SEL Competency Guide

Self-Awareness is the ability to understand your motivations, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. By building this competency, you are better able to navigate situations and interactions with others in your daily life. You understand your strengths, your challenges, and how your inner life can impact achievement in school, your relationships, and meeting personal goals for college, career, and life.

Self-Management is the ability to understand and regulate your emotions, thoughts, and actions in a way that promotes more positive wellbeing for self and others around you. Being able to effectively manage different situations and people encountered helps us to achieve our goals, sustain positive relationships, and succeed in and out of school.

Social Awareness is the ability to understand social situations that require different approaches of engagement. By being socially aware, you have the ability to interact appropriately with people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and identities. You are also able to take another’s perspective, demonstrate compassion and empathy, and understand the historical and social norms that affect behaviors.

Responsible Decision Making is the ability to make healthy, constructive decisions for optimal well-being. By building this competency, you are better able to make safe choices and use sound judgment. You are also able to analyze how your behaviors impact your personal goals in and out of school, as well as how your behaviors affect those around you, leading to more positive decision-making.

Relationship Skills are the ability to maintain healthy, encouraging relationships with others. By employing effective relationship skills, you
engage in positive social interaction, you are able to communicate effectively, you can navigate varied situations, you can successfully collaborate and problem solve with a spirit of teamwork, and you can appreciate and appropriately engage with diverse groups of people.