Break-Out Session 1.3: Building teacher efficacy through awareness, resilience, and a systematic approach to SEL
Presenters: Quintin Mangano, Amy Parker, Crystal Spain, Melissa Bridgers
District: Nash County Public Schools
Building a strong sense of individual and collective teacher efficacy begins with awareness. What is teacher efficacy and how can we develop it? Can we have strong teacher efficacy without a certain level of personal and professional awareness? When teachers and administrators first examine their own beliefs and behaviors, reflect on them often and prioritize the need to grow, then true change can happen. In this session we will discuss how our staff is using personal and professional development, dialogue and training combined with a structured SEL curriculum, to further advance the learning experiences for our overall school community. We have adopted the Second Step SEL curriculum to teach all K-5 students Skills for Learning, Empathy, Emotional Management, and Problem Solving. These same skills are strongly aligned with the basic tenants required to improve and increase teacher efficacy within a school community. After this session we hope participants will see the value of increasing personal and professional awareness to SEL, and it’s importance in the academic growth and development of not only students in classrooms but in the teaching professionals who are delivering instruction every day.