SEL From the Top Down

Diante Johnson

Article

SEL From the Top Down: Social Emotional Learning for the Administrator

Dr. Easterling-Hood

Vince Davis, Jr.

Self-awareness is being aware that emotions can drive our behavior and impact people (positively and negatively), and learning how to manage those emotions – both our own and others – especially when we are under pressure. Through demonstration of the first SEL competency, Self-Awareness, participants will uncover their personal ACE’s and emotional triggers and determine how doing so will help them to provide professional development for their teachers and staff. This discovery will help administrators 1) Understand how self-awareness helps one to be honest with themselves and people around them, especially people they lead 2) Guide administrators to acknowledge Social Emotional Learning as an approach to prevent ACE’s and remove barriers to student achievement and 3) help the administrator to gauge the readiness and/or progress of implementing a schoolwide SEL program based on the Illinois SEL standards by completing a school-wide planning and implementation rubric developed by CASEL (The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning).

Diante Johnson actually wrote the soundtrack to It’s OK video and was responsible for the entire music production. He is a Teacher Assistant with a degree in Music from Columbia University.

Dr. Easterling-Hood is Principal of McDowell School and creator of the Wellness Project, She co-wrote the songtrack, and helped to produce the video. This project was inspired by a presentation she prepared along with her school counselor. Darril Fountain, entitled: SEL From the Top Down as well as the recognition of the stress teachers were experiencing due to Covid. As a matter of fact, we were selected to present at the Illinois Principal Association Leaders Conference this month but had to decline due to Covid. Vince Davis is the Technology Coordinator for McDowell School. He is co-producer of music and an actual musician who played keys on the project. He included SEL practices in his Tech classes. He is also a Doctoral Student.

Tsureyah McKee is a Special Education Assistant here at McDowell. She was our videographer and was responsible for capturing the video clips of our staff and participated in the editing. She is also singing on the project. Ms. McKee is a graduate of Southern Illinois University. She is also the sponsor of our female mentoring and empowering program.