A “quick reference guide” explaining how to use close reading lessons to promote understanding and analysis of complex text.
Reading Closely to Analyze Complex Texts - Elementary
Reading Closely to Analyze Complex Texts - Secondary
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Curriculum & Instruction
Produced jointly by the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) and Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), this guide provides best practices and resources that parents and educators can utilize as they work to achieve a positive school climate, lower disciplinary issues, and enhance school safety.
Parent and Educator Guide to School Climate Resources
United States Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
This free online training for educators is part of the Clough Foundation Training and Access Project (TAP) Online series, which offers free courses on social-emotional learning and behavioral health in schools. TAP is a part of the Boston Children’s Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships Program (BCHNP).
Open Pediatrics
As the nation is becoming increasingly interested in how children learn, efforts like the landmark consensus report issued by the National Commission’s Council of Distinguished Scientists are providing new insights. This report, “The Evidence Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Development,” unites scholars from multiple fields to affirm the interconnectedness of the social, emotional, and academic components of learning. Take a look starting at page 9 to see "What We've Learned."
How Learning Happens: Supporting Students' Social, Emotional, and Academic Development
National Commissions on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development
The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) is a training and technical assistance (TTA) center funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students to help address the many factors that result in disciplinary problems and affect conditions for learning, such as bullying, harassment, violence, and substance abuse. Due to the growing concern over school climate and disproportionate rates of suspensions and expulsions in the nation’s schools, over the past few years, NCSSLE has developed a number of materials related to this topic. Additionally, NCSSLE has increased the number of resources housed in the NCSSLE website to help school districts better address their approaches to school climate and discipline while safeguarding student’s civil rights.
Moving Beyond Open House: Building Meaningful Relationships between Parents/Families and Schools - Recorded Webinar | Presentation Slides
Making the Case for the Important of School Climate and Its Measurement in Turnaround Schools - Recorded Webinar | Presentation Slides
Enhancing Peer-to-Peer Relationships to Strengths School Climate - Recorded Webinar | Presentation Slides
National Center for Safe Supportive Learning Environments
Excellent Edutopia series on how Metro Nashville Public Schools is bringing coherence and alignment to social emotional learning implementation. The series hits key messages about how to position and integrate SEL so that it is part and parcel of the school culture for adults and students, not another "flavor of the month" program. The series also highlights concrete practices for elementary, middle and high schools and explains how the district uses a common SEL Walkthrough Rubric to guide implementation. Nashville is part of a network of the Collaborating Districts Initiative working with CASEL on district-wide SEL implementation.
Each article is accompanied by a video related to the article theme. (Note: There is reuse of some footage across the videos but each also includes new footage related to the specific theme of the article.)
Nashville Confronts SEL Resistance Head-On (feature article in the series, why Nashville is doing this and key messaging points)
https://www.edutopia.org/article/nashville-confronts-sel-resistance-head
The Big Picture: Integrating SEL Across a District (features the SEL Walkthrough Rubric)
https://www.edutopia.org/video/big-picture-integrating-sel-across-district
SEL as a Foundation for Academics (features SEL implementation in middle school)
https://www.edutopia.org/article/sel-foundation-academics
Closing the Achievement Gap With SEL (features implementation in high school)
https://www.edutopia.org/article/closing-achievement-gap-sel
An Inside Look at Trauma-Informed Practices (school-wide approach in an elementary school)
https://www.edutopia.org/article/inside-look-trauma-informed-practices
How a District Integrates SEL with Academics
https://www.edutopia.org/package/how-district-integrates-sel-academics
Edutopia in collaboration with the National Commission for Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, with support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Distributed leadership is identified in the Massachusetts Turnaround Practices as an essential element of school improvement. Development and support for Instructional Leadership Teams (ILTs) is an efficient, high leverage means to build school and district capacity to engage sustainable continuous cycles of improvement. This strategy for building distributed leadership is an emerging focus of Massachusetts Statewide System of Support assistance. The ILT project provides focus, resources and training to ensure that ILT development is supported in turnaround schools across the commonwealth.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Statewide System of Support
MA ESE conducted research on successful partnerships, reviewing exited 2010 Massachusetts Level 4 schools supported by one or more partner. The interviews, focus groups, and research led to the conclusion that there are necessary conditions at the outset of a partnership, as well as ongoing habits throughout a partnership, that make the difference between successful and unsuccessful relationships. This led to a theory of action: If districts and partners establish conditions for success and monitor these over time, then partnerships will be more likely to have greater academic return on investment, thereby increasing student achievement in high-needs districts. This guidance aims to provide clarity around the necessary conditions, as well as a set of tools for districts and partners to voluntarily implement.
Conditions and Habits of Successful Partnership Guidance - Full Document
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Training materials to support use of the Massachusetts educator evaluation framework. Includes facilitator tools, videos, handouts and slides needed to provide educator training workshops.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
CASEL's 2017 report on the Collaborating Districts Initiative (CDI), a six-plus year effort to study and scale high-quality, evidence-based academic, social and emotional learning in 10 of the largest, most complex school systems in the country: Anchorage, Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Nashville, Oakland, Sacramento, Washoe County (NV), Atlanta and El Paso.
Key Insights from the Collaborating Districts Initiative
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Concise guide that provides a PBIS practices self-assessment tool, classroom decision-making chart, and classroom-based practice examples organized by topic, e.g., setting expectations, developing routines, using behavior-specific praise, responding to problem behavior, collecting and using behavior data, etc.
Supporting and Responding to Behavior - Evidence Based Classroom Practices for Teachers
Adapted from the PBIS Technical Brief on Classroom PBIS Strategies written by: Brandi Simonsen, Jennifer Freeman, Steve Goodman, Barbara Mitchell, Jessica Swain-Bradway, Brigid Flannery, George Sugai, Heather George, and Bob Putman, 2015
This set of tools and resources from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, in collaboration with the Center for Collaborative Education is devoted to supporting schools and districts with their efforts to establish and sustain cultures that promote Professional Learning Communities. Through these modules, teams can explore the essential questions: What role do professional learning communities play in improving instruction and student achievement? How can we leverage change in our school and build capacity by implementing professional learning communities?
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Center for Collaborative Education (CCE)
Based in existing research and best-practices, this guide provides a compass for the development of family engagement strategies, policies, and programs using a "dual capacity" approach that recognizes the roles and needs of both partners - parents and staff. For those doing family engagement work, this is one of the main go-to frameworks for thinking about this work.
A Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships
SEDL: Advancing Research Improving Education, U.S. Department of Education
There are many social emotional learning programs out there. This report provides a comprehensive report on 25 evidence-based social emotional learning programs for elementary school. Developed for the Wallace Foundation and released in March 2017, the report profiles both lesson-based/curriculum and non-curricular approaches.
Navigating SEL from the Inside Out: Looking Inside & Across 25 Leading SEL Programs
SEL Programs Evaluated
In-School, Lesson-Based Curricula: The 4Rs Program, Caring School Community, Character First, Competent Kids, Caring Communities, I Can Problem Solve, Lions Quest, The Mutt-i-grees Curriculum, Open Circle, The PATHS Program, Positive Action , RULER, Second Step, SECURe, Social Decision Making/Problem Solving Program, Too Good for Violence, We Have Skills, Wise Skills
In-School, Non-curricular Approaches: Conscious Discipline, Good Behavior Game, Playworks, Responsive Classroom, Program Profiles
Out-of-School Time Programs: Before the Bullying, A.F.T.E.R School Program, Girls on the Run, WINGS for Kids
The Wallace Foundation, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Learn how the P.K. Yonge School in Florida structured its tiered systems of support approach. The case study includes information on how "Student Success Teams" are organized and run, how "tiering" is done, and how the staff take an integrated view of academic and social emotional or behavioral support needs.
Edutopia
The PEAR Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) is a universal social-emotional assessment tool (student survey) that can help you better understand each student's unique strengths and needs. The assessment is based on PEAR's Clover Model of youth development, covering the following 4 domains:
Active Engagement (engaging with the world physically)
Assertiveness (expressing voice and choice)
Belonging (social connection and relationships)
Reflection (thought and meaning-making)
PEAR Holistic Student Assessment
Partnerships in Education and Resilience (PEAR) Institute, Harvard Medical School, McLean Hospital
This research study explores the climate of a handful of secondary schools with extraordinary success compared to other schools, including those that consistently under-perform. A growing body of research suggests that school climate may be an important variable in explaining why some schools are more successful than others. Learn about how these school's focused on climate and experienced overall improvement.
A Climate for Academic Success
California Comprehensive Center
A lot of school climate and culture is "what's happening when adults are busy doing other things." Use these resources from the Center on School Climate & Learning to involve a variety of students (not just natural or known leaders) in gathering student voice and pinpointing aspects of school climate/culture that need work and strategies for addressing them.
The Center for School Climate and Learning
Learn how to shift from traditional parent-teacher open house and curriculum nights to teacher-facilitated sessions designed to help parents support their child's academic success: Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT).
Lynn APTT Initiative - Mass Wraparound Replication Cookbook
The Power of Academic Parent-Teacher Teams - Edutopia
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, School & Main Institute, Edutopia
School culture and climate is a critical component to any school. This paper can help a school or district explore how to design schools around young people in order to support them on their positive youth development, including the importance of caring, trusting, and supportive relationships, high expectations, voice, choice and contribution, intentionally engaging learning experiences and consistency.
How Students Thrive: Positive Youth Development in Practice
Springpoint Schools
Resources clearinghouse for the MA Department of Elementary & Secondary Education
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