SEL

June 23-24, 2025

Role: 5/6 Science Teacher and 6th Grade Advisor

The PD was held by IFSEL founder Nick Haisman-Smith, who framed this training as a means to become familiar with tenets of SEL and to get teachers to hopefully treat the advisory space not as a passive homeroom, but as the primary structure through which students develop a sense of belonging and connection. The idea was to build teacher competency about evidence-based approaches to belonging and SEL practices, and included a variety of different activities we could bring to our own advisory spaces and conduct with our student populations.

My big takeaways from this training were that as an advisor to 6th graders, I should keep a few main goals at the forefront, namely, establishing trust with students and fostering trust in each other, creating predictable routines, encouraging them to find and use their voice, reducing fear of judgment or negativity, and building a sense of cohesion within the group.

I took and employed some of the strategies from this PD with this year's advisory, and in retrospect I feel that this year was my strongest advisory year yet, and the group was sad to see it disband. This year the camaraderie between my advisees, and the relationship they had with me was more profound than ever before, and it helped to create such positive and memorable experiences in major events like Outdoor Ed, but also in the day-to-day.

I've always been a little nervous to get a new crop of students, even if I know them beforehand, but actually after the successes I've had this year, I'm really eager and looking forward to the next advisory group!

If you get a chance to attend this training, I highly recommend it. In addition to learning useful strategies about how to use your advisory space, the training staff were super helpful and cordial, and remain in touch with you if you have any questions or need any help with the lessons or techniques.

https://www.instituteforsel.net/sel-workshops/advisory-workshops