IFSEL’s Whole Community Approach embeds SEL into all aspects of teaching, learning, school-wide culture, and family engagement.

Aligned with CASEL’s Core Competencies to ensure research-based, comprehensive SEL integration
Designed for sustainable implementation across K–12 districts and schools
Created by a team of educators with 80+ years of combined SEL leadership and teaching experience in diverse school settings
Grounded in the understanding that Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) are deeply interconnected
Evidence-led, drawing on over 15 years of experience supporting SEL implementation in hundreds of schools worldwide—including public school districts, independent schools, charter schools, and international schools.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

SEL is the foundation for restorative practices, healing, and justice. SEL must be rooted in equity. This includes:

Adults actively working to understand power structures, their own identities and biases, and how these may impact social interactions.
Bringing this evolving awareness to teaching practices.
Pedagogy that supports student self-, social, and cultural awareness relating to identity, bias, power, and privilege.
Inclusive decision-making and systems that elevate and include all voices.
High-quality education for all students, including culturally relevant content.

Whole Community Approach

SEL thrives when it’s integrated into all parts of the community.

IFSEL’s Whole Community Approach to equity-rooted SEL starts with developing student and adult skills and mindsets through explicit instruction, educator practices and responsive opportunities. An SEL lens on schoolwide systems and connections with home ensures that SEL is sustainable and unique to the culture of the school.

Student Skills & Mindsets

Abundant evidence illustrates that student SEL skills and mindsets must be taught intentionally throughout a young person’s education.
Creative, experiential, joyful, and evidence-led SEL Curriculum, engages students to activate and deepen their SEL competencies from K-12th Grade, and helps build a common language for SEL.
Curriculum resources are available organized by a range of different SEL Frameworks

Educator Practices

“How” we teach for SEL is as important as the “What.”
Core Educator Practices empower educators to integrate and activate SEL in all teaching and learning moments, in every classroom and subject, for every student.

School-Wide Systems

Opportunities for Integrating SEL:

School Schedule
Rituals & Transitions
Lunch
Discipline, Restorative Justice
Extra Curricular / Clubs
Recess
School Trips

Assemblies & Community Meetings
Service Learning
Bus, Before & After Care
Award Ceremonies
Digital Literacy
and many more...

Connections to Home

Including Parents and Caregivers in the sustained implementation of SEL is essential.
Building parents and caregivers’ understanding of SEL and the tools and skills their children are learning in school is important to build a common language and consistency between home and school.
Nurturing the social and emotional wellbeing of parents and caregivers, their support for one another, and their connection to school is critical to improve community-wide SEL.

Responsive Opportunities

The ways in which individuals and communities activate SEL in our responses depends on the presence and vibrancy of the other four elements of IFSEL’s Whole Community Approach.
Informal or unstructured moments in school communities often make or break a culture of care and SEL.
IFSEL supports all adults to bring the SEL lens to their responses - from the small, moment-to-moment interactions with students in the hallway; to the major events that impact the whole-community.
SEL-aligned responsiveness models emotionally healthy decision making for students, and allows community values and beliefs to come to life.