Summer is here for most of our readers. It's a welcomed time to catch your breath, sip some lemonade, enjoy the sunshine, and relax. You have earned it. This year, we experienced the incredible highs and lows alongside the teams we coach. Each month in our blogs, we worked to capture those moments and identify their ahas, potential next steps, and lessons learned. As we head into summer planning, consider that CASEL reminds us: Trust, community, and collective efficacy among staff are strong predictors of how well schools can carry out improvement initiatives (Bryk & Schneider, 2003) and impact student achievement (Donohoo, Hattie, & Eells, 2018), and serve as a critical foundation for SEL.
When you are ready to charge ahead...use this blog as a summer-long learning tool. We have organized those blogs to offer you some poolside or porchswing reading and reflection for you and your team in relation to these focus areas.
Assessing Impact
| Topic | Read | Thinking Questions |
| Growth in the time of challenge | Watch for Falling Apples | How did you and your staff grow this year? What wins and innovations came from our challenges? What do you want to replicate or maintain? How did you/will you identify these with staff in relation to the impact they had on learners? |
| Impact on Staff | Spring Forward, Forward March: Seeds and Steps Have an Impact | What is your level of efficacy in terms of the impact you have had on your staff? How did your actions this past year contribute to their growth and wellbeing? What’s next or something you haven’t accomplished yet in your community of learners? |
| Instructional Leadership Skills | What's Cookin' for Student Success? | What are your priorities heading into the fall? What knowledge and skills do you need as an instructional leader to support your staff in alignment to those? |
Adult SEL
| Topic | Read | Thinking Questions |
| Feedback impact on efficacy & wellbeing | Fair Winds and Following Seas: Feedback for Stress, Feedback for Efficacy | What role did feedback play this past year in support of your staff? What was their level of self- and collective efficacy and how did you influence those? How can you plan to create feedback cycles this year that will focus on impact and causal attributions? |
| Instructional Moments & Connectedness | Creating Moments to Create Connection | How did you/will you work to create connectedness among students/among staff? How did you/will you help staff see how instructional choices impact relationships and connectedness? |
| Clarity and understanding of human & social capital | Finding Balance: Responding to How We Really Are | How did you/will you create an environment/relationships of trust and openness? Did you have a clear picture of how your staff was doing emotionally and physically? Instructionally? How did you/will you balance social and human capital? |
Professional Learning
| Topic | Read | Thinking Questions |
| Anywhere, Anytime Learning | Lighting the Way: Creating Anywhere, Anytime Learning | How did you/will you create opportunities for staff to learn and grow beyond sit-and-get or whole group PL? How did you/will you foster collaborative learning experiences or peer-to-peer support? |
| Academic & SEL connections | Linking Learning & SEL: Make Connections to Make Meaning | How did you/will you support staff in understanding the interconnections of academic and social, emotional learning? |
| Using Your Summer for Planning | Readying for Reopening: 21 R's for Summer Planning | How will you fill your own buckets this summer so you can fill others’? What will you do to renew and re-energize your spirit? What knowledge do you need to take action this fall? |
| Book studies | ||
| Skills and Strategies for Feedback that Feeds Forward |  | How do you align feedback to common expectations? How do you collect and leverage specific evidence? How do you help teachers see impact? How do you ensure actionable next steps built on strengths? What systems are in place to create feedback cycles? |
| Impact on Learners at the Center |  | How do you use what you understand about how students learn to improve feedback? How do you plan for more effective observation and collection of evidence based on goals for learners? How do you adapt evidence-collection practices in the moment? How do you build a culture of learning through a culture of feedback? |
Happy Reading and Happy Summer!
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