voice in our schools, we begin to disrupt oppressive systems that silence and marginalize young people.

How do we invite stories into our learning environments and lives?

In her ASCD article “The Power of Protocols for Equity,” Zaretta Hammond lays out five strategies to support the implementation of student talk protocols, and offers resources to find one that fits your classroom environment. In this Education Week article, Michelle Nicola gives examples and anecdotes around her journey of building empowering stories into her classroom practice, drawing on her learning from Hammond, Elena Aguilar, and Chimamanda Adichie. Developing a culturally-responsive restorative practice circle tradition in classrooms promotes storytelling, peaceful conflict resolution, community building, and connection. When implemented with care and intention, culturally-responsive restorative practices can evolve into a system that has the potential to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects students of color. Austin ISD even has our very own culturally responsive restorative practice team!

As we move through a uniquely challenging time together, the power of stories to build empathy and connection is of critical importance. Let us use our curiosity and natural human desire for connection to invite in each other’s stories, lift each other up, and heal.

How are you listening to and sharing stories in your life and learning environments? How are you honoring Black excellence and teaching Black history as American history this month and all year long? How do you grow your curiosity and empathy? Let us know in the comments, and tag us on social media @austinisdsel! We wish all y’all a warm, connected February 2021.

Happy New Year, SEL fans. Already, 2021 has been eventful.

Recently, our country witnessed a shocking and traumatic event in our Capitol city, reminding us of the crucial importance of equity and intentionally cultivating compassion.

As our country struggles through this dark winter of a continuing global pandemic and related economic instability, deep political division, collective grief, and the undeniable reality we face around white privilege, power, and racial injustice, there is so much hope – and that hope starts with each of us, and how we intentionally cultivate connection and compassion, and utilize our SEL competencies to create opportunities for healing.

Skills We Need Now

The Collaborative for Academics and Social and Emotional Learning, in its Reunite, Renew, and Thrive Roadmap for Reopening Schools, offers the SEL Competencies adapted to be relevant to our current sociopolitical context:

CASEL also just released a Refocus on the SEL Roadmap document to guide schools as they begin the spring semester. Because CASEL serves compassionate educators who know how deeply the socio-political environment affects their students in classrooms at every level, they also suggested these resources for classrooms navigating feelings and discussions around traumatic news events:

• EdWeek’s article on caring for students in the wake of disturbing news
• Dena Simmons on how to engage students about the chaos at the Capitol
• Facing History has action steps on how to create space in learning environments to process these events
• Here is another resource from PBS on how to teach about the insurrection.

Growing Compassion and Connection

Like many skills and capacities, we grow our ability to be compassionate by practicing compassion. Per Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, compassion consists of four components:

Bringing attention or awareness to recognizing that there is suffering (cognitive)

Feeling emotionally moved by that suffering (affective)

Wishing there to be relief from that suffering (intentional)

A readiness to take action to relieve that suffering (motivational)

This article contains the Six Habits of Highly Compassionate People, with concrete ideas on how to address each of these components to cultivate compassion in our lives. And this Edutopia post offers some simple ideas for incorporating more opportunities to grow compassion in classroom environments.

Intentionally building compassion and connection in our lives and educational communities is actively working against the hate and division that literally attacked our nation yesterday. Educators in particular are uniquely positioned to touch countless young lives with compassionate teaching and practices, modeling and promoting the skills we all need to live together and take care of each other in an ever-changing and interconnected world.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this month, offers these inspirational quotes:

1. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

2. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

3. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

4. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

5. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

6. “Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”

7. “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

8. “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

9. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

10. “So even though we face difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”

May we lean into Dr. King’s vision of peace, equality, compassion and understanding now, more than ever.

Reflection

How do Dr. King’s words resonate for you? How are you inviting more compassion into your life and your classroom? Leave us a comment, and tag us on social media @austinisdsel!

We are so grateful for the local, national, and global community of compassionate educators doing the work of SEL along with us in this new year. Cheers to you!

Well, y’all, we made it to the last month of 2020. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? We’ve had many opportunities to practice SEL skills of all kinds, move through some big collective trauma, and navigate personal and professional situations that lots of us never imagined. And still the pandemic rages on, and we’re immersed in a holiday season that may feel very different than it has in years past. It is precisely times like this in which humans reach together for the very ideas that holidays around the world generally lift up: Strength, hope, and caring for each other.

The Blanton Museum of Art has worked with Austin ISD in many capacities, including partnering with our SEL department to connect art and SEL ideas. The goal of these collaborations is to increase access to its collection for all students, and reinforce social and emotional learning concepts through examination and discussion of art. This amazing video, and the one below, are opportunities to virtually visit these two pieces in the museum’s collection. We are invited to consider how art can inspire us to think more deeply about our own experiences and connect with the stories of others. Check out these downloadable journal pages for Strength and Hope and Caring for Ourselves and Others to take your SEL art journey even deeper!

Safely Together

If you are looking for ways to stay socially connected to your family, friends, and loved ones while remaining physically distant this season, you sure aren’t the only one! Finding opportunities to intentionally share stories can happen in-person or virtually, and is one of the best ways to keep and grow connections with the people around us. Though being on an internet call with loved ones is definitely different than being together in-person, asking meaningful questions and practicing active listening can help build and deepen relationships.

S.P.A.R.K for Community can help us stay connected with a card game designed to build and nurture relationships through storytelling. S.P.A.R.K has all of their robust sample decks available for download/printing, including a new holiday deck, as well as this guide to playing the game with classrooms, colleagues, family, you name it! Rachel Rosen and her sparky S.P.A.R.K team is planning to host a demonstration of their new digital game play platform on January 5th for all interested educators – find out more from their website! Rachel and her team have been compassionate supporters and partners of our SEL team for awhile, and have especially stepped it up during these challenging times.

Doing Hard Things

The holiday season can be stressful under regular circumstances, and this year provides a level of uncertainty that might exacerbate this dynamic for many. Please make sure you do some radical self care this December, maybe including some exploration of mindfulness practices. This excerpt from the work of Glennon Doyle is a call to grace, strength and hope:

We humans have an uncanny ability to learn. We grow. We overcome. We adapt. We rest.

We change our minds. Make amends. Laugh. Blow milk out our noses when laughing. We plan. We cease. We strive.

There is no end to what we can do.

But sometimes it feels too hard to do anything. Breathing seems like hard work and the days seem long and nights bound to infinity.

We can do hard things.

Have you ever watched a kiddo tackle new reading or math and emerge from all of the effort triumphant? No gladiator’s gloat can compare.

When kids learn in school, like the gladiator in the ring, they are fighting for their lives. And  they do hard things.

When a man becomes a dad and learns to become a father along the way, the wonder is real and the triumph is no less hard-won.

As we grapple with this thing of living, encountering the unknown graces and shadow places; still learning to be present, be kind, be “here now”; we are still growing. The hard everyday things of filing taxes, getting the kids to their places on time…fed, forgiving, and hoping for the future can be very hard daily things. We do hard things.

We do hard things because they must be done or we have a hope in doing them, something better and more desirable than the present situation will become.

What are you doing these days to find strength, hope, and caring? What are you celebrating as this year wraps up? What are you looking forward to in the new year? Tag us on social media @austinisdsel, and drop us a line in the comments. We are so grateful that you are on this journey with us. Bring on 2021!

As 2020 heads into its final months, most folks would probably agree that it has been a pretty intense year, to say the least:

• Global pandemic
• Economic crisis
• Record-breaking wildfires, hurricanes and other climate phenomena
• Unprecedented worldwide civil rights and anti-racism movement
• Massive shifts and re-imaginings in the realms of work and education
• An election that, as of this writing, remains unresolved

What can educational communities do?

It’s certainly not every year that presents as much uncertainty and history in 11 months quite like this one. As such, we all have been called to navigate collective trauma and anxiety on a scale new to everyone. The social and emotional competencies of self-awareness and self-management are skills we need now, as the Collective for Social and Emotional Learning [CASEL] offers:

COMPETENCY DEFINED	SKILLS WE NEED NOW
SELF-AWARENESS, which is the ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior; and accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations, with a well- grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.”	As we process the current pandemic and racial injustices, self-awareness is critical to identifying and processing our complex emotions when things are uncertain and socially turbulent, reflecting on our strengths; understanding our cultural, racial, and social identities; and examining our implicit biases.
SELF-MANAGEMENT, which is the ability to successfully regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations—effectively managing stress, controlling impulses, and motivating oneself; and the ability to set and work toward goals.	Self-management is critical now as we cope with grief and loss, develop our resiliency, and express our agency through resisting injustices and practicing anti-racism.

CASEL also points out in their Roadmap to Reopening Schools that these skills “take on deeper significance as we navigate a very different type of [life].” Prioritized into four critical practice areas, this Roadmap guides districts in “…foster[ing] the competencies and learning environments that students and adults need to reunite, renew, and thrive:”

Knowing ourselves, finding balance

In times of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty, it’s crucial that we give ourselves space and time to acknowledge our own feelings and experiences, seek balance and self-compassion, and reach for connection even while remaining physically distant. Mindfulness can be a key aspect of growing our self-awareness, and offers the practice of pausing and choosing a response, rather a reflexive reaction. In the words of Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl:

As always, our own Mindfulness Specialist James Butler offers his YouTube channel and website full of mindful practice ideas for kids and adults.

It’s a lot. Really.

These are hard and strange times – hard for everyone individually, and hard for all of us collectively. It is important, and can be validating, to simply name that there are many truly absurd aspects to these days, weeks and months that we are moving through. Finding balance, seeking gratitude, avoiding the effects of toxic positivity, and reaching for each other can all help.

What are you doing for yourself, your family, your educational community, or for society that is helping you “just keep swimming” these days? We want to know, and we love to hear from you. Tag us on social media @austinisdsel, or drop us a comment. Take sweet care out there, SEL fans.

School would have started August 18, but it didn’t, and we all know why: Covid-19, the novel corona virus that has wreaked havoc and taken lives and livelihoods across the globe, is still in full swing. For the safety of everyone, and to give educators and district leaders the chance to organize high-quality virtual learning experiences for every single student, school will now start on September 8.

Creating Virtual Space for Community

Austin ISD has publicly committed to creating safe, inclusive, culturally responsive, academically engaging, and equitable learning environments, and now we’re navigating the logistics of doing that virtually. Luckily, as we highlighted back in April, educators are some of the most resourceful and creative people in the world. Teachers and school leaders all over our district have been working literally to around the clock get ready to welcome students back virtually, and are finding novel, intentional ways to foster connection and community in their learning spaces:

• The SEL Three Signature Practices are embedded throughout our virtual academic curriculum, co-created by teachers, instructional coaches and academic leads!
• Educators at every level are exploring ways to build community virtually and invite student voice and collaboration!
• Teachers and leaders are considering their roles amid the amplified needs of students across the board during this ongoing time of uncertainty, while learning to address ZOOM fatigue and strategies for mental wellness for ourselves.
• Expanding on our SEL Symposium’s theme of creating everyday brave spaces, professional educators are considering and adapting to myriad factors that can impact student learning in agile, responsive ways.
  

Ultimately, as we all move through this historical moment together, the goal is to create space in our learning environments to encourage story telling: building community creates brave space in which learners can tell their stories, and hear the stories of others. In the article “Strengthening Resilience Through the Power of Story,” the author discusses how

Stories — both sharing our perception of experiences and listening to those of others — are at the heart of working this [resilience] muscle, and not just for kids. Through story, we can come to terms with, and make meaning of what happened and must be faced, and this applies to people of any age.

Though it was written in 2017, the concept of using story-telling to help each other make meaning of what is happening in our world right now has never been more relevant. The article also shares some rich ideas for story-telling in the learning environment for both students and adult learners, with the ultimate goal of building resilience, increasing empathy, and deepening communal connection.

The richest resource we have to navigate this uncharted educational territory is the lived experiences, expertise, and compassion of the talented professional educators in our district. How are you making space for stories in your learning environment? How are you building community during distance learning? What stories are giving you hope? We want to hear how you’re doing out there, as we move through this shared reality. School Year 20-21, bring it on!

Leave us a comment here, or tag us on social media @austinisdsel! #WeAreSEL #InThisTogether

Congratulations to our 72 Seed Model Campuses who presented at our SEL Symposium 2020: Creating Everyday Brave Spaces! Being a Seed Model Campus means setting concrete SMART goals and working toward deeper, systemic Social and Emotional Learning implementation, hosting tours from leaders and educators from around Texas and the nation, and presenting at the annual SEL Symposium.

Seed Model status means being open to vulnerability, and showing the process of deepening social and emotional learning through integration and implementation on a campus – in all its sometimes messy, sometimes frustrating, always transformative glory. Check out the Seed Model Campus Symposium 2020 BLEND Course to see some of the incredible work from these schools!

Even though school year 2019-2020 got interrupted in a most unprecedented way by novel virus COVID-19, Seed Model Campuses pivoted with agility to apply their SMART implementation goals to suit a new virtual learning environment. They applied these new skills to their presentations at our Symposium too, showing up with live, facilitated sessions and panels, EdTalks, and written statements exploring their challenges and successes. We are so happy to recognize the incredible 2020 Seed Model Campuses!

Thank you all for all your hard work – you rocked it, even under such strange circumstances. Are you a member of one of these Seed Model Campus educational communities? What has your experience been? Leave us a comment, and tag us @austinisdsel on social media! Thank you for your essential role in helping move equity-centered Social and Emotional Learning work forward in Austin ISD!