Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide: The Formative Five Success Skills for Students and Staff, Dec/2019

What’s the secret to making schoolwide SEL work? Growing numbers of people recognize that social-emotional learning (SEL) is central to a well-rounded education and to success in life outside and beyond the school building. What’s missing is the know-how and framework for weaving SEL into the fabric of the school. In this highly practical and eminently readable book, Thomas R. Hoerr shows teachers, administrators, and other school staff how to integrate the Formative Five success skills—empathy, integrity, self-control, embracing diversity, and grit—with school culture essentials by answering these questions:

1. How can you ensure that your school or district is helping students develop their SEL skills across disciplines? Address your values, vision, mission.
2. What effective programs and activities support student development of SEL skills at the classroom, school, and district levels?  Consider your practices.
3. How can you leverage personal relationships within the school and in the community to cultivate students’ appreciation of how the differences among us make us stronger? Involve your people.
4. How can you weave an SEL narrative into your school’s culture? Live your narrative.
5. What can you do to establish and nurture a welcoming school environment as you strive to enhance students’ SEL skills? Embrace your place.

Replete with real-life examples from the author’s years as a school leader, relevant findings from the research, and helpful strategies for use at all levels and with all K-12 populations, Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide is the ultimate blueprint for making sure students and staff are equipped to thrive. 

About the Author:

Thomas R. Hoerr retired after leading the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri, for 34 years and is now the Emeritus Head of School. He teaches in the educational leadership program at the University of Missouri St. Louis and holds a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis. Hoerr has written five books Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School (2000), The Art of School Leadership (2005), School Leadership for the Future (2009), Fostering Grit (2013), and The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs (2017) and more than 150 articles, including "The Principal Connection" column in Educational Leadership. Hoerr is a fan of chocolate and an enthusiastic but poor basketball player.