Missouri River Educational Cooperative Foundation
Report date
February 2020
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Serving as North Dakota’s liaison to the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) Collaborating States Initiative has been instrumental in our team’s progress in advancing the development of a culturally responsive and replicable social-emotional learning framework and delivery mechanisms through a programmatic and cross-sector approach. In addition to access to a robust network of similarly-tasked practitioners, monthly technical assistance meetings, a semi-annual regional meeting and an annual meeting our CASEL liaison provides meaningful feedback and assists us in staying accountable for the purpose of advancing the work. A specific targeted assistance award through CASEL and the National Governor's Association has also provided a unique opportunity to engage in a community of practice exploring policy levers and barriers in terms of creating education to workforce pathways through SEL skills for the future. Our team has also been afforded a seat on the North Dakota team in the national community of practice exploring SEL and school safety.
Key lessons learned
Our team learned many lessons throughout the course of the first year of the learning journey. Most notably, we learned the vastly varrying percieved needs of ND schools with regards to systemic implementaiton of SEL as much of our time has been spent in the needs assessment phase of our continuous improvement cycle. Additionally, in our quest to access tools for the purpose of program evaluation, we have found that very few, if any exist. Finally, while still deeply engaged in the process of planning and implementing, our team is getting better at packaging and providing a base service and adding customized layers of support based on identified school need just as we assist our schools in doing for their educators and students.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Collaboration has been integral in attempting to create reasonable, pracitcal and doable solutions for ND schools. The MREC Foundation has worked with national partners CASEL and the Center to Improve SEL, fellow ND Regional Education Associations, community partners and member school districts to create the SEL Network to serve as a community of practice for ND schools investigating systemic implementation of SEL for the purpose of filling the prevention gap related to youth behavioral health.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
A key element in our community innovation process is the organic, grass roots nature of problem solving. Likely aligned with resourcefulness, practitioners are those who are actively seeking solutions to problems that their students and their families are experiencing. As facilitators of the ND SEL Network, our role has been to create the conditions for collaborative problem-solving, co-construction of ideas and potential solutions. Noteable pieces of this facilitation include, 1) conveening Network members and 2) Compiling resources for review and easy access.
Understanding the problem
The opportunity to share systemic implementaiton of SEL with ND schools and community partners alike has reinforced the need for a continuum of supports availalbe for students in schools. One strategy, practice, program, or service will not meet the needs of all students and families. However, multiple, yet alligned strategies, practices, programs and services can be levereged to meet more needs.
If you could do it all over again...
One peice of advice we would give ourselves if we were to start this work all over is to hire an external evaluator more immediately. Our evaluation assistance, a recent addition, has assisted us in explicitly connecting the ND Multi-Tier System of Supports continuous improvement cycle to our work along with establishing a logic model and the start of a project plan so we can demonstrate our thinking and masure our progress toward expected outcomes more effeciently and effectively. Because of this experience, we have embedded our program evaluation into SEL Network in order to advance the work of engaged schools.
One last thought
The innovations and continuous improvement cycle that our organization subscribes to includes: Needs Assessment, Planning, Implementation, Evaluation that in turn informes needs assessment. The pacing of our year 1 work was primarliy aligned with the needs assessment and planning phase of our continuous improvement cycle. As a resourceful organization, leveraging personal professional connections and internal resources including human capital and complimentary funding sources supporting complimenary work, we did not expend the funds at an anticipated rate in year 1. The SEL Network was launched Jan 23, 2020 which initiated the Implementation phase in which the most financial support will be required in order to facilitate the state-wide community of practice.