Illinois Learning Standards

Stage J - Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Goals, Standards and Descriptors


1A —
 Identify and manage one's emotions and behavior.
  1. Explain how focusing on your community's assets rather than its deficits can affect your choices.
  2. Describe how changing your interpretation of an event can alter how you and others feel about it.
  3. Recognize the impact of denial defense mechanisms on your mental health.
  4. Analyze outcome differences for you and others of expressing fear in various situations (e.g., in the presence of a potential assailant, in the presence of a friend).
  5. Demonstrate how you might use upset feelings to ask for help rather express anger.
  6. Demonstrate an ability to express hurt without withdrawal, blame, or aggression.
  7. Select healthy defense mechanisms.
1B —
Recognize personal qualities and external supports.
  1. Identify the skills and credentials required to enter a particular profession and begin to prepare accordingly.
  2. Analyze how the example of the professional work or community service of an adult in your life has contributed to an important life goal.
  3. Demonstrate decision-making based on what is right rather than media images of success.
  4. Reach out to help others achieve their goals.
  5. Develop relationships that support personal and career goals.
1C —
Demonstrate skills related to achieving personal and academic goals.
  1. Set a long-term academic/career goal with dates for completion of the action steps.
  2. Anticipate barriers to achieving your goal and make contingency plans for overcoming them.
  3. Analyze how current decisions about health behavior may affect long-term education and career goals.
  4. Evaluate the feasibility of the goal of getting a summer job based on your ability to complete the necessary action steps in a timely manner.
  5. Evaluate your achievement on two recent goals by using criteria related to goal setting, making and working a plan, and accessing available supports.
  6. Establish a behavioral contract to improve a coping strategy and journal your progress in fulfilling it.


2A  —
Recognize the feelings and perspectives of others.
  1. Analyze barriers to effective communication.
  2. Evaluate opposing points of view on current issues (e.g., the role of students in the governance of their school)
  3. Analyze the factors that have influenced your perspective on an issue.
  4. Use appropriate non-verbal cues to communicate your understanding of another's perspective.
  5. Demonstrate ways to assert one's needs and viewpoints in a respectful manner.
  6. Practice responding to ideas rather that the person advancing them.
2B —
Recognize individual and group similarities and differences.
  1. Analyze your perception of cultural variation in light of experiences you have had with members of various cultural groups.
  2. Analyze how the media create and/or reinforce societal expectations of various social and cultural groups.
  3. Analyze the meaning of citizenship in various countries and historical periods.
  4. Evaluate how marketing and media shape how social and cultural groups. perceive themselves.
  5. Evaluate how getting to know and work with others from various social and cultural groups can change your perceptions of these groups.
  6. Practice opposing intolerance and stereotyping (e.g., participate in mock trials of students accused of non-conformist behavior).
  7. Demonstrate an ability to work well with those of different ethnic groups and religions.
2C —
Use communication and social skills to interact effectively with others.
  1. Analyze how you and others feel in giving and receiving help.
  2. Analyze the effects of giving and receiving help in completing tasks.
  3. Evaluate ideas on their merit instead of the individual sharing them.
  4. Evaluate how well one follows the lead of others in completing group tasks.
  5. Evaluate how well one supports the leadership of others.. Demonstrate ways one can move group efforts forward (e.g., providing structure, guidelines, or ideas; supporting others' ideas).
  6. Demonstrate strategies for collaborating with peers, adults and others in the community.
2D —
  1. Analyze the causes of conflict in various situations (e.g., with a friend, someone you are dating, a neighbor, someone with a different political position, another country).
  2. Analyze strategies for dealing with sexual harassment and an abusive relationship.
  3. Evaluate the appropriateness of various approaches to resolving conflict (e.g., reflective listening, self-management, debate, mediation, decision making by a leader, war, court rulings, etc.).
  4. Recommend ways for students to have a voice in establishing and enforcing school rules.
  5. Analyze how conflict can escalate into violence.
  6. Demonstrate various approaches for resolving conflict.


3A —
Consider ethical, safety, and societal factors in making decisions.
  1. Describe the value of resisting peer pressure that causes social or emotional harm to self or others.
  2. Explain how a change in a current social policy (e.g., health care coverage for children, free public education, child care assistance for working families) would impact the behaviors of individuals and groups.
  3. Evaluate the consequences for yourself and others of following ethical principles in your relationships.
  4. Evaluate ethical issues involved in a social policy.
  5. Predict how a jury of one's peers would judge various behaviors.
  6. Show how a service project contributes to the good of society.
3B —
  1. Identify how social relationships impact academic performance.
  2. Analyze how interests, personality traits, and aptitudes affect career choices.
  3. Examine the relationship between academic courses and career goals.
  4. Examine family and friends as sources of support for academic and social decisions.
  5. Evaluate how past relationships impact decisions about future relationships.
  6. Use school and community resources in making academic and social decisions.
3C —
Contribute to the well-being of one's school and community.
  1. Design a survey to identify school needs.
  2. Prioritize identified school needs.
  3. Compare and contrast government's record on important public policy issues (e.g., protecting human rights, developing renewable sources of energy, etc.).
  4. Develop a project and action plan to address an identified school need.
  5. Conduct research on a school need of interest.
  6. Work cooperatively with other students in addressing an identified need in the broader community (e.g., working on a political campaign, a literacy project, an effort to reduce hunger, an educational program to raise awareness about climate change, etc.).
  7. Communicate the results of a group service project to interested school and community groups.

Return to Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Performance Descriptors