Integrating SEL in Early Childhood Education: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Integrating Social-emotional Learning:
Getting to the Heart of the Matter
Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, Ph.D. &
Mayra Porrata, M.Ed.
Division of Early Childhood - International Conference
Atlanta, GA
October 8, 2015
© 2015 Mayra Porrata and Kristie Pretti-Frontczak. All rights reserved.

PART 1:
The case for SEL and SE
skills for teachers, parents
& caregivers.
PRESENTED BY:
Mayra Porrata
PART 2:
Introduction to the
ESSENCE GLOSSARY &
example of 1 application for
integrating SEL.
PRESENTED BY:
Kristie Pretti-Frontczak
Session Outline
PART 3:
Working with the
“real” common core to
promote “integration”
and wholeness
“Schools are producing test takers, while life requires thinkers and connectors.
Imagine if school performance gave equal weight to developing intelligence of the heart
as it does to book smarts…”
Project Happiness, 2014

About Mayra
- College
- Corporate career
- Mom
- Graduate school
- Caregiver
- Educator (social marketing,
marketing, community
health education & applied
mindfulness)
- Social entrepreneur
- Then, I met Kristie! 

The Case for SEL
- Our Children, Ourselves
(our common broken-heartedness)
- We have the data,
but where is our humanity?
- “What is school for?” (Seth Godin)

Leading by Example
“Between stimulus and response
there is a space. In that space is our
power to choose our response. In
our response lies our growth and
our freedom.”
Viktor E. Frankl

5 Leadership* Practices
Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Situational awareness
Social awareness
Spirituality
* For all human beings
Adapted from a B2K Solutions℠, Ltd. blog series onWhy Professional Development May be
Failing Our Teachers (and it isn’t why you think)

Self-awareness

Self-regulation

Situational awareness

Social awareness

Spirituality

STRETCH BREAK 

About Kristie
- College
-Mike
-More college
-Early Interventionist
-Higher education track
-Speaker
- Author
-“Mid-life crisis”
-Social entrepreneur (B2K)
-Then, I met Mayra 
-[R]evolutionary
-“Scoper”

Ready SELF to teach
1. Teach before the peak
2. Sit beside and guide
3. Manage your own behaviors not others’
4. Say what you mean, mean what you say
5. Be present, be mindful, be in the flow

© 2015 Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, B2K SolutionsSM, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Image based upon the work of Barbara Avila, Synergy Autism Center

Ready CHILD to learn
1. Connect
2. Validate
3. Listen
4. Restate
Adapted from “No Drama
Discipline” by Siegel and
Payne Bryson

The “Real” Common Core:
What to Teach

HOW to teach
• Focus on integration and wholeness
Integrate left and right brain
Integrate upstairs brain and downstairs brain
Integrate memory
Integrate the many parts of myself
Integrate self and others
From “Whole-Brain Child” by Siegel and Payne Bryson
http://content.randomhouse.com/assets/9780553907254/pdfs/Sie
g_refrigerator_sheet.pdf

“Integration” Strategy
• Books that address SEL
• Aligned with Glossary attributes
• Aligned to integration strategies
• Create opportunities for retelling
– integrating memory; integrating left and right brain
• Create opportunities to pay attention to sensations,
images, feelings, and thoughts within them and others
– integrating the many parts of myself; integrating self and
other
• Create rewarding interactions
– integrating self and other

Demonstration BDGA
• Ask Questions: open-ended, interesting,
sequential, variety
• Give Directives: encourages curiosity,
persistence, exploration
• Self-Talk: describes what you are thinking,
feeling, hypothesizing, wondering, doing

Small Group Activity

Directions
• Find a friend
• Pick a book that addresses SEL or download Soul Friends
• Pick 1-3 attributes (e.g., self-regulation, hope, zest)
• Generate a question, a directive, or an example of self-
talk to create an opportunity to teach the attribute while
reading the story
• Share with another friend or two, in terms of how you will
“amplify” what you are learning
http://mindfuleducationsolutions.com click on RESOURCES to download the
following:
• Free digital copy of Soul Friends
• BOOST for Soul Friends

Our Vision…

In Closing…
“I mean, the opportunity that we now have to
reimagine everything, to reimagine work, to
think of it as productive not only of things, but
of well-being, to think of governance in a
different way, to think of education in a different
way. What an opportunity, what a time to be
alive. We’re not only being, but we’re non-being
and becoming.”
~ Grace Lee Boggs
June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015

THANK YOU
for the work you do!
From: Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, Ph.D. &
Mayra Porrata, M.Ed.

Integrating SEL in Early Childhood Education: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

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