Insights from the Caregiver Community: Building Authentic School and Family Partnerships

This brief highlights key learnings from CASEL’s pilot SEL Dialogue Series for Caregiver-School Partnerships, which took place at a high school in Chicago, Ill., during Spring, 2022. It hones in on 4 insights towards creating authentic school-family partnerships, each with a corresponding set of recommendations for school leaders.

TAGS family partnerships equity

Plan SEL Foundational Learning for your School District

This tool can help SEL leaders prepare a broad plan to provide learning experiences for all stakeholders in the school district community, and access resources to support foundational learning about SEL.

TAGS teacher training professional learning family and community engagement

Austin Independent School District SEL Newsletter

Samples of a bilingual newsletter distributed by the SEL department in Austin, including a school spotlight, featured SEL strategy, and family resources.

TAGS parenting reading lists - parents spanish language resources model SEL schools communications community relations family and community engagement

Case Study: Austin Independent School District Process for Developing SEL Standards

SEL standards from Austin and contextual information on how they are used and measured.

TAGS SEL standards board policies middle school grades high school grades elementary school grades PK-12

School Climate Survey Compendia

The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments maintains this list of valid and reliable surveys, assessments, and scales of school climate.

TAGS define SEL metrics assessment continuous improvement PK-12 implementation evaluation

School Climate Improvement: What do Teachers Believe, Need and Want?

A research report from the National School Climate Center shows 90% of educators believe that a positive school climate is very important, and educators wanted tools and "roadmaps" for improving school climate.

TAGS journal article SEL coaching for staff culture and climate building buy-in for SEL

Social and Emotional Learning in Out-of-School Time Settings

Brief from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Wallace Foundation providing guidelines and considerations for adapting leading SEL programs to out-of-school settings.

TAGS SEL partnerships research brief evidence-based programs out of school

Early Lessons from Schools and Out-of-School Time Programs Implementing Social and Emotional Learning

This report details the study of partnerships between schools and out of school time partners working together to implement SEL in a coordinated way, organizing lessons learned into 4 main categories: system-level launch activities, developing partnerships, developing adults' capacity to promote SEL, and improving climate and delivering SEL instruction.

TAGS community partnerships implementation evaluation out of school

Partnerships by Design: Cultivating Effective and Meaningful School-Family-Community Partnerships

This tool from Northwest REL includes forms, worksheets, and activities to assess the current state of family and community collaboration, create a vision for partnership, and set up an action plan.

TAGS family partnerships community partnerships anti-bias toolkit parent leadership culturally responsive family and community engagement

Strategies for Establishing School-Family Partnerships

This tool from CASEL's Guide to Schoolwide SEL outlines the components of a meaningful partnership that involves family members in their child's social and emotional development and in schoolwide decision making about SEL, and proposes strategies for bridging constraints and communication gaps.

TAGS family partnerships SEL partnerships parent leadership family and community engagement