- [Narrator] Over the course of their development, students have many needs, from academic to behavioral, and social-emotional.

Schools recognize and respond to these needs in a number of different ways, including through tiered systems of support.

Schools that implement SEL school-wide are able to enhance those systems, creating a continuum of integrated supports.

- For effective school-wide social-emotional learning implementation, we want to also make sure that SEL is integrated into the continuum of supports that exists in the school.

Most schools have these supports in place so that all kids' needs are met academically and in terms of behavior.

And ensuring that SEL is integrated into those areas will make sure that we have a focus on relationships and problem solving, and perspective taking, and empathy, and all the important social-emotional competence as we engage in academics and behavioral interventions - The continuum of supports is really key to students' experience, because they are with multiple educators, adults, counselors, social workers, deans across the day, and we really want them to be experiencing support that is aligned in all of those contexts.

And all of them have the ability to really shape students' experience during the day and to build their social-emotional competence, as well as their academic competence.

Sometimes, if a student is struggling academically, it may have a root cause that's social-emotional.

If a student is struggling social-emotionally, it may have a root cause that's academics.

So we wanna ensure that we are aligning all of those supports and really looking at each student as an individual and looking at them holistically to make sure all their needs are met.

- [Narrator] For many schools, these systems often take the form of a multi-tiered system of support, or MTSS, where the needs of 80% of the students are typically met by tier one experiences, or universal practices.

Traditionally, these systems have looked at academic and behavior supports.

Implementing social and emotional supports through this system can aid in student success.

- When we talk about the continuum of supports and what that looks like in schools, we are talking about students having a welcoming learning environment where they feel they can bring their full selves to the classroom.

We are talking about having robust instruction in the classroom so that they are engaged and able to really feel like the curriculum is relevant to them and the instruction allows them to build their social-emotional competence, as well as their academic competence.

And then for students who need a little bit more to thrive and to engage, then we may have small group interventions with teachers, and if they need even a little bit more to thrive, really have some individualized supports that may come from school based personnel, or from community based personnel.

- [Narrator] In West Carrollton School District, near Dayton, Ohio, the SEL team began by integrating SEL practices into the systems of support already present.

- It's not one side with behavioral support and necessarily one side with academic support.

And the way I think of it, it's like the glue that kind of holds those two buckets, those two processes together.

There is a return on investment, both behaviorally and academically when SEL is implemented.

- [Narrator] Julie Jones leads up the district's SEL team, which includes three SEL coaches, the assistant superintendent, principals, counselors, and teachers from each of the district's schools.

Their training, collaboration, and guidance has given the district the ability to fulfill each tier of support in ways that are consistent across each building, but also allow for customized interventions based on grade level - We greet students at the threshold right at the door with a positive, warm greeting.

We value and constantly foster positive relationships between students and teachers, students and other staff, and students to students.

And then we implement strategies that help support positive relationships.

Morning meeting and closing circle are a really good example of that.

So teachers start their day with a morning meeting, which includes a greeting, includes a share, some team building activities, and maybe even a social-emotional learning lesson.

It's a great time to do that.

And then closing circle has students reflect on the day, and how they did, and it's a great time to do shout outs for students.

(Julie) Here in the district, we realized that we were a little light on the tier two interventions.

We felt good about what we were offering at the tier one level and we have a lot of things in play for tier three, but we really wanted to focus on more of the tier two level this year and in the future.

So we've created some small group opportunities for our students.

We have a combination of counselors working in small groups.

And in that combination, we have outside speakers coming in, mentors that are meeting with our students in small groups, and then our SEL coaches as well that have some short term small groups taking place that are targeted to just behaviors, maybe in that particular grade level.

And then for tier three, moving into the very targeted areas of focus, we have a whole referral system for teachers to use that go directly to our SEL coaches who are licensed social workers and work very closely with families in crisis.

So if a teacher sees anything that is kind of beyond the scope of what they can do in the classroom, they refer that to our SEL coaches and they're able to just provide all the wraparound services necessary - [Narrator] To better understand the level of support required for each child, the district utilizes regular needs assessments.

Middle school and older students answers short surveys created by counselors, while teachers in the younger grades connect directly with the parents or caregivers to capture this information.

This data driven mindset is pivotal for West Carrollton's continuum of supports.

There are teams in each building using data to improve the system at every level (Becky) Data is at the heart of everything that we do.

We're always reflecting and looking at our data, and then refining our practices.

So the first thing that we do when we are in the tier one meeting is we look at our data throughout the month.

You know, where are students getting the most referrals?

What are the problem spots?

What do we have to refine?

The school leader is the most important piece of the monitoring and making the data-based decisions.

I constantly am monitoring our tier one, tier two, tier three data, I attend to every single meeting.

And I look for anywhere where we've missed something.

So we're constantly looking are we missing students?

Why does the student really seem to be struggling?

Have we not done what we needed to do to best support them to be successful?

Or what do we need to do now?

- [Narrator] From everyday reinforcement and SEL practice to crisis intervention, a school's continuum of integrated supports when threaded with social-emotional learning can provide the scaffolding and stability for students to meet both the academic and behavioral expectation of schools while also adopting a growth mindset and those key life skills that come with school-wide SEL implementation.

[Karen] We hope that schools will have in place this core set of framework and practices, but they will make it their own, right?

You want this to be responsive to local needs and to the needs of your particular students.

But as long as you are focusing on this holistic sense of young people's development and thinking about the ways that that crosscuts your curriculum, your rituals and routines in a school, like the way that you create your school calendar and staff your school, all of that has connections to social-emotional learning and we want folks to be thinking about how you build a system of support that's meaningful for adults and young people.

(gentle music)