Social Emotional Learning Standards: Formalizing 'That Special Something' For Mississippi's Teachers, Classrooms

Heather Craig

The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) implemented the state’s first Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Standards in January to address the needs of pre-K and K-12 students in classrooms across the state, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and decision-making skills.

The standards were already in the planning and defining phase when the global pandemic led to the shift to online and hybrid learning, highlighting the need for formal SEL tools. What was originally a plan for the near future became a cemented reality when educators realized the effects of the pandemic caused high levels of stress and uncertainty for students of all grade levels.

“When COVID-19 hit and we saw that there was going to be a substantial need for these standards, we absolutely sped up our design and implementation,” said Ginger Koestler, the MDE’s behavioral intervention specialist.

In its push for developing the standards quickly, the MDE had outside help. The plan is a joint effort between the MDE; the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL); and Realizing Excellence for ALL Children in Mississippi (REACH MS). CASEL is the organization that helped defined SEL more than two decades ago. REACH MS is a sub-grantee of the MDE’s special education department that partners on much of the department’s behavioral intervention work, making it well-suited to assist with developing the SEL standards.

MDE project managers also found themselves looking to a wide range of specialists within their own office in developing the new standards.

“This was a huge group effort. We pulled in our special education department, office of elementary and reading, our counselors and our secondary education specialists,” Koestler said. “We could not have done it without them. They did a lot of the heavy lifting on this project.”

With the standards covering every year of students’ K-12 education, Koestler relied on one group of specialists to serve as the glue that held the SEL standards together at every developmental stage. Due to its vast experience in SEL, the early childhood department stepped into the role of helping all the standards work together fluidly.

“They had social emotional standards built into those pre-K standards, so we brought them in to make sure the standards mesh,” Koestler said. “Because of the pre-K department’s experience, the standards use the same language, all the way from pre-K to K-12. We really thought that was key.”

As far as the new standards’ effect on teachers’ classrooms this year are concerned, that will depend on the individual teacher.

Despite perhaps not giving a formal name to their own SEL efforts, most teachers already engage in SEL in their classrooms daily.

“Teaching expectations, responsibility and consequences for actions — in the same way that teaching those things at home is good parenting — good teachers already teach these things on a day-to-day basis,” said Dr. Nathan Oakley, the MDE’s chief academic officer.

“We expect a lot from our teachers,” Koestler added, “but I don’t want them to think this is ‘just another thing.’”

What Koestler mainly wants Mississippi teachers to know is that they will now have SEL resources, tools and support when they look to the formalized standards.

“For teachers, there’s so much going on that a lot of times they don’t know what resources are out there,” she said. “Beyond that, when teachers really look at the performance standards alongside the tasks, they will see that most solid teachers who have created positive classroom environments were already doing this. This is just putting the ideas on paper so that educators can evolve the good work they are already doing.”

Both Oakley and Koestler agreed everyone, regardless of background, can recognize SEL based on their own learning experiences.

“We all had a teacher who stood out to us and supported us more than others," Oakley said. "That was a teacher that had good SEL practices, even if they were teaching before SEL was defined. It was just good teaching.”

Koestler said she tells people with questions about SEL to “look back to the teacher that made a difference in your life — that teacher who had ‘it,’ who made you feel welcome, who made you feel excited about learning even when you weren’t doing well, and when you made a mistake, who knew to build you up.”

“You probably learned more from that teacher than anybody else — that’s the environment, the good learning space we’re looking to create for all students. That’s SEL,” she said.