How Do You Facilitate Them?

This Playbook is designed to respect the judgment, experience, and language of the facilitator. Be sure to adjust activities to suit your context and goals as you work with youth and adults.

Prioritize

The urgency of the task or topic can trick us into thinking that we don’t have time for SEL practices, but creating the conditions for the group to do its best work actually results in more effective learning and collaboration. 

Ask yourself: How much time is available?

• If you are in a short meeting or class period, design one- to five-minute SEL practices to quickly anchor the group, make a connection to the work ahead, support interactive engagement, and bring the time together smoothly to a close.
• If you are together for a whole day, you might plan SEL practices that take a little more time so you can also establish and deepen the relationships in the group.
• If you are behind schedule, select an SEL activity that quickly consolidates the group, helps maintain focus, and/or allows for an intentional end.

You may notice that activities include a debrief. The debrief is where some of the most powerful learning takes place, so plan enough time for this valuable component. Reflecting on connections to specific skills within an SEL competency is a powerful strategy for individual, small-group, and whole-group self-assessment. 

Align to a Clear Purpose

Having a clear idea of what’s important is vital for selecting SEL practices that will support participants in achieving the goals of your engagement. 

Ask yourself: What is important about this engagement?

• If an important goal of the day is based in creative work or planning, consider choosing an inclusive welcome that includes brainstorming or a question.
• If an important goal of the meeting is making a difficult decision, you might choose a welcome that invites participants to make choices. 
• If an important goal of the engagement is learning how to work in small groups, you might decide to welcome the group with an activity that is organized in trios, then debriefed with the whole group.

Keep Relationships in Mind

How well your group knows each other, how comfortable they are with one another, and how many times you’ll be meeting as a group are some of the factors that help you determine the vulnerability level of your activity. 

Ask yourself: How vulnerable can I ask participants to be?

• If the group is meeting together for the first time, participants may not be comfortable sharing deeply with people they don’t know well. A low-vulnerability activity might be structured with participants choosing their own partner and answering a question such as “What’s something that’s new with you?” 
• As a group forms deeper, more trusting relationships, you can facilitate activities that benefit from those increasingly more insightful exchanges. A higher-vulnerability activity might involve randomly selected partners and responding to a prompt such as “Describe a current work situation that you’re finding very challenging.”

Empathize With Participants – Read the Room

Having a hunch about the state of the group will help you select or create SEL practices that will match the emotional, physical, and intellectual needs of the participants.

Ask yourself: How can I meet the diverse needs of participants?

• If participants appreciate feeling productive and task-oriented at all times, a welcoming activity that is clearly focused on the topic of the engagement will support that.
• If the group is tired and low-energy, consider selecting an activity that involves movement and an upbeat tone.
• If the group has become unfocused, consider an engaging strategy that brings their attention to one central whole-group activity by helping the group down-regulate (e.g., using mindful focusing) or up-regulate in an active and fun way.
• If your time together has been spent on challenging material, choosing a closing activity that provides an opportunity to share appreciations can reframe the hard work as a chance to support one another.

• The Playbook provides only a sampling of activities within each category. The options are limitless and grow most authentically from the work you’re doing and the group with whom you’re working.  Use these examples to build your understanding as you develop your own activities to fit your community and subject matter and share those with us.
• Using the Playbook requires thoughtful selection and preparation.
• The Playbook identifies key SEL competencies and skills for each activity as a possible focus area.  You can also use these activities for building skills in other competencies that you are intentionally addressing.