March 11, 2024, Active classroom engagement is at the heart of children’s learning. Teachers need to be equipped with suitable tools to support student acquisition of skills that build healthy peer relationships and regulate emotions while also ensuring that classroom diversity translates into successful social inclusion and student learning. 

These were the findings of a Marcus Foundation-funded 2022 study of teachers’ experiences and perceived effects of a professional development approach called Social Emotional Engagement – Knowledge and Skills (SEE-KS). The approach aims to incorporate support for teachers to help them meet the diverse social-emotional and academic needs of their students.

Co-developer of the SEE-KS approach, national early language and literacy expert Emily Rubin returned to Savannah on March 7 to lead a second training session with local educators and provide freely accessible tools for measuring learner engagement, enhancing engagement in everyday settings and academic instruction, and empowering educators to sustain the work through peer to peer mentorship. 

About 75 local educators attended the training, presented by Coastal Georgia Indicators Coalition, United Way of the Coastal Empire and the Savannah Chatham County Public School System.

Held at the Southwest Branch of Live Oak Public Libraries, the event was the second of a series of three sessions to be led by Rubin for Savannah area educators. During the first, held on January 11, Rubin provided a tool kit for educators to help identify early indicators of language and how to interact with children to help with their communications. 

“Our focus in this second session was to provide support for the development of community-viable models of staff training,” Rubin said. “We shared the tools that build the capacity of school systems and early intervention providers to serve as informed consumers of evidence-based practices.”

Rubin said her professional vision is to empower our public schools with a framework for social and emotional engagement and learning that is: 1) ecologically valid to the demands of achieving academic standards, 2) sensitive to the unique needs of students with social learning differences, and 3) can serve as a universal design for learning that benefits all of our students and young children in order to maximize return on professional learning.

“This training opportunity offered teachers the tools they need to mentor other teachers in early intervention techniques,” said CGIC executive director Lizann Roberts. “Its purpose was to build their skillsets and model how they can work together to foster the social and emotional and academic needs of their students.”