The Role of the SEL Transition Classroom Teacher

In my last blog post, I wrote, “A teacher in a transition classroom wears many hats. They are part behavior re-mediator, inclusion specialist, curriculum developer, instructional specialist, and importantly, a team coordinator.”

For those of us who are SEL Transition room teachers, finding our own identity can be a challenging, and exciting, process. With a field so new, many school systems, and even teacher’s education services, have not yet defined our role. Statewide programs and national platforms promoting SEL Transition programs have largely taken a macro-view: creating and developing an infrastructure to support school-wide social & emotional programming. This gives relevant teachers the rare opportunity to define their own roles.

Over the last three years, I have worked diligently to both implement and evaluate skills that best support my teaching role in the SEL classroom. I have done so with careful attention paid to the needs of the Director of Social & Emotional Learning, administrators, the Guidance department, classroom teachers, parents, Special Education, and students. Evaluation has been conducted through meticulous data gathering, assessment, and intervention.

As a result, I have developed a detailed job description for the lead teacher in an SEL-based High School Transition Classroom. These descriptors serve to certainly explain the responsibilities of my current position, but also to highlight the key aspects of a classroom based on a new approach to education in an effort to inspire and assist all teachers as they try to incorporate more social and emotional learning into their curriculum.

The following are a list of 5 areas of focus. Each will be unpacked in their own upcoming blog entry. Check back for more!

1. Foundations
2. Applications
3. Development
4. Communication & Coordination
5. Community​