The Daily SEL Leader
A Guided Journal
Social-emotional learning is one of the hottest education topics today. Most of the focus, however, has been at the student level. The truth is that school leaders can’t implement social-emotional learning effectively if they don’t deeply understand it for themselves.
A deeper, renewed self-awareness and understanding of your own and others’ emotional needs is the key to promoting social-emotional learning across your school. Exploring and mastering core social and emotional competencies a little at a time with the help of this guide fits perfectly with the daily demands of being a school leader, team leader, or classroom leader. Using the core CASEL skills presented in six modules, this guided journal will help you:
- Become more self-aware of what each CASEL skill means for leadership
- Build stronger relationships throughout schools, classrooms, and communities
- Increase credibility and approachability
- Engage stakeholders confidently
Because human growth and leadership go hand in hand, meeting students, teachers, and colleagues where they are at emotionally will begin a ripple effect and leave a lasting impact on your learning community. To do that, however, you must first focus on developing your own SEL skills.
Free resources
Podcast: Leading SEL by Modeling It With James Bailey & Randy Weiner
In this Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast episode, The Daily SEL Leader authors discuss how social-emotional learning is personal work, and school leaders have to be willing to engage in the work themselves before they can lead others in doing the work.
This easy-to-use and well-researched journal will definitely guide leaders to grow their SEL skills. I am eager to begin using The Daily SEL Leader. Leaders who use it are going to be inspired to learn more about SEL, which will positively affect their relationships with students, staff, the community and, most importantly, themselves. I can't wait to see the impact!
As the importance of everyday Social Emotional Learning is being understood by more educational stakeholders, we are finding that adults need the tools to practice social and emotional competencies in order to model them in their classrooms and with students. The authors have developed a wonderful resource for educators to use that provides them with real world examples and practices that will accelerate the adoption of these crucial skills. I highly recommend this book for educators who want to advance their practices of social and emotional competencies.
Bailey and Weiner have gifted educators with a multi-tool guide in The Daily SEL Leader. Readers are supported through a theory of action, inserting SEL inputs within a continuous improvement cycle, provide daily actions for individuals and teams to practice and strengthen their own SEL competencies and a step-by-step instructional manual on exactly how to integrate social emotional learning competencies into everyday spaces with adults and students. This one is bound to be a repeat read by administrators and teachers alike!
I have supported school leaders for over 20 years, and I have struggled to find a meaningful, ongoing, and frankly, efficient, way to both support principals in their own social emotional well-being and to develop their capacity to develop their teams’ social emotional well-being. This is an invaluable tool for just that! With short manageable activities, it guides the school leader through a daily practice of reflection and goal setting that builds not only their personal growth but also their professional capacity for developing the social emotional growth of their team.
The Daily SEL Leader is a comprehensive and practical resource that will guide educational leaders to understand, practice and model SEL skills. This book is written for educators, by educators. It is insightful, functional and will foster impactful leadership.
Social and emotional learning isn’t just for kids. It’s for all. And in particular, it’s for school leaders, for whom a normal day requires confidently and cheerfully meeting the unexpected. Wise leaders know that we are truly only in charge of our own selves, and that we can achieve tremendous personal growth by fine-tuning our social and emotional skills. Bailey and Weiner’s Daily SEL Leader shows the way. As inspiring as it is practical, this is a must-have resource for anyone serious about being a respected, trusted, and cherished educator.
As a busy school principal, I love the accessibility of The Daily SEL Leader. Written in short, easy to digest modules, this book gives me a daily burst of inspiration, grounding me in the core SEL skills that I seek to deepen in my leadership. The focus on reflection and action is key, helping me cultivate these skills in my daily practice.
I love that this is a book and reflection journal all in one! It is easy to follow and highlights the major SEL skills leaders need to move the work with a growth mindset.