Social Emotional Learning and Personalized Learning

Throughout CPS, social emotional learning ensures that schools create and foster safe learning environments that maximize student engagement and achievement. Within personalized learning, SEL practices and skills are an essential element towards building and achieving holistic learner success.

We believe in the importance of SEL in academic instruction and view SEL as a crucial element to students' lifelong success as learners, peers, and citizens within our PL classrooms. 

The Essential Components of SEL

Under the personalized learning approach, students who are provided with the opportunity to learn and practice the five social and emotional learning core competencies, self-assess progress, and receive one-on-one feedback from their teacher will be on a trajectory for academic and interpersonal success!

Both Chicago Public Schools and the Department of Personalized Learning leverage the CASEL SEL Competencies to improve our understanding of what's best for students and help educators develop the advanced SEL practices in their classrooms. 

The Three Prong Approach to Foundational SEL Practices

We believe there is no PL without strong SEL!  Our three prong approach details strategies, resources, and best practices for strengthening student and staff SEL competencies!  Explore the links below for more information on these fundamental SEL practices.

Classroom SEL Practices

We believe that the explicit teaching of the IL State Board of Education SEL Standards, the use of the American Institute for Research’s 10 teaching practices, and the cultivation of a service-minded community are key components of a personalized learning classroom. ​

​Illinois is one of 8 states that has developed SEL standards or competencies for KDG-12th grade. Using the CASEL 5 competencies as the guiding framework, ISBE came up with three overarching goals of knowing oneself, knowing others, and knowing how to work together.

In 2014, AIR released a brief that described 10 instructional practices that promote the implicit teaching of social and emotional competencies to develop the “whole child.”
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A “service-minded community” is where students teach and learn from each other in a collaborative, reciprocal learning environment that bridges across grades and abilities.

Data-Driven SEL Practices

We believe that establishing a rich culture and climate, nurturing adult SEL, and measuring student SEL are data-driven SEL practices which serve as the backbone of a flourishing personalized learning environment. 

A “rich culture and climate” includes Tier 1, 2, and 3 systems and structures that ensure all students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs are met. Supportive and restorative learning climates are developed through the establishment of a teaming structure that uses a variety of data sources to monitor and continuously improve the effectiveness of systems and structures that support SEL. 

“Adult SEL” is all about cultivating trust, relationships, and social-emotional skills among the adults in the school community. When educators develop SEL skills, they set a positive example for students and are better able to implement student-centered learning practices. Adults are able to know and manage themselves through the use of self-assessment tools.

“Measuring student SEL” is an emerging practice in teaching and learning which brings the assessment and progress monitoring of “non-academic” skills on par with academic data. Learners in grades 3-12 are encouraged to self-report their skills just like the adults, while educators of KDG-2nd graders will use observation protocols and rating scales to best assess what SEL beliefs, attitudes, skills, and knowledge need to be developed in learners.

School-Wide SEL Practices

We believe that “trauma informed practices”, “restorative practices” and “culturally-responsive practices” are essential school-wide SEL practices that build community while meeting the needs of all learners and educators.

All three components are interrelated in the following way: when there is a shared understanding about the impact of trauma and adversity on students, then schools recognize the need to implement restorative and culturally responsive classroom and discipline policies. Furthermore, when all students have access to comprehensive school mental and behavioral health services, the physical, social, and emotional safety of the school community increases.