The case study is about Franklin Elementary school’s incredible SEL journey. Franklin is a participant in the BSWSEL pilot and is currently a P-7 school. This public school will become a P-8 school in Fall 2023. Located in a predominantly Latinx community in Newark, the school serves about 700 students, including significant populations of differently-abled students (33%), English Language Learners (33%), and economically disadvantaged students (95%).

What deepened Franklin Elementary School’s commitment to SEL?

Chapter I: Embracing the Whole Child outlines Franklin's start story with SEL. With a principal transition and other staff changes on the horizon in 2018, and drawing from the lessons learned from a district inclusion pilot, the leadership believed that SEL could help strengthen behavioral support, meet the needs of different student groups, reinforce the focus on the whole child, and nurture the positive “family feeling” Franklin was known for.

What did Franklin’s four-year SEL journey look like?

Chapter II: Learning the Language of SEL discusses how Franklin’s SEL initiative struck deep roots despite the COVID pandemic. Franklin participated in the SSLE initiative from 2018 to 2020 and the BSWSEL pilot from 2020 to 2022. The school received a grant and coaching support to build its capacity to integrate SEL across the school. Drawing on interviews with administrators, staff, family members, and students we reconstruct the school's rich SEL journey.

What were the lessons learned from the Building School-Wide SEL pilot?

Chapter III: Lessons from the BSWSEL Pilot summarizes the progress made by the five BSWSEL pilot schools despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic. We also present national highlights of SEL practice around the United States. Due to discontinuities in data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this publication preceding the administration of the 2022 state assessment, we will publish an addendum to this case study summarizing 

state assessment data as well as other school data in August of this year.