Social Emotional Learning Advisor
Under the direction of the Senior Director of Mental Health and SEL, the Social Emotional Learning Advisor promotes the practices and conditions required to support children, families, and staffs’ social and emotional well-being, while ensuring that services are designed to assist children in their emotional, cognitive, and social development toward an overall goal of social competence and school readiness. The SEL Advisor provides ongoing, relationship-based social emotional learning consultation, technical assistance, training, coaching, and referral services to Carole Robertson Center for Learning site-based, community-based, and partner programs. The SEL Advisor promotes continuous quality improvement for all Carole Robertson Center for Learning programs by embedding, scaling, and codifying the Center’s Mental Health/Social Emotional Learning (MH-SEL) framework.
Key Responsibilities
- In collaboration with the Senior Director of Mental Health and SEL and other Program and Impact leadership, cultivate an organization-wide culture that promotes child, family, and staff well-being in all program components and levels, including the classroom, handbooks, meetings, discussion groups, family assessments, and home visits. Such a culture includes an environment of mutual respect among staff and families that welcomes and supports diverse cultures, languages, traditions, and experiences; strives to build long-term, stable relationships with staff, families, and community; and provides access to resources that support child, family, and staff emotional and physical well-being.
- Assist children in their emotional, cognitive, and social development, toward an overall goal of social competence and school readiness and identify problems that may interfere with the development thereof.
- Provide one-on-one support for children when necessary, including push-in supports within classroom routines and small-group skill-building activities that strengthen social emotional development, self-regulation, relationship-building, and problem-solving skills.
- Assist parents, staff, and caregivers in developing positive attitudes toward mental health services and in acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to understand and deal more effectively with common development and behavior problems seen in children.
- Provide parents, staff, and caregivers with an understanding of child growth and development, an appreciation of individual as well as cultural/ethnic differences, and the need for a supportive environment.
- Provide for prevention, early identification, and intervention of problems that may interfere with child and family social functioning/relationships.
- Support parents, staff, caregivers, and children in implementing the goals of the Individual Education Program (IEP) or Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP).
- Provide children with disabilities and their families with the mental health supportive services to ensure that the children and families achieve the full benefits of participation in the program.
- Provide assistance and intervention to families in crisis.
- Provide assistance and intervention to staff in crisis.
- In collaboration with the Senior Director of Mental Health and SEL and other Program and Impact leadership, lead programmatic efforts that ensure embedding, scaling, and codification of the Center’s Mental Health/Social Emotional Learning (MH-SEL) framework by collaborating with a cross-functional team of Carole Robertson Center for Learning staff in implementing MH/SEL best practices to improve child and family resilience and ensure children are ready to learn and are on the path to become successful adults.
- For staff:
- Increase staff access to professional development focused on evidence-based SEL practices
- Increase staff access to professional development focused on evidence-based SEL practices
- Improve staff skills/abilities to support SEL in children, including hands on, in classroom support and modeling when children are in active crisis
- Coach teachers to build their capacity to nurture social emotional development in the classroom through reflective practice, modeling, feedback, and collaborative planning.
- Improve staff ability to recognize when child/family is facing trauma and identify the best course of action
- Improve staff use of data to reflect on and improve practice
- For children and families:
- Improve children’s relationship building and problem solving
- Build critical life skills, protective factors and developmental assets
- Improve family ability to support SEL in their children
- Improve parent-child relationships and foster secure attachments
- Ensure strong SEL and mental health competencies for children, youth and families
- Provide education and information to staff and families. This education and information may be delivered through a variety of methods, including but not limited to discussion groups, meetings, trainings, workshops, and informational materials/newsletters, based on resources and the needs of the organization and target audience.
- Provide Reflective Learning Group (RLG) opportunities with various staff groupings.
- Provide individual child observations and whole-classroom observations for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children to inform SEL supports, coaching, and intervention planning.
- For children with emotional/behavioral needs who have an IFSP or IEP, the SEL Advisor, in collaboration with program staff and designated program leadership, supports classroom staff, home visitors, caregivers, and families to ensure that children’s social-emotional needs are being met.
- In collaboration with the Senior Director of Mental Health and SEL and other Program and Impact leadership, the SEL Advisor ensures the fulfillment of the Head Start mental health services plan.
- Make a schedule of mental health consultant services available to staff and parents.
- Meet with staff and parents on a regular basis to discuss children’s changing needs.
- Develop well-being activities for staff and parents.
- Review referrals for children that result from behavioral screenings.
- Foster the development of a warm and welcoming classroom, center, and home environment, where children feel safe to express their feelings and develop a strong sense of self.
- Ensure parents are included as a part of the child’s team in discussions about challenges before it is determined that interventions are needed.
- Discuss child’s strengths as well as concerns with parents, e.g., typical development, how child responds to stressful situations.
- Develop appropriate responses to address challenging behaviors, and strategies to strengthen results.
- Recognize and address the difficulties with separation and attachment for child and parent.
- Support healthy child rearing practices.
- Help children adjust to changes in family circumstances.
- Address domestic violence situations.
- Promote stress reduction.
- Facilitate support groups or other activities that meet the needs of the program children, families, staff, and community.
- Solicit information, including from parents, about all aspects of children’s development in order to plan individual programs. This information can be gained from the following sources and events, among others: i. Child’s orientation visits.
- Daily contacts during drop-off and pick-ups.
- Conversations and discussions about the child’s strength, needs, special interests, typical and atypical development, health issues, and any concerns about the child’s mental health.
- Review screening and assessment results.
- Review health and nutrition interviews.
- Assist in collecting data with various assessment tools including ECERS, ITERS, SACERS, FCCERS, CLASS, DECA/DARS, PQA, and DESSA for Carole Robertson Center for Learning programs and partners.
- Assist in managing Teaching Strategies GOLD (TSG) observational data and maintaining TSG/Creative Curriculum fidelity.
- Prepare reports and maintain relevant documentation.
Qualifications
- Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in social work, in early childhood education, early childhood administration, education, or a related field or a related discipline.
- Proven understanding of early childhood development, anti-bias education, trauma-informed learning, and approaches to mental health and social emotional learning
- Ability to gain and maintain reliability on various assessment tools in order to assist in collecting data using these tools (ECERS, ITERS, SACERS, CLASS, DECA/DARS).
- Working knowledge of Teaching Strategies GOLD system, Coaching to Fidelity, NAEYC accreditation standards, and Head Start standards.
- Advanced knowledge of child and adult learning theory, practice, and implementation.
- Advance knowledge of reflective supervision, teacher coaching best practices, and implementation.
- Advanced skills in use of Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
- Excellent oral and written skills
- Must be willing and able to work evenings, weekends, or other times as required.
- A high degree of emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
- Proven ability to work in diverse settings with multiple stakeholders.
- Excellent project management skills and ability to multi-task with demonstrated attention to detail.
- Ability to oversee multiple concurrent projects effectively and ability to work well under tight deadlines.
- Assists with other duties and projects as assigned.
- Flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and requirements.
- Bilingual (English and Spanish) preferred.
Benefits
- Health Insurance (medical, dental, vision)
- Retirement savings plan (401(k))
- Paid Time Off (vacation, sick leave, holiday)
- Employee Assistance Program
- 2026-27 CRCL Benefits Guide
- CRCL 2026-2027 Bi-Weekly Rate Sheet
- If you are having issues accessing the link, please be sure to check out our Careers page for more information!
Carole Robertson Center for Learning provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.
