Enacting Social-Emotional Learning

Social-emotional learning (SEL) refers to the beliefs, attitudes, personality traits, and behaviors that students need to succeed in school and life. Our study looks closely at ten “outlier schools” in California’s CORE districts whose students report strong social-emotional learning outcomes compared to other, similar middle schools. This brief and the infographic—based on a longer technical report—describe the surprising breadth and variety of social-emotional learning practices found in these outlier schools, as well as commonalities in their approaches and implementation challenges that some are facing. Our findings offer ideas and lessons learned that may benefit other schools and districts seeking to implement social-emotional learning at scale.