Richard K. Cohen

Richard K. Cohen is the assistant superintendent of the Metuchen School District in New Jersey and serves as co-adjunct faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Before becoming assistant superintendent, Richard led as principal for Red Bank Primary School in Red Bank, New Jersey and acted as founding director of a new bilingual school, Colegio Americano, in San Salvador, El Salvador. His professional experiences as an educator range from working in predominantly low-income public and charter schools to some of the most affluent public and private schools.

Rick has served as a leader of social-emotional learning (SEL) at the district, county, state, and national levels. His work infusing academic state standards and SEL skills together with evidence-based character education has won national and state of New Jersey School of Character Awards and a National Promising Practice Award from Character.org. In 2015, Rick also served on the New Jersey State Standards Revision Committee, helping add self-reflection and metacognition into academic state standards. Rick’s work has been published in Character.org’s “11 Principles Framework for Schools,” Edutopia, and NJEA Review’s “Great Ideas” column. Rick Cohen is coauthor of The Metacognitive Student, which has won two national awards for Best Indie Book in Education (Forewords Reviews 2021 and IPPY Awards 2022) and has been featured in articles in Edutopia and Educational Leadership.

Rick Cohen received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in educational administration from Rutgers University.

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Metacognitive Strategies for Improving Students' Mental Health

Metacognitive Strategies for Improving Students’ Mental Health

Presenter linkDeanne Kildare OpatoskyPresenter linkEdward P. DarrahPresenter linkJames SavagePresenter linkRichard K. CohenPresenter linkSusan Olsen Stevens
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Categories: 21st Century Skills, Instruction, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Now more than ever, students need skills, strategies, and mental processes to more effectively cope with the many challenges that COVID-19, racial inequities, and distance learning pose.

Although many educators teach a wide range of critical-thinking skills, problem-solving processes, and coping strategies, students often lack the ability to independently identify and apply the appropriate critical-thinking skill, problem-solving process, or coping strategy to help them stay calm, think clearly, and resolve conflicts. Read more