Adult SEL isn’t “jeans on Friday”: It’s a leadership imperative  

On any given Friday, you might walk into a school and see teachers in jeans, a snack cart in the lounge, or a handwritten note of appreciation in a mailbox. These moments are great; they signal care and acknowledge effort.

But let’s be honest: this is not adult social-emotional learning. And when we confuse the two, we risk trivializing something that is far more powerful and far more necessary.

Adult SEL is not a morale boost. It is not a reward system. It is not an initiative to roll out once a year.

It is, as defined in the research, the process through which adults develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to manage emotions, build relationships, and make responsible decisions within complex environments (CASEL, 2020). And in schools, those environments are anything but simple.

What I learned studying adult SEL

When researching my dissertation on adult SEL and its relationship to teacher attrition and retention, one thing became immediately clear: We have spent decades focusing on students’ social-emotional development while largely assuming adults already have these skills. And, that assumption is flawed.

The research base is consistent. Jennings and Greenberg (2009) demonstrated that teachers’ social and emotional competence directly impacts classroom climate, student relationships, and instructional effectiveness. Schonert-Reichl (2017) reinforces this, emphasizing that educators must not only teach SEL but embody it.

In my dissertation, I found that when SEL is explicitly developed—through professional learning, reflection, and systemic support—both educators and students benefit. But here’s the tension: Despite its promise, adult SEL is still often misunderstood and underdeveloped at the system level.

It’s about relationships, not rewards

Too often, adult SEL is reduced to surface-level gestures: appreciation days, wellness challenges, or small perks meant to boost morale. Those things are not wrong. But they are insufficient.

SEL lives in the everyday interactions that shape a school’s culture:

• How colleagues speak to one another
• How conflict is navigated
• Whether trust exists between staff and leadership
• Whether people feel psychologically safe to be honest, vulnerable, and human

Research increasingly points to the importance of collegial relationships as a central mechanism. When educators experience strong, supportive relationships with one another, it not only improves their own well-being it strengthens the entire school community.

This aligns with what I found in my own research: schools that include both adults and students in SEL implementation demonstrate stronger outcomes than those that focus on students alone. Because adults are not separate from the system—they are the system.

Culture is not an initiative

We are asking educators to do extraordinarily complex work under increasingly demanding conditions. National data continue to show high levels of stress, burnout, and dissatisfaction among teachers (Doan et al., 2021; E4E, 2022).

And while adult SEL is often positioned as a solution, research findings tell a more nuanced story. There is not a simple, direct correlation between the presence of SEL standards and improved retention rates. And this matters because it tells us that SEL, on its own, is not a silver bullet.

Instead, it must be part of a broader ecosystem that includes:

• Manageable workloads
• Meaningful professional development
• Adequate compensation
• Strong leadership support

Adult SEL strengthens the system but it cannot compensate for a broken one. Here is where this work becomes both simple and challenging.

SEL cannot be delegated, we cannot outsource the support we provide to the adults on campus. Additionally, it cannot live solely in a professional development session or a strategic plan.

It is important to include it in PD sessions, but that is not the only place we should see it. It must be modeled both consistently and visibly by leaders.

When school-based leaders and those at the district office intentionally center their practice on adult SEL, the evidence shows that schools are able to attract and retain teachers. We can also see how SEL shows up in our own leadership behaviors:

• How a principal responds to a frustrated teacher
• How a district leader communicates difficult decisions
• How feedback is given and received
• How mistakes are handled

When leaders model self-awareness, empathy, and responsible decision-making, they create the conditions for those behaviors to spread throughout a school system. When they do not, social-emotional learning risks becoming performative; something that is discussed in theory but not truly experienced in practice.

Adults in school buildings need to know that their leaders understand the daily realities and challenges they face and are available to support them. Just as importantly, they need trust. Trust is built (or broken) through leadership behaviors and the consistency with which leaders show up for their staff.

More capable and connected

If we are serious about strengthening adult SEL, we must move beyond treating it as an add-on initiative and instead embed it into the way the entire system operates.

This requires a shift in how schools approach professional learning and organizational culture. SEL should be embedded into professional learning opportunities as ongoing development rather than isolated, one-time training.

SEL practices should also be integrated into team meetings, professional learning communities, and daily routines so that they become part of the fabric of the work. In addition, educators benefit far more from coaching and mentorship than from standalone workshops that lack sustained follow-through.

Schools and districts must also intentionally align SEL efforts with existing frameworks such as MTSS and PBIS to ensure that adult well-being and support systems are not operating in silos.

Although many states and districts have begun incorporating adult-focused components into their SEL standards, few provide clear guidance for implementation. Addressing this gap will require time, intentionality, and a sustained commitment to systems change.

Without intentional implementation, adult SEL remains theoretical rather than transformational. It is not about making educators more comfortable; it is about making them more capable, more connected, and more supported in doing deeply human work.

It is not about superficial perks or occasional morale boosters. Instead, it is about building relationships grounded in trust, creating cultures that prioritize well-being, developing systems that recognize the emotional demands of teaching, and ensuring leadership consistently models the behaviors and expectations it promotes.

Strengthening adult SEL capacity has the potential to improve well-being, enhance relationships, and contribute to more positive school environments overall. The opportunity before us is clear: if we want students to experience SEL in meaningful and authentic ways, we must first ensure that the adults within our systems are experiencing it themselves.

The image above was created with AI.