CASEL CARES is a new initiative from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) that connects individuals and communities with experts to address how Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) can be most helpful in today’s circumstances. It is important to recognize that the most vulnerable students are at particular risk during this time. As part of the CASEL CARES webinar series, the Education Trust’s John King and the Forum’s Karen Pittman recently offered reflections on existing inequities in education that have been exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic.

Our current system is limiting youth potential. There are four new COVID-19 induced realities that every organization and every adult is dealing with: 1) the inadequacy of current applications of and uses of virtual platforms, even when available, for virtual-only academic instruction, 2) the heightened visibility and exacerbation of many different kinds of inequities such as health, emotional wellness, family resources, food and housing insecurity (within and across families, schools, communities), 3) the certainty of traumatic effects (associated with the virus, compounded by the closings, the separations and losses, the disconnection from important communities in young people’s lives), and 4) the uncertainty of re-openings (schools, child and youth development programs, workplaces, and the economy).

While many youth-serving programs have adapted quickly in response to COVID-19, disruptions to research and evaluation data collection efforts have left practitioners with questions about how to complete current projects and what information to collect to guide future planning. This webinar convenes researchers, evaluators, and funders to discuss practical solutions for interrupted data collection efforts and reporting expectations to promote the continuation of quality improvement conversations and the sharing of program impact stories.

Summertime provides a unique opportunity for community partners, schools, families, and young people to work together to provide programs and services that promote the social, emotional, and cognitive development of youth.

During this webinar, we focus on a 2019 report released by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine titled "Shaping Summertime Experiences: Opportunities to Promote Healthy Development and Well-Being for Children and Youth." Members of the committee who produced the report discussed their practices that align to the recommendations in the report. These presenters also provide insight on what actions you can take even as we consider the uncertainty of what lies ahead in this summer.

It’s springtime, yet rather than preparing for end-of-year assessments, graduation, prom, and summer school, educators and school personnel, along with community organizations and families, are grappling with the challenges of facilitating learning, keeping young people safe, and supporting their overall well-being when “out-of-school time is all the time.”  As educators try to find stop-gap measures to make learning accessible to every student, what are the most effective ways to engage and empower our adolescents, particularly in high school and beyond, so that they are equipped to manage change and difficulty?

A recent virtual event launched the Readiness Projects and featured a series of short segments and interviews to tee up real-time topics for action and reflection in the days to come. What are we seeing, hearing, leveraging, and doing to respond to one very visible fact: out-of-school time is now all of the time? Together, we are stepping back to think about the inequities that are even more pressing for today's youth.