NSBA Trainers Conference: Cultural Responsive Social and Emotional Learning

 Another of the periodic postings from the NSBA Trainer Conference in Juneau. Today's session is "how school boards can integrate social-emotional learning and development with culturally responsive practices that create high trust/low-stress environments, re-build the natural confidence of the most marginalized students, and improve their ability to turn inert facts into usable knowledge?"
We're in the Alaska State Library this morning.
Presenting today is Heather Coulehan of the Association of Alaska School Boards
CRESEL i3 grant (Culturally Responsive Embedded Social & Emtional Learning)
"what does this work look like in a particular context?"

AASB, 7 AK school districts, First Alaskan Institute, Alaska Afterschool Network
unusual way of working from the district out, embedded in culturally responsive practices
"communities are the experts"
identifying a student's unmet need and helping to meet that need=equity (Kolene James)
community conversation: focus on culture and schools; skills needed for children in and out of the community
set up in a circle with powerful questions
themes that are emerging through the conversations
asset-based: what does the community have? what are we building on and with?

what does discipline look like if you're truly partnering with the community?

Zaretta Hammond Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain
"the learning pit" what skills and relationships will allow children to come out of the learning pit?

how does one describe SEL in different contexts?
work skills and life skills: "employers are asking for these"
SEL as learning standards
self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, decision-making skills
connection between SEL and academic achievement that sustains over time
"I've seen my students become brave learners"
"school might be the only place where they feel connected and that needs to remain constant"
SEL connecting adults, adults modeling SEL skills
recognizing importance of non-teaching staff in school community; "it's not just the teaching"
and what about Boards modeling skills?

Rita Pearson, "Every Kid Needs a Champion"

self-regulation and self-management
brain-body connections strategies

CRESEL is a process not a program
starting at viewing culture and SEL and separate and stand alone and "imported"
moving through alignment to indigenizing and using local staff to co-creation of school
what does co-creation of school look like?

How do school boards create the CONDITION to integrate social-emotional learning and development with culturally responsive practices that create high trust/low-stress environments, re-build the natural confidence of the most marginalized students, and improve their ability to turn inert facts into usable knowledge?