Developing a Network of Early Childhood Educators Practicing Social and Emotional Learning and Racial Equity

• In Event: Multiple Perspectives on Building a County-Wide Ecosystem of Social and Emotional Learning and Racial Equity

Abstract

Objectives/purposes. Over the past twenty years, our team has partnered with local early childhood educators to bring mental health supports to their classrooms, children, and families. Now, the work is evolving to include a specific focus on building early childhood educator SEL skills, using a community of practice. In the past two years, we have begun iteratively building this model and weaving in racially-responsive practices to formally integrate SEL and Racial Equity (Larson, 2022). Now, we are expanding our model (the SELs Cohort) to ten communities of early childhood educators. Our aim in this paper is to share our model with the AERA SEL SIG and lessons learned regarding the implementation of the model and the discussion prompts that were most effective for leading to SEL and Racial Equity learning.

Theoretical framework. Our approach to SEL in early childhood classrooms is based on findings related to educator secondary trauma and stress, showing that it has increased in recent years, and is also likely to ultimately lead to increased suspension and expulsion rates (Silver & Zinsser, 2020). As such, we focus this paper on the need to specifically attend to the adults in early childhood spaces, including their growth and development.

Methods, data, and results. Data will be collected at each community of practice and reviewed by the entire team after each session. Structured notes from the session will supplement the formal child assessments used in classrooms and after teacher-consultant conversations. The goal of our mixed methods analyses is to connect quantitative child-level patterns in the county with adult SEL skill areas of concerns and growth. These connections will illuminate potential opportunities for guiding the following year’s adult community of practice content.

Scholarly significance and implications. We aim to help early educators have a space for learning how to advance their own SEL, while also making racial equity a priority (Jagers, et al., 2018). The significance of having an integrated learning space that is safe and brave (Arao & Clemens) is one that we have seen the need for and has only increased since educator burnout worsened during COVID-19. The potential for showing iterative adult learning community topic development based on teacher concerns and child-level scores, has the potential to open up an entirely new area of SEL program content development. Rather than implementing content in a prescribed order (for adults or children), there is the opportunity to look at the needs and synergies between the two, and arrange content according to the ways they can learn to respond to each others’ needs and build timely skills.

Authors

• Tracy Larson, University of Pittsburgh

• Karl L. Jancart, University of Pittsburgh