LM Sept2022hi

Lighthouse ... cont’d.

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What hasbeen the feedback fromstudents? Overall, I think our students are very receptive and open to it. Our whole social-emotional learning work and journey began really with input from our commu- nity, which included our students. We’re really proud of the fact that Naperville is a high achieving and high performing school district academically, but some- times that brings additional pressure to have to be the best. Our community told us the importance of making sure that we’re educating the whole child and making sure that we’re creating environments in our school where students feel safe from a physical standpoint, but also safe from a mental health and an emotional stand- point. Our students understand this is going to impact them in the real world. However, I would also say there a lot of times where our students don’t realize that there’s explicit instruction happening around SEL skills because it’s so deeply integrated into the work that we’re doing. Doyouhavedata thatmeasures the impact of thiswork? Over 90 percent of our kindergarten through fifth- grade teachers feel that the SEL curriculum has been positive and had a positive impact on the students

in their classroom. 77 percent of our sixth through eighth grade teachers felt that same way and about 70 percent of ninth through 12 graders felt it has been positive. That kind of goes to that idea of just how it’s being implemented and how it’s working. We have also seen mental health hospitalizations among our students fall by over 7 percent initially and by the next year that number was over 20 percent. Our chronic absenteeism rate has also dropped significantly over the past several years as well. What advicedoyouhave for your peers about implementinganSEL initiative? My advice is to be clear about your goal and your pur- pose. What’s the why behind it? We’re asking our edu- cators to do an awful lot every day, so we have to make it as easy as possible for them to receive the training and the support, both initially and ongoing. You really want to make sure that you are really supporting those who are ready to move when they’re ready to move. There has to be a kind of a personalized approach to it.

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Monthly e-magazine of LeadershipMatters

14 LM September 2022