Supporting Youth by Combining Workforce Skills and SEL with Ruth Cross and Andrew Tucker from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)

On this episode of “In Session,” we speak with NCSSLE partners Ruth Cross and Andrew Tucker from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) about supporting youth by combining workforce skills and Social Emotional Learning (SEL), an area of interest among the grantees we serve. This conversation is guided by NCSSLE’s Annie Knowles and Brianna Cunniff.

0:46- Introductions

2:29- What CASEL is and its relationship with NCSSLE

4:48- CASEL's initiative on supporting youth with workforce skills and SEL

7:42- Examples of a skill taught in SEL and career readiness

10:46- Who they are trying to reach with this initiative/ needs being met

14:43- Advice to share with others looking to utilize this approach

21:08- The importance of career awareness among youth

24:20- What's next

25:26- Final takeaways and closing

For all questions or feedback, you can email [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Please note, the contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the U.S. Department of Education, nor does it imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education.

What is In Session?

In Session is an education-centered podcast where we speak with changemakers working towards safe supportive learning environments within their communities, co-hosted by Annie Knowles and Brianna Cunniff at the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments. Our guests include state and local education agencies and their partners - all grant recipients from the Department of Education, using their funding to advance school-based mental health services, support mental health service professionals, and establish trauma recovery and prevention programs. Please note, the contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the U.S. Department of Education, nor does it imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education.

Brianna Cunniff: Hello, and welcome to In Session, a podcast where we speak with change makers working towards safe, supportive learning environments within their communities. Our guests include state and local education agencies and their partners, all grant recipients from the Department of Education, using their funding to advance school-based mental health services, support mental health service professionals, and establish trauma recovery and prevention programs.
I'm Brianna, and this is Annie at the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, and we produce In Session. On this episode of In Session, we speak with NCSSLE Partners, Ruth Cross and Andy Tucker, from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, about supporting youth with workforce skills through social and emotional learning.

Annie Knowles: All right, so thank you so much Ruth and Andy for joining us on this episode of In Session. We're really excited to talk with you all about your work at CASEL and before we get into more specific questions, we want to give both of you an opportunity to introduce yourself.

Ruth Cross: Thank you. Andy, if you don't mind, I'll start. I'm Ruth Cross, I'm an SEL consultant at the CASEL Nonprofit Organization. I'm a former teacher building principal, assistant superintendent, and I joined CASEL in 2007 when I retired from the school district. I'm passionate about all students having the social and emotional skills to be successful in life and that's why I'm excited about this particular podcast.

Andy Tucker: And I'm Andy Tucker. I am the director of policy at CASEL. Thrilled to be here today. Thank you all for inviting Ruth and me to join you. Like Ruth, I've been a lifelong educator as well. I started as a secondary Spanish teacher, then I became a school counselor, was a building and district level administrator. Before I joined CASEL, I was the director of post-Secondary and Workforce Readiness at the Colorado Department of Education. So I have a long history of helping students to really figure out who they are and what they want to do in this world and to develop the skills that they need to be successful citizens and successful humans. So thrilled to talk about this topic today.

Brianna Cunniff: Wonderful. We're so excited to have you both. Thank you for that. If you could just take a minute to explain what CASEL is as well as your roles at the organization and its relationship with NCSSLE and grantees.

Ruth Cross: I'm happy to do that. CASEL is the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. That word collaborative is really important. That's one of our roles with NCSSLE is that we have a partnership. We collaborate with NCSSLE around the environment and the conditions for learning that includes social and emotional learning in our schools. So CASEL has been around for a little over 30 years. It is an organization of educators, researchers, and others who care about effective schools and positive development of children and youth. And that positive in development includes academics, it includes social and emotional growth as well.
As an organization, and we are now a nonprofit organization, we work to advance the science of social and emotional learning through research. We extend the practice by working with districts and schools and we extend our influence with working through state and federal level policies. That's primarily what we do in a nutshell. And my role is an SEL consultant. I work in the practice department and in the policy department. So we try, at CASEL, to make sure that we don't operate in silos and that when there is a significant project in which we're involved, we all have a part in that project. Andy is our director of policy and we're lucky to have him with his background, particularly lucky to have him with his knowledge about workforce development, career and college skills.

Annie Knowles: That sounds great. I definitely see why that collaborative piece is important, like you said. So to go on, I know that we wanted to talk today about this specific initiative that CASEL has on supporting youth with workforce skills and SEL. So I would love Andy maybe if you could talk a little bit more specifically on that initiative.

Andy Tucker: Yeah, I'm happy to. CASEL, for now, for the past couple of years has really been focusing on how social and emotional learning and career and workforce development or career and college readiness. However, whichever terminology you want to use, how they really are one and the same in many ways. I mean, the skills that students learn through social and emotional learning are the same skills that students need in order to be successful in post-secondary education and in the workforce. So we work with our state agency partners largely. Our policy team works largely with our collaborating states initiatives, what we call our CSI, Collaborating States Initiative. We've worked with state agencies to really think about how does the work that they are doing around career and college readiness intersect and where's the coherence with the work they're doing around social and emotional learning. So we've worked with many states to do that.
We've crossed walked our SEL skills with the skills that employers are seeking. We've published numerous briefs around how those skills are one and the same and what employers say they're seeking at this time are the skills that students learn through social and emotional learning. We've facilitated convenings with state education agencies to learn how states are connecting the SEL to their workforce development practices and have helped them to think through that. And ultimately what we're hoping to do is help all students to develop a healthy sense of identity and agency so they can see themselves in careers that are meaningful and have opportunities for advancement and wages that support a successful life and a family. Some examples of states that we've worked with, Pennsylvania, for example, Pennsylvania, now they have Career Ready Pennsylvania and it really culminates in a portrait of a graduate, which I'll talk about a little bit in a little while.
But ultimately they've aligned their SEL skills with their career-ready skills. And they are, everything that they do in the state of Pennsylvania in their K12 system is to create a career-ready students that they lead ready for the next step. And SEL is an integral part in that. Delaware has done similar projects where they have aligned SEL and career and workforce development or career and college readiness, as well as many other initiatives like trauma-informed schools, and a number of other initiatives to really build coherence. So they're all working towards the same goal of preparing kids who are ready for life and have the skills that they need to be successful in the post-second in their post-secondary life.

Annie Knowles: Do you mind really quick, Brianna, before you ask the next question, Andy, could you just give maybe one example of a skill that you find is taught in SEL and in career readiness?

Andy Tucker: Happy to give you a bunch of those. So when you think about it, CASEL has five social and emotional competencies that are part of the CASEL model, which is the most likely adopted model of social and emotional learning in the world. And they are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. So let's take those one at a time. So when you think about somebody who's good in the workforce, I mean those of us that are on this podcast right now, we got to where we are because we have, hopefully, we're creative, we're confident, right? We show flexibility. We have a sense of self-worth, we have a positive attitude. All of those align very nicely with the social and emotional competency of self-awareness. If you are self-aware, you have all of those things. If you can self-manage, you have organizational skills, you have time management, you're detail oriented, you have a strong work ethic.
If you have social awareness, you have the ability to work with people of different backgrounds and cultures or you can respect individual differences. If you have strong relationship skills, you can communicate effectively with others, you can collaborate with others, you can respond to customer needs and resolve conflicts. And finally, if you're a good responsible decision maker, you're honest, you have integrity, you could think critically, you can analyze and solve complex problems. So all of these are things that the workforce and the post-secondary education demands and social and emotional learning competencies and the social emotional learning programming that happens in K12 schools leads to this sort of skill development.

Ruth Cross: And if I might add to that, we encourage these competencies, these skills to be taught in the classrooms and not only in the regular education classroom, but in the CTE classes, the career tech classes, we want all students to be able to thrive. We also encourage students with learning differences to be taught these skills as well. So it's a really wide range of support that is encouraged in districts and schools and at the state level so that all students are not left behind.

Brianna Cunniff: That's amazing. I think it's so important to make that connection for folks to see how the intersection of all these skills are in all facets of your life in the workforce and also interacting with people and furthering your relationships and every facet of your life, seeing how those all connect is so critical for people. So what was the need that you were trying to meet? Who were you trying to reach with this initiative?

Ruth Cross: So as you've heard Andy say, we have been doing a lot of work with state agencies around the policies and the practices that they should support in order for the districts and schools to teach these skills to students. And the why we were doing that, according to a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum, 50% of all current workers will need re-skilling in their occupations in the next five years. We know that to be true, and you all do too because even as individuals in this work, we're looking at the technical skills we need, how to have an appropriate Zoom call that that was something that certainly happened as a result of the pandemic. And we're doing more of that and we're having to look at our technical skills around that. Technology is changing the world of work so quickly for all of us that technical skills are becoming obsolete.
So a company will train their employees around the technical skills of the moment when there's a change. They will also train their employees on those technical skills. We know that that changes quickly, but what we're talking about is how do we encourage the social emotional skills that are durable skills, skills that will last a long time most of your life. If you learn to collaborate and you learn to collaborate well, you will [inaudible 00:12:46], you're doing that. Companies value that when you learn to problem solve, not only as an individual, but when you learn collaborative problem solving, that's an asset to a company.
And so we are talking about SEL programming schools, that includes students learning how to collaborate, how to problem solve, how to communicate, how to resolve conflict. And these are the skills that we know employers are asking for. And we know that because we've researched that and we have been told that, but multiple organizations and industries leaders. So we want our students to graduate with those skills. Now, not only will it prepare them for the world of work, they will be more successful in school if they have these skills, they will also be more successful in post-secondary opportunities.
So we cannot stress more clearly that this is something all of us need, our adults need it to. I've been doing this work since 19, wow, 1990, and I'm still learning to manage my skills better when certain things come up, I am still learning when is it appropriate to speak out and not speak out? I mean, it's something that we live with all of our lives and it helps us become the kind of person that we would like to become. And that's the need. We're meeting helping schools roll out these competencies to prepare students to thrive in the world of work.

Annie Knowles: Absolutely. And also the value in starting it when students and children are younger, just so that it's that much more ingrained or taught. All right. So to continue on, say there are state education agencies out there looking to utilize this approach. What if any advice would you share with them?

Andy Tucker: So I'm happy to give, to respond to your question for both state agents, for state agencies and districts and schools, because this work is vital. And as you said, Annie, this work can start at the earliest of ages and career awareness can happen anytime. I mean, let's think about when you were a small child, how many careers did you know about? You probably knew, I'm guessing, about you probably knew what your mom did. You probably knew what your dad did. You might've known what your grandparents did. You might've known what your neighbor did and your aunt and uncle and maybe you knew about being a firefighter or a professional sports star or a YouTuber, depending on what generation you're from. But we all know about these different, but that's it. Our career awareness began and ended with what was immediately around us. And so beginning the process of helping students to understand what careers are available to them is something that can happen at the earliest of ages.
So a gentleman by the name of Ed Hidalgo, and he was a longtime employee of the Cajon Valley Union School District in San Diego where they began a program called the World of Work. Ed now works across the country to help school districts to really learn how to integrate career development, career awareness strategies combined with social and emotional learning at the elementary level specifically. A lot of people have believed for years that you really don't start this until middle school or even high school, but it is far more impactful when you begin really teaching students the skills that they need and give them the awareness of different career fields from a very, very early age so they can see themselves in a variety of different areas. So vital, vital work there. I think that it's also essential that as students developmentally grow to really help them to engage in career development activities that help add relevancy to their K12 education.
Because so often students don't really know where they're going and don't really know why they're in school and don't know why they're learning the Pythagorean theorem and don't know why they're reading Shakespeare. But if you can help them understand that the skills that they're learning by doing those things are going to help them later in life and introduce them to careers where they might use those skills, they're going to be far, they're going to find more relevancy and it's proven to help with dropout, to reduce dropout rates, to increase graduation rates, et cetera. In secondary schools, you should give all students the opportunity to engage in real life work-based learning opportunities, including mentorships and internships, apprenticeships, industry-sponsored projects, and many other types of work-based learning. Career connected learning is a very common term these days and where many schools are moving. It's important to intentionally connect all SEL activities to the skills that students are developing to show the connection between SEL and the work that they're doing in SEL, and what they're learning in SEL, and how that's going to serve them well in their career and college life.
Finally, I think it's really, really important for schools, districts, even state agencies to build really strong relationships with local employers and higher education officials who can speak to the importance of this skill development, of the skills that they're learning. And that will also, if you build those relationships with the employers and the higher education officials, it will provide more opportunities for students to build these skills in real work in academic environments. So these employers and higher education officials will be champions of SEL in your communities because they'll recognize with your help of course, that the students are coming to them with these exceptions, with these great skills because they have engaged in strong SEL programming throughout their K12 education. As mentioned earlier, especially after the great recession, after the pandemic, workforce development also is a universally accepted priority for policymakers, school personnel and others.
So because of that, SEL, let's be honest, SEL right now is under the microscope a little bit and has been brought into become somewhat politically divisive, not everywhere, and certainly not in every school and in every community, but there is some national discourse around this. We know that career development and career workforce development is a universally accepted positive, highly regarded strategy on both sides of the aisle. It is a bipartisan community because due to the great recession, we've seen more people leave work and more jobs open than we've ever seen. So businesses recognize that what they need is they need people, they can come with the skills that they need to do the jobs that they need. SEL can do that.

Ruth Cross: And to add to that, Andy, we know that because at CASEL, the CSI or our policy team works with partners such as Civic Enterprises, Business Roundtable, Education Trust, Coalition for Career Development Center, and others to work with states who want to more intentionally connect education to workforce pathways, the pathways that Andy was talking about that should start early and last through their education. And we have a targeted focus on the social and emotional skills that these partners know and we know that the industry is asking for. It's something we can agree on. Parents will agree on this. Business partners agree, and as Andy said, it's a bipartisan effort. So it's what kids need and that's why we're doing it.

Brianna Cunniff: Absolutely. You well hit on so many great points and I think that that point of the earlier you start, the more time you have to learn even more information. And it also gives those young students time to find things that they connect with and excite them about higher education or the workforce. And oftentimes they might not get that skill building or career awareness until they're graduating high school and have to suddenly choose a major and pick a career path that they might not know anything about or go into the workforce not knowing what all is out there and how they can offer what skills they have to the workforce. So I think, yeah, that's so many amazing points.

Andy Tucker: To that point, I have always given told this story that I am a perfect, I think I'm in this work because when I entered college, I entered college as a Japanese major, international business minor, and here I sit as an lifelong educator and I started as a Spanish teacher. I had no idea what I wanted to do because I hadn't had these activities and I was following my father's dreams, not my own. So I think that starting this work early, so students develop this self-awareness to know what they want to do and they develop the other skills that they need in order to make good decisions to go and find a career that fits them and the path that fits them is just so unbelievably vital. And I wish I had had it when I was a kid

Ruth Cross: And I wish I had it too because, like Andy, when I left high school, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. It was teaching, nursing, secretary were the options open to me at the time I was coming through school. But then I got into college and I loved science and I excelled in science. And so I decided I was going into med technology, which I did. I worked at hospitals, I worked for a doctor, I married and I had children. And that was not a good career at that time because it meant I had to be on call at night. I was called back to the hospital to do lab work or something of that nature when I had small children.
So I am like so many people, even today. I decided to change careers. So I had to go back to school and pick up those education courses that I did not take because I was concentrating on science. That is true today more than it was when I came along, that kids will leave one company and go to another company and if they have those durable skills, they will be well off because that company will train them in their technical skills. So there is a lot of career shifts in our world today.

Brianna Cunniff: I think with that, that goes to show that it's never too late to start a program like this. It's great to start early, but with career shifts happening at all ages, it's never too late to do this program. But we're definitely excited to hear all about this great work and we'd love to hear about where you plan to go from here and what's in store for the future.

Ruth Cross: I'm going to start by telling you that in the fall, CASEL is going to release a brief on how states have developed portraits of a graduate to highlight essential skills that they need when they graduate. These are the skills that districts are expecting them to have, and those skills are based on community and stakeholder input. So when a district comes together or a state develops a portrait of a graduate, they are looking at the skills they want them to have in order to be successful in life. And many of our states, like Utah, have cross walked the SEL competencies with the other skills that they expect their students to have, the academic skills. And North Carolina has also done that. Andy, I know you would like to add to that.

Andy Tucker: I'll just say that thank you for having us on this podcast and letting us share the great work that we're doing and share with you some of the work that we're seeing other people do around the country that is so essential in this. I mean, to close, I would just say that and if there's anything you need to remember, it's the skills that the students learn through social and emotional learning, whether you want to call them soft skills, they're not soft, they're hard. Whether you want to call them, please don't call them non-cognitive skills, non-cognitive means that you don't think, and these are skills that do require thinking, but we think the better term is durable skills. These durable skills that students learn through SEL programming are the same skills that post-secondary institutions and employers seek. And that the work that schools do out there today, that's intentional programming and career and college readiness that is coupled with SEL will help prepare your students for the future.

Ruth Cross: And we might add that when you think about people who have not done well in workforce, it's not because they didn't have the technical skills is because they didn't have those durable skills to get along with people, to work in a global society, to be critical thinkers, to collaborate well with others, to problem solve, to understand who they are as a learner, as a leader, as a member of a community. So those skills are good for all of us.

Annie Knowles: Agreed. And I love just in closing as well, I love that you all are bringing this to schools on a state district, local level because in a way brings more access of this type of teaching and learning to all students regardless of their background. Or maybe some students may be learning these skills outside of the classroom, some may not be. So to be able to have that opportunity for them in the classroom just increases access as well. And with that, I guess we will close out this episode, from both Brianna and I, thank you so much for taking the time to share your work. It really is such an incredible initiative and I'm really excited to see the impacts and where you do go from here.

Andy Tucker: Thank you again for having us.

Ruth Cross: Thank you for having us.

Annie Knowles: In Session is brought to you by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments or NCSSLE at the American Institutes for Research. This podcast is funded by the US Department of Education. If you'd like to learn more about NCSSLE visit safesupportivelearning.ed.gov. For all questions or feedback, you can email us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening.
Please note, the contents of this podcast do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the US Department of Education, nor does it imply endorsement by the US Department of Education.