The Rise of SEL: How Educator PD is Evolving Beyond Google Tools in 2023

The most popular topics on Alludo in 2023 highlight two major trends in education - a continued reliance on Google tools along with an emerging prioritization of social-emotional learning (SEL) and educator wellness. While Google applications like Classroom, Docs, and Slides topped the list as expected, a suite of SEL-focused topics also ranked highly, indicating these issues have become more prominent. This highlights how educators are recognizing the importance of not just academic skills, but the whole child.

Follow along with clickable PDF.

Positive Outcomes for Educators

Google Docs

1. Time savings - Many of the activities like templates, voice typing, and collaboration tools can save educators time in creating documents and assignments. This gives them more time to focus on instruction and interacting with students.
2. Increased student engagement - Activities like HyperDocs, choice boards, and group writing projects provide interactive formats that promote critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration amongst students. This leads to greater engagement and motivation.
3. Enhanced classroom dynamic - With real-time collaboration, easy sharing, and multimedia integration, Docs helps create a more modern, tech-integrated classroom environment. Activities bring learning to life for digital native students. The teacher also positions themselves as a "guide on the side" facilitating active learning.

Google Sheets

1. Streamline workflows and simplify data management by learning how to effectively utilize Sheets for tracking student progress, grading assignments, collecting survey responses, organizing lesson plans, and more.
2. Increase student engagement by creating interactive activities, self-grading quizzes, and visually appealing materials in Sheets that promote analysis and collaboration.
3. Gain confidence navigating Sheets through step-by-step video tutorials, learning how to format, filter, sort data, use pivot tables and charts, apply conditional formatting rules, and customize Sheets to their specific needs. This allows educators to maximize the versatility of this cloud-based software for their classrooms

Intro to SEL

1. Gain strategies to cultivate five core SEL competencies in students: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. This will allow educators to integrate SEL skills across subjects and environments.
2. Learn how to implement schoolwide SEL initiatives that spur systemic change through frameworks like the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). This provides benchmarking and tracking of students' SEL development.
3. Align lessons with evidence-based SEL benchmarks and state standards. This ensures SEL skills are being developed in accordance with best practices and policies.

Google Slides

1. More engaging and interactive lessons - By learning to add features like animations, transitions, audio, video, and links, educators can create more visually appealing and interactive presentations and activities for students. This leads to increased student engagement and retention.
2. Flipped classroom capabilities - Mastering tools like recording slide-based video lectures enables educators to "flip" their classrooms more easily. This allows more in-person time for rich discussion, collaboration, and active learning.
3. Time savings - Learning hacks and tricks like turning PDFs into editable worksheets can save teachers time in developing materials. Building templates and frameworks they can reuse also boosts efficiency.

Google Drive

1. Streamlined Workflows - Educators can create templates, organize files intuitively with colors/symbols, use priority suggestions and workspaces to quickly access relevant files, and facilitate seamless collaboration. This saves time spent searching for files.
2. Enhanced Lesson Planning - With robust search capabilities and the ability to easily duplicate, convert, and share files, educators can build repositories of lesson plans, assignments, and resources that can be continually refined.  
3. Improved Student Collaboration - Students can submit assignments directly into shared Drive folders, allowing educators to easily collect and grade work. Shared drives also enable collaborative student projects with centralized hubs containing all relevant files and materials.

Google Classroom

1. Streamlined workflow - Classroom simplifies creating, distributing, and grading assignments. Features like copying classes, scheduling assignments, and importing quiz grades save teachers time. This allows educators to focus more on connecting with students.
2. Enhanced differentiation - Classroom makes differentiating instruction easy through individualized assignments. Teachers can assign students different activities tailored to their skills and interests.
3. Improved feedback - Tools like comment banks, audio/video comments with Screencastify, and originality reports facilitate rich, multimedia feedback. Teachers can provide actionable feedback faster to help students improve.

Wellness

1. Increased awareness of personal signs of stress and burnout, as well as strategies to implement self-care, set boundaries, and improve work-life balance. This can lead to improved health, happiness, and ability to support students.
2. Knowledge of research-backed wellness practices, tools, and activities that can be integrated into daily life and shared with colleagues. Exploring resources like the Yoga Ed toolkit equips educators with sustainable ways to cultivate personal and collective wellbeing.
3. Deeper understanding of the critical role educator wellness plays in creating equitable, supportive learning environments where all students can thrive. Examining CASEL's roadmap for reopening schools post-pandemic provides a framework to prioritize emotional safety, heal relationships, and sustain progress.

SEL in the Classroom and Support

1. Gain practical strategies and activities to integrate SEL into their classroom and teaching practice. The topic offers a wide variety of concrete ideas educators can directly apply, from mindfulness practices to fostering student empathy. Implementing these has the potential to enhance student wellbeing, behavior, and academic performance.
2. Develop a deeper understanding of social-emotional learning and its importance. By engaging with the theory, research, and examples provided throughout the topic, educators can appreciate how fundamental SEL is for development and success. This awareness can strengthen their commitment to SEL.
3. Reflect on their role in supporting student social-emotional growth. Several activities prompt self-reflection on areas like modeling empathy, creating a safe classroom climate, and monitoring student progress. This reflection can help educators understand their own influence and identify personal growth opportunities.

Google Gmail

1. Increased productivity and efficiency - By learning how to better organize their inbox, create filters and labels, use canned responses and schedule emails, educators can save a significant amount of time managing communications. This allows them to focus more time on teaching and lesson planning.
2. Improved communication practices - The training covers email etiquette topics like using BCC and avoiding overuse of Reply All. Implementing best practices for professional communication ensures educators come across as more polished.
3. Enhanced technical skills - Completing hands-on activities around Gmail features builds educators' capabilities with technology. As schools continue adopting more digital tools, developing these skills is valuable for teachers. Specifically, learning how to translate emails could enable better communication with diverse families.

Google Calendar

1. Streamlined scheduling and time management. By using features like calendar view, recurring events, reminders, and appointment slots, educators can optimize their schedules, reduce double-booking errors, and stay on top of meetings and deadlines. This saves time and reduces stress.
2. Improved collaboration and communication. Calendar sharing allows educators to coordinate schedules, meetings, and events with colleagues, parents, and administrators. Features like appointment schedules, resource calendars, and calendar integrations enable frictionless scheduling. 
3. Enhanced lesson planning and organization. Calendar helps educators neatly organize lessons, track school events, set parent-teacher conference times, and categorize tasks. This level of organization boosts productivity and order. Educators have the tools to plan smarter, not harder.

Self-Care for Wellness

1. Develop a personalized self-care regimen to implement on a regular basis, leading to reduced stress, better work-life balance, and prevention of burnout.
2. Gain skills to cope with trauma, adversity, and demanding situations in the classroom, resulting in increased resilience, patience, and effectiveness as an educator. 
3. Enhance overall health and wellbeing through activities like scheduling dedicated wellness time, setting boundaries, and nurturing relationships, boosting mood, energy, and ability to thrive in the long run.

PBIS and MTSS Fundamentals

1. Gain a deeper understanding of the PBIS framework for supporting positive student behavior through a 3-tiered system of universal, targeted, and intensive interventions. This allows teachers to create consistent, schoolwide expectations while also providing individualized supports.
2. Learn how MTSS provides an overarching structure to address students' academic, behavioral, social-emotional, and attendance needs through timely, data-driven interventions. This enables a proactive, differentiated approach to student support.  
3. Discover a wealth of practical classroom resources, tools and strategies related to PBIS and MTSS implementation. Applying this knowledge empowers teachers to play an integral role in improving school climate and student outcomes.

Google Search

1. Learn optimized search techniques to more efficiently find authoritative, credible information and resources for lesson planning and researching education policies. By going beyond just "Googling it," educators can save time and better target niche sites and sources.
2. Gain inside knowledge of how Google ranks pages and search results. Understanding the algorithms that determine top rankings can help educators better evaluate the usefulness and relevance of the information they find.
3. Become more search savvy in navigating the digital world. As searching is a core life skill today, the latest search strategies from Alludo empower educators with knowledge applicable both in and out of the classroom. This supports their own professional and personal growth.

Microsoft Word

1. Save Time and Increase Efficiency - By mastering Word's features like styles, templates, and mail merge, educators can greatly reduce the time spent on administrative tasks like creating lesson plans, newsletters, and bulk customized communications. This frees up time for lesson planning and student engagement.
2. Boost Student Engagement - With tools like fillable forms, choice boards, collaborative editing, and audio transcription, educators can create more interactive and personalized learning activities that get students more excited and invested. 
3. Enhance Accessibility and Inclusion - Utilizing Word's accessibility checker, translation tools, and audio/visual features allows educators to make content usable for all learning abilities and languages. They can reach more students by removing barriers.

Good Health Practices

1. Learn research-backed techniques to manage stress, cultivate mindfulness, and prevent burnout. This includes simple self-care rituals to incorporate into their routine to boost energy and happiness.
2. Gain strategies to champion wellbeing across the entire school community, through things like SEL lessons and staff workshops. This allows them to spread more joy and resilience campus-wide.  
3. Access free resources like self-care practices, lesson plans, videos, guided meditations and more from organizations like Breathe For Change. This equips educators with tools to maintain peak performance and rediscover their passion for teaching.

Understanding English Language Development

1. Gaining research-based strategies and techniques to provide targeted instruction to help English Learners develop critical English language skills. The training covers best practices for both designated and integrated ELD instruction.
2. Understanding the unique needs of Long-Term English Learners and learning how to better support their language development needs in the classroom.
3. Learning about California's English Language Proficiency Assessments (ELPAC) to understand these high-stakes tests and acquire strategies to prepare English Learners to demonstrate their abilities on the ELPAC.

Assessments

1. Educators will gain a deeper understanding of the different types of assessments, including formative, summative, interim, and performance-based assessments. This will allow them to utilize a wider variety of assessment strategies to better evaluate student learning.
2. Educators will learn new methods for checking student understanding and gauging learning in real-time through formative assessment strategies. This will enable them to adjust their teaching more effectively during a lesson.
3. Educators will discover how to use assessment data, including from interim and summative assessments, to identify knowledge gaps and target areas for reteaching. This data-driven approach will lead to more personalized and impactful instruction.

Google Docs

1. Improved communication and collaboration with students, parents, and staff who speak other languages. By removing language barriers, educators can more clearly convey ideas, expectations, feedback, etc. 
2. Time savings from no longer relying on inaccurate tools like Google Translate or playing charades. Translating Google Docs provides fast, seamless translations that retain original formatting and meaning.
3. Peace of mind knowing sensitive information remains secure. The training allows educators to share translated copies of documents while restricting access as needed. This enables better communication without compromising privacy.

Common Sense Media

1. Gain access to award-winning, standards-aligned digital citizenship curriculum and resources to teach students critical skills. The lessons and resources equip educators to handle timely issues like social media drama, sexting situations, privacy breaches, and digital addiction.
2. Connect with a community of over 100,000 educators worldwide to share ideas and best practices for promoting safe, ethical and empowered technology use in the classroom through Facebook groups and events like the annual Digital Citizenship Week.  
3. Become a Common Sense Certified Educator by completing training and teaching digital citizenship lessons. This demonstrates a commitment to preparing students with 21st century citizenship skills and can support school-wide digital citizenship initiatives.

Professional Learning Communities and Networks

1. Improved collaboration and community. Educators build connections with colleagues both within and outside their school through in-person and virtual networking and sharing of ideas and resources. This leads to less isolation and more support.
2. Enhanced teaching practices. By collaborating, educators share best practices, feedback, and new ideas that can directly inform and improve classroom instruction. Staying current through PLNs also exposes educators to the latest research and innovations.
3. Increased leadership skills. Educators take initiative in their own learning and development. Presenting at conferences, blogging, leading PD sessions, and other leadership activities build confidence and allow educators to inspire change.

Chromebook

1. Save time and increase efficiency with Chromebook shortcuts and features. By learning keyboard shortcuts, cloud integration, accessibility options, and other time-saving tricks, educators can streamline everyday tasks like grading, lesson planning, and administrative work. This frees up more time to focus on teaching students.
2. Feel empowered to use Chromebooks confidently in the classroom. The hands-on activities allow educators to practice real-world Chromebook skills so they can capably leverage the devices for lessons, assignments, and more. This boosts overall comfort and confidence using the technology.
3. Create a more innovative, inclusive learning environment. Mastering Chromebook accessibility features and options allows educators to better support students with special needs. And overall Chromebook familiarity helps introduce new, exciting learning opportunities through technology. This ultimately helps unlock every student's potential.

Chrome

1. Save time and be more organized. Educators will learn how to set up customized start pages, organize bookmarks and tabs efficiently, and leverage tab grouping and pinning for faster access. This helps them be more organized and save precious time.
2. Support diverse learning abilities. The training covers built-in accessibility features like the screen reader. Knowing how to enable these will allow educators to better support students with diverse learning needs.
3. Facilitate digital classrooms. Mastering Chrome classroom tools like Incognito browsing, extensions, syncing across devices, and Google apps integration facilitates seamless online teaching, testing, and grading. This unlocks Chrome's immense potential for digital instruction.

Google Forms

1. Streamlined assessment creation and grading. Educators can create self-grading quizzes and surveys that provide instant feedback to students and automatically organize responses for the teacher. This saves time grading assignments.
2. Differentiated instruction. Using features like branching logic and add-ons, teachers can customize forms to provide personalized learning paths and activities based on student needs and performance.
3. Enhanced student engagement. By embedding rich media like images, videos, and audio recording into forms, educators make activities more interactive and engaging for today's digital learners. Students can demonstrate understanding in creative ways.

Final Word

The prevalence of Google tools and SEL topics shows professional development is supporting both educational technology and student wellbeing. While Google applications help create engaging digital classrooms, SEL topics build critical life skills for students and prevent educator burnout. By upskilling teachers in both areas, Alludo is equipping them to nurture healthier, more empowered learners in the digital age. As schools continue to evolve, it's promising to see this dual focus emerge to educate both the minds and hearts of students. With teachers developing their competencies in both technology integration and SEL, they can create supportive environments where all students have the tools and skills to thrive.