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An Overview of How to Implement SEEL

SEEL involves a comprehensive process of engagement, explicit teaching and meaningful interaction. The methods can be learned in a variety of ways, which include studying this Web site and using the SEEL teacher resources.

The optimum way is through professional development--a process that is as engaging as the SEEL instruction.

Professional Development Opportunities

In the SEEL professional development process, participants collaboratively explore how the SEEL content and strategies can contribute to achieving their literacy goals in creative and gratifying ways. The SEEL professional development is delivered through

• professional development workshops,
• in-class demonstrations and co-teaching,
• lesson study, and
• weekly peer team meetings.

For teachers located a distance from the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, where the SEEL team is  based, there are alternatives including access to online databases of SEEL activities and lesson strategies.

Professional Development Workshops

Workshops include the following:

1. Teachers learn the rationale for SEEL: how playful practice, meaning-making activities, and socially constructed conversations contribute to successful development of children's literacy skills via the comprehensive SEEL  curriculum.

2. Lesson rehearsal  demonstrates explicit but playful practice of SEEL content (e.g., phonological awareness, print-related letter knowledge, vocabulary, comprehension), followed by opportunities for guided practice of the SEEL teaching methods.

3. Participants are exposed to co-planning and co-teaching playful activities and unit plans (weekly and monthly), which address particular curricular goals and individual student needs through the use of appealing curricular themes. As they participate in collaborative co-planning,  teachers strengthen their capacity to brainstorm and reflect on possibilities.

4. Teachers learn to access the SEEL resource database, which provides both complete and “seed” lessons for target skills in the SEEL curriculum. Teachers are encouraged to apply these lessons as they learn SEEL methods and principles. They will soon find themselves collaborating in their own teams to develop lessons for target skills based on their own ideas and their students' interests.

In-Class Demonstrations and Co-Teaching

SEEL project staff are willing to do demonstration teaching in the classrooms of interested teachers. A major focus of the project will be to actually implement developed lessons. This will include the activities described below.

• SEEL staff will model implementation of the instruction and discuss implementation strategies with teachers.
• SEEL staff will support teachers in monitoring student progress and in making decisions about which strategies to use and when to transition to new activities.
• Teachers will learn through modeling from SEEL staff how to expose children to frequent, salient opportunities to notice and use the literacy target skills.
• Teachers will learn to respond to children's inputs and to structure participation to provide children with highly interactive practice opportunities.
• Following the demonstration, team members will participate in a debriefing session during which they will discuss the observed strategy, suggest alternatives, and evaluate progress.

Collaboration for Excellence

Lesson Study
Lesson study is a process in which teachers collaboratively plan a SEEL lesson and select one teacher on their team to teach it. The team observes (and sometimes videotapes) the lesson, and then they review it and provide feedback. Based on the review and feedback, the team revises the SEEL lesson, and another teacher implements it in his/her classroom. This process is considered to be completed when each of the teachers on the team has had an opportunity to implement the revised lesson.

Peer Team Meetings
Participants operate as part of a peer team in which teachers work and plan together, visit and review classrooms, and participate in discussions and decision making procedures (Hord, 2004). Peer team meetings allow participating teachers to collaborate on implementing the SEEL framework, which includes consistency of strategy use, transfer of skills, and increase in focused instruction for students (Beck & Dennis, 1997; Ehren, 2000; Simon, 1995). During these meetings teachers and SEEL project staff share integrated lesson/activity plans, discuss adaptations, and provide mutual support in making instructional decisions based on assessment data.

School-wide Collaboration
The early childhood teacher at the school becomes the SEEL coordinating teacher for an expanded team made up of professionals and paraprofessionals. The intent is to plan and coordinate the application of SEEL principles throughout the services matrix for each student. Support for this coordination is available from SEEL staff as a part of professional development and as a follow-up extension in subsequent years of SEEL implementation.

Appreciative Inquiry - Building on Strengths to Achieve Excellence

Moving from Problem-based to Strength-based Professional Development

While traditional education is based on solving problems--diagnose-prescribe-treat-evaluate--SEEL instruction begins with a positive focus on strengths and on the power of involvement. To promote this focus, professional development incorporates appreciative inquiry (AI) methodology. The AI methodology activates teachers’ interests and connects relevant interests to their core of positive values, beliefs, experiences and attitudes, motivating them to improve their practice. AI draws on proven adult education methods that engage participants intellectually in the subject matter (Learning First Alliance, 2000), situate learning in authentic contexts (Putnam & Borko, 2000), and provide opportunities for engaging in solving problems collaboratively and practicing specific skills (Elmore, 2002).

Building on the Collective Strength of the Collaborators

The needed participant reflection, context-embedded instruction, and planning/ problem solving opportunities occur as participants collaboratively refine unit and lesson plans. As they do this, participants following the AI approach identify and build on their positive experiences, strengths, and capacities (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005).

The AI process  takes participants through the following steps:

1. Discover what participants value, appreciate, or believe about early literacy instruction

2. Dream about what they consider to be an ideal early literacy program

3. Design/co-construct the components of that dream utilizing the SEEL content: e.g., by considering sample plans, filling out a unit planning framework, selecting from the array of contexts, and constructing activity plans that fit well with the unit theme. Collaborative designing facilitates the development of an effectively functioning educational team. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts

4. Develop an action plan for achieving the goal or dream, with guidance/support from literacy coaches and research-based curricular resources

In addition to situating the experience in classroom contexts, such a plan encourages use of an array of SEEL contexts and activities and provides opportunities to share results and refine the planning based on implementation experience. The AI action plan is a formative process with iterative steps enabling continuous refinement of practice.