Bell Elementary School counselor Lori Fisher will speak via livestream to a nationwide audience of educators Tuesday evening, highlighting the work she has done with Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in the Windsor Central School District.
Fisher will be featured in the Second Step Program’s Educator Spotlight Series. Second Step generates SEL programming and has community of 10,000 educators. Only one per month is invited to share their SEL expertise.
“I am excited to share ideas with other SEL educators and give back to a group that has helped improve my practice,” said Fisher.
She will speak about how she became a Second Step educator and what the one thing she and her colleagues are doing now to support students’ social-emotional learning of which she is most proud.
“Second Step has had strong positive effects across all Three of our elementary schools. Our students are learning how to identify their feelings, calm down strong emotions, and effectively solve social problems. Students are developing a deeper understanding of empathy, kindness, and compassion making our buildings more inviting, accepting, and welcoming,” said Fisher.
According to Second Step, research links evidence-based SEL to positive outcomes such as increased social-emotional skills, improved attitudes about self, others, and school, prosocial classroom behavior, and increased academic achievement.
“When students feel accepted, understood, and cared for they will do their best learning and achieve at high levels. In addition, the social emotional skills we are teaching are essential lifelong skills that will help our students be future ready,” said Fisher.
“I know that they value her input and use her knowledge to make improvements to their program, which impacts SEL programming for children nation-wide,” said Windsor CSD school psychologist Magdalena Ostrowski-Hilton.
Second Step Social Emotional Lessons are co-taught by school counselors and homeroom teachers in all three Windsor Elementary Schools (grades K-5). They teach four units across all grade levels: Growth Mindset and Goal Setting, Emotion Management, Empathy and Kindness, and Problem Solving.
You can watch Fisher’s livestream Tuesday, January 17th at 4:30 using the following links: