We see behavior as a form of communication to help us identify possible lagging social emotional learning skills. We teach behavior skills with the same love and compassion as we teach academic skills. We understand students may demonstrate undesirable and unproductive behaviors when they have not yet mastered an important skill. Our goal at HASD is to identify the lagging skills in students’ flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem solving. We provide intervention to meet students at their skill level, building skills in manageable increments. We take a systems approach to aligning social emotional learning supports to ensure all students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to “manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” (CASEL.org) 

Collective Commitments  

• We commit to positive relationship building through focused and intentional communication practices. 
• We commit to intentionally teaching, re-teaching, and providing targeted instruction of the essential social and academic behavior expectations.  
• We commit to using student data to improve programming and student outcomes. 
  • Minor and major behavioral referrals are used as data for problem solving 
  • Universal screening data from the SSIS is used for SEL lesson development 
  • Individual academic and social behavior plans are monitored 
• We commit to celebrating success with individual students, classrooms, grade levels, and school wide events. Celebrations are:  
  • Learning opportunities to practice and celebrate SEL skills  
  • For ALL students and include ALL students  
  • Important community building opportunities  
  • Scheduled regularly and intermittently  
• We commit to using the CASEL framework to guide our work.  

Please reach out to your child’s building SEL coach for more detailed information. 

We believe “that if kids could do well they would do well. In other words, if the kid had the skills to exhibit adaptive behavior, he wouldn’t be exhibiting challenging behavior. That’s because doing well is always preferable to not doing well.” from: Dr. Ross Green, livesinthebalance.org