In order to promote creativity in the classroom, the FCSS VAPA Department has developed a series of creative SEL lessons. You don’t need to be an arts teacher in order to utilize these strategies with your students. The artistic elements in these lessons are tools designed to help engage student creativity and support their social emotional development. When utilizing creative strategies to support SEL, the most important outcomes are not artistic. If the artistic elements are not what some might consider the highest quality, that is perfectly fine. The goal is to help students connect to their own SEL through these creative practices, encouraging thoughtful reflection and honest conversation. Each lesson is aligned to one of the five core competencies and intended to focus on a particular aspect of that competency. The lessons are easily repeated, and the focus can be changed by altering the reflection questions to help guide student discussion.