The Maryland Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (SEFEL) for Preschool Classrooms is a public health framework for addressing social-emotional needs of all children that supports families and providers in building relationships and supportive environments for all children, targeted teaching of social-emotional skills to children who need it, and intensive individualized interventions for children with challenging behavior.
Successful completion of each module will provide learners with a certificate of completion for each module with Continuing Education Clock Hours for the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and completion of the entire curriculum provides learners with a certificate of completion with National Association of Social Workers (NASW) CEs.
SEFEL Pyramid Modules
Module 1: Nurturing & Responsive Relationships Child Development (7 hours/Child Development)
Establishing nurturing and responsive relationships within a caring community is the foundation of the Pyramid Model. This training focuses on practices for building relationships with children, promoting relationships between children, relationships with families that affirm family culture and identity, and relationships with team members.
Module 2: High-Quality Supportive Environments (6 hours/Child Development)
This module focuses on the practices for establishing high-quality supportive classroom environments that promote social-emotional skill development and prevent challenging behavior. Practices related to schedules, routines, transitions, promoting engagement, expectations, and rules are addressed in the workshop.
Module 3: Teaching Social-Emotional Skills (6 hours/Curriculum)
Promoting social-emotional development is core to the Pyramid Model. This module provides training on the practices for teaching friendship skills, emotional literacy, self-regulation, and problem-solving.
Module 4: Individualized Teaching of Social-Emotional Skills (3 hours/ Special Needs)
This module guides practitioners in how to individualize instruction on social-emotional skills for children who need more targeted supports. Practices that are taught include: teaching systematically, peer-mediated intervention, planning for embedded instruction, and progress monitoring.
Module 5: Addressing Challenging Behavior (7 hours/Special Needs)
This module provides the practices for understanding child challenging behavior, how to respond to challenging behavior, becoming aware of bias in responding, de-escalating behavior, and the components of developing a behavior support plan for children with persistent challenging behavior.
Module 6: Overview of Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children (2 hours/Special Needs)
In this module, practitioners learn about the steps of Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children (PTR-YC) and how PTR-YC is used as a manualized process for conducting a functional behavioral assessment and developing a behavior support plan.
* Based on your program needs, the Pyramid Model modules can be taken as a series or as stand-alone workshops