Tag Archives: CASEL

SEL Infused PBL Workshops

I am excited to announce some brand new workshops this summer based off from my upcoming book, The Pulse of PBL: Seamlessly Integrating Social and Emotional Learning! (co-authored with the amazing Matinga Ragatz). Workshops will be offered virtually so any individual in the world can join in from the comfort of their internet hotspot. All workshops are interactive, modeling a Project Based Learning framework and include participants designing a plan to implement in their classroom. My workshops can also be customized for your school and facilitated remotely or in person (I am fully vaccinated).

SEL Infused PBL

July 19-23rd 9:00am – 12:30pm EST Registration & Payment

(Recommended for teachers new to PBL. Space is limited to allow for personal coaching)

Meaningful Project Based Learning focuses inquiry on content and cultivates Social and Emotional Learning skills simultaneously. During this workshop educators will create their own PBL project integrated with SEL competencies by experiencing the PBL process themselves. Teachers from all levels and content areas will partake in a PBL environment full of protocols and structures instantly transferable to any classroom. This hands-on, comprehensive workshop will support teachers to confidently transition to SEL infused PBL inspiring students to change their world.

Transformative SEL: The Pulse of PBL

July 30th 9:30am – 4pm EST Registration & Payment

(1, 2, or 3 day options are available for school workshops. Recommended for teachers with PBL experience. Space is limited to allow for personal coaching.)

With the trauma of the craziness of 2020, educators are paying more attention than ever to Social and Emotional Learning. Many teachers use mindfulness, yoga, and other exercises to help students focus, but these tools focus primarily on self-control and behavior management. The SEL competencies encompass so much more! Discover how to teach, practice, and assess ALL of the CASEL competencies in this hands-on workshop. SEL is the Pulse of PBL: the energy running through the veins of a project that gives life to PBL and develops students into self-reliant learners. Using a Project Based Learning framework, each participant will develop a personalized plan to cultivate all of their students’ SEL skills. 

SEL Experiences and Options for School PD:

All of the SEL workshops address common myths about SEL, best practices of SEL implementation, and how to teach, practice, and assess SEL within a Project Based Learning framework. Although ideally suited for PBL, the SEL strategies can be implemented in any K-12 classroom. Each participant will complete a personalized SEL plan for their students. Multiple day SEL workshops allow groups to add the following optional add-ons and focus areas:

  • Transformative SEL: Transformative SEL means that students don’t just practice CASEL competencies in a sterile environment, but address issues of justice and equity. Projects should be culturally responsive and scaffolded for all learners including special education and English Learners. Design powerful SEL experiences bent toward justice in the community. 
  • Extreme Project Makeover: Bring an old project, stale unit, or a new idea that you want to revamp for maximum impact. Share previous successes and challenges of SEL in your classroom. Integrate the SEL competencies with new protocols to develop a personalized plan to cultivate ALL of your students’ SEL skills. 
  • Focus on 1 Core Competency: CASEL organizes SEL into 5 core areas: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making. Tailor your workshop for a deep dive into specific strategies of one or more of these competencies.
  • Developing Oracy and Public Speaking Skills: Students don’t show up to your class as natural experts in Relationship Skills. They need to be taught SEL skills such as how to communicate effectively with their team and how to effectively share their ideas with the world. Discover specific strategies to improve student dialogue around controversial issues, negotiating group conflicts, and presenting their ideas publicly. 
  • Community Partnerships: PBL and SEL need to be seated in authentic contexts. Take your projects to a higher level with community partnerships to engage in local issues. Explore how partnerships in the community motivate students to practice SEL skills in meaningful problems with local experts.
  • Classroom Culture & Community: Launching into SEL and/or PBL for the first time can seem daunting. Experience proven structures and techniques to successfully establish classroom culture from the start of the year that encourages students to actively engage in tasks, take risks, and come together as a learning community. Individually or as a school team, design a plan for the opening weeks of school.
  • Project and Group Management: Responsible Decision-Making leads to work done efficiently and on-time. Discover specific tools and practices to help facilitate projects in the classroom. Roleplay common scenarios and practice using tools that teach students to problem solve and manage themselves, their teammates, and the project work. 
  • Leadership Through Service Learning: Brainstorm and plan a PBL project around specific needs in the community. Apply Transformative SEL and Community Partnerships to cultivate student leadership by investigating and tackling tough local problems to improve citizen’s lives.
  • Assessing SEL: Educators understand that if learning is important, it needs to be assessed (but not necessarily graded). Design a plan to effectively assess the different competencies throughout a project with an emphasis on goal-setting and personal growth.
  • Extended Work Time with Personalized Coaching: Multiple day workshops allow further time for planning SEL implementation of the strategies experienced in the workshop to teacher’s classrooms. During group work time, personalized feedback and coaching is provided.

Questions? Would you like to chat about customizing for your school? Connect with me at michaelkaechele.com or @mikekaechele on Twitter.

Change the Setting to Change the Mindset

When we start talking about hot topics, people immediately take sides and get defensive. Most people, let alone students, struggle being truly empathetic and looking at a situation from multiple points of view. Everyone understands their own point of view and oftentimes think that they grasp the opposite side, but usually they don’t. This leads to emotional debates that only entrench people more deeply in their positions. Teaching the SEL competency of Social Awareness is vital if we want to heal divisions in our country and world. We need to build empathy in all of our students.

How can we talk about important issues without the conversation breaking down into unproductive arguments?

Once I shared a news article with my students about U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. But instead of giving them the actual article, I copied and pasted it into a GDoc and changed the setting of the story. I substituted China for the United States and Tibet for Iraq. We read and discussed how horrible the Chinese actions were. I wanted students to commit emotionally to judgement before I revealed that there was something not true about it. Eventually I told them that it wasn’t really about China in Tibet, but the U.S. in Iraq, and gave them the link to the actual article online. Then we looked online at the disgraceful pictures of Abu Ghraib (warning many are graphic). Since I teach thematically, students immediately made the connections to other U.S. atrocities that we had previously studied in the Moros Massacre (Samuel Clemons’ commentary) and My Lai Massacre.

This bit of deception helped open the minds of some students who initially would have been resistance to any critique of the U.S. military. It allowed them to take their jingoism out of their first impression of the event and evaluate the facts without their instinctive bias. In the end, students were able to more deeply understand why America is unpopular in certain parts of the world.

A while back, I heard about (don’t remember where) teachers in Israel using “The Troubles” in Ireland to build empathy in their students by studying the complexities of religious (Protestant vs. Catholic) and ethnic (Irish vs. British) strife in another part of the world. The conflict in their own country was too personal and close at hand for students to consider objectively. But by first looking at similar issues abroad, students were able to apply it back to themselves. I think this is a genius approach to teaching empathy.

This week I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History Presents: The Limits of Power, an excerpt from his book David and Goliath. This podcast episode focuses on the very topic of escalation between the the Protestants and Catholics in 1970’s Ireland and how the British got involved, and I think that it can be applied to more than Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

Gladwell explains that a paper, Rebellion and Authority from Leites and Wolf argued that economics was the key factor in dealing with rebellions. It was (still is???) the primary viewpoint of governments and law enforcement at the time. Basically use force to make insurgents feel pain, and they will comply. The feelings and emotions of the people are irrelevant. Gladwell’s excellent storytelling demonstrates the fallacy of this theory (Sidenote: this theory also was behind the U.S. strategy in Vietnam).

Of course, he has the American struggle for equality and full civil rights in mind, when he wrote this chapter of his book and the parallels are obvious. This podcast would be great to use with students and have them first analyze “The Troubles” and then apply their conclusions to the Black Lives Matter movement and other resistant movements.

Sometimes we need to change the setting to change the mindset!

CASEL has recently updated its competencies to reflect the importance of equity. Social Awareness now includes sub categories:

  • Taking others’ perspectives
  • Recognizing strengths in others
  • Demonstrating empathy and compassion
  • Showing concern for the feelings of others
  • Understanding and expressing gratitude
  • Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones
  • Recognizing situational demands and opportunities
  • Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

I think one of the most important additions is the last bullet point. We need to teach students the legacy of systematic racism. History is not just individuals making decisions, but huge, powerful systems that control and limit options for the disadvantaged. In the United States, public schools are one of these systems. And when it comes to “identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones,” it is often easier to critique another country than one’s own. Try using “neutral” international settings to build consensus before engaging in partisan domestic issues. The future of democracy may depend on our ability to develop Social Awareness in the next generation!