While elevating academic achievement is the core focus of any school, Distinctive Schools in Chicago and Detroit recognizes the importance of prioritizing the social-emotional needs of all students and staff to build safer, more equitable, and better-connected communities. Their commitment to supporting the social, emotional, and academic development of students has become a central pillar of the Distinctive Way and is integrated into their strategic plan.
How Distinctive Schools is Building a
Positive Learning Culture with Systemic SEL
“You can’t be an organization focused on culture and not value social emotional learning.”
Anthony Claypool, Network Director of Data & Assessment
A Systemic Approach to Mental Health
To ensure that the social emotional needs of their community are being met, Distinctive Schools integrates Move This World’s foundational mental health platform throughout the network – administrators, educators, building staff, and families are engaged in social emotional development. Distinctive Schools has embedded social emotional skill building into their network-wide strategic plan, schools integrate mental health into MTSS and PBIS frameworks, and educators implement classroom practices regularly. From the district level to the individual student level, social emotional development is core to the operating system of Distinctive Schools.
Making social emotional skill building an essential practice
At CICS West Belden in Chicago, regular practice of Move This World creates opportunities for students to reflect and grow. “Since beginning Move This World, our Emogers (emotion managers) are posted in the classroom as they guide us through the day’s video, activity, and beyond,” fourth-grade teacher Meghan Camacho explains. “We do Move This World four days a week, and it allows for independent and whole community conversations and growth. We use the day’s video and activity for our morning journal, as well as discussions throughout the day, week, and year.”
That evolving, proactive and preventive approach to mental health empowers educators to go beyond improving individual student outcomes and focus on lifting the entire community by strengthening relationships and teaching students strategies that they can independently use to manage stress, set and work towards goals, celebrate accomplishments, and overcome challenges. With these skills, students are able to support one another and build a stronger school community. “Over my past six years of teaching, I have seen the difference social emotional skill building can make in student/teacher and student/student relationships,” Camacho says. “When these relationships are strong and continuously developing, learning occurs on a much deeper level and students become more confident in who they are as a person and learner. It has also helped me become a more empathetic teacher who has learned to stop for the teaching and growing moments rather than sticking to the curriculum task at hand.”
More than lessons
Distinctive Schools’ leadership know that if they were going to make emotional wellness an ingrained part of school life, they needed to implement their program in a seamless and authentic way that was responsive to their community’s needs. Chrysantha Norwood, a sixth-grade teacher at Distinctive College Prep: Harper Woods, describes how her school’s enthusiasm for social emotional skill building is embedded in their day-to-day operation, “In our school, emotional wellness looks like a practice that is evolving to meet the needs of the students we serve and the needs of our team. Social emotional skill building looks like an integral part of our school culture that is embraced and encouraged, not just ‘sessions or lessons.’”
A Foundation for Future Success
Creating a culture of wellness and connectivity is a huge undertaking at the school level. It becomes an even greater challenge to build one across an entire school network with campuses in two states. But Distinctive Schools’ Regional SEL Director Sarah Gaw champions the importance of prioritizing this work, “Proactive mental health is important to me because of the influence social emotional skills have on the individual lives and futures of our students. It’s the vehicle in which our students’ hopes and dreams can be reached. I often tell students that even if you’re the smartest person in the room, if you can’t work well with others and navigate through challenging situations, your knowledge, and other skills won’t be used to their full potential. To me, social emotional skills are absolutely essential for the future of our students.”
Learn more about mental health at Distinctive Schools:
On-Demand webinar: Data-Driven Social Emotional Skills: Moving This World in Distinctive Schools
