Expanding roles: Engaging in interprofessional collaboration to support social and emotional learning in classrooms

Leaders in education have been exploring how to creatively use their resources to offer social and emotional learning programming that supports positive mental health and fosters resilience in the educational setting, noting the growing number of children who have experienced trauma and who demonstrate mental health challenges. Social and emotional learning, as outlined by the leading national framework the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), is ideally fostered by an interprofessional team that can collaboratively address each of its competency areas. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened up an opportunity for school-based professionals to provide proactive trauma-informed support for social and emotional learning to students through a tiered approach. This paper aims to propose key factors in the development of a universal social and emotional learning program to be offered in elementary classrooms, led by the interprofessional collaboration of an occupational therapist, school psychologist, and speech-language pathologist. An innovative clinical example in an elementary school in the United States will also be detailed to demonstrate an approach that capitalizes on each discipline’s expertise. By enacting this type of interprofessional collaborative programming in the classrooms through the implementation of ESSA and the application of CASEL, school-based professionals can work together to build resiliency in the student body and cultivate an enriched school environment that empowers students.