Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Want to know how students are faring in 2020? Ask them!

Want to Know How Students Are Faring in 2020? Ask Them!

Presenter linkLeigh ColburnPresenter linkLinda Beggs
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Categories: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), Technology

Based on The Wraparound Guide

Like virtually everyone, students are facing unprecedented changes and challenges in 2020: distance learning, canceled or altered social interactions, closed schools, altered athletics schedules, disruption of extracurricular activities, changed family dynamics, and perhaps sick—or even lost—loved ones. 

Schools also face rocky terrain as they attempt to resume this fall—whether in person, online, or through a combination of both media. Typical school policies and school improvement plans simply won’t provide the guidance educators need to weather this storm, especially when they also are personally impacted by current events. Read more

How We Know What We Know

How We Know What We Know

Presenter linkBrian M. PetePresenter linkRobin J. Fogarty
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Categories: Instruction, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Thinking about Thinking in IB Schools: How We Know What We Know (Fogarty, Pete, 2020) examines teaching techniques in International Baccalaureate schools, focusing on a curricular framework that is used on the international instructional scene.

For students influenced by the high expectations of this “IB kind of study,” their performances show evidence of thought and a rare mindfulness for young learners. That said, this is a practical guide framed by the fine curricular beliefs crafted by the founders of the IB schools (2018) and the Theory of Knowledge (2014). Read more

Planning for Your Youngest Learners in an Unprecedented School Year | Pandemic Response and Educational Practices (PREP)

Planning for Your Youngest Learners in an Unprecedented School Year

Presenter linkBrian K. ButlerPresenter linkDiane KerrPresenter linkJacqueline HellerPresenter linkTracey A. Hulen
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Categories: Pandemic Response and Educational Practices, PLC, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), Technology

This entry is the 12th in a blog series called Pandemic Response and Educational Practices (PREP), which aims to highlight and further the important work educators are doing amid the worldwide COVID-19 crisis.

Based on What About Us? The PLC at Work® Process for Grades PreK-2 Teams

Several years ago, Becky DuFour, expressing her passion for our youngest learners, helped us launch an idea that is now being released as our new book, What About Us? The PLC at Work Process for Grades PreK-2 Teams.

We four coauthors, from Mason Crest Elementary—the first DuFour Award–winning national Model PLC school—filled the book with resources, tools, action steps, and examples for early childhood educators striving to meet the needs of all students. With the publication of the book this month, coinciding with the launch of a school year full of uncertainty, we thought a sneak peek into a few chapters, while considering ideas for adapting to a remote learning environment, could add some welcome tools to early educators’ toolkits. Read more

Reaching Our Most Vulnerable Children

Presenter linkChristine MasonPresenter linkMichele Rivers MurphyPresenter linkYvette Jackson
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Categories: Pandemic Response and Educational Practices, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

 

Alison Gibertoni, fifth-grade teacher, Wallingford, Conn. Picture used with permission.

This entry is the third in a blog series called Pandemic Response and Educational Practices (PREP), which aims to highlight and further the important work educators are doing amid the worldwide COVID-19 crisis.

Teachers are taking extraordinary steps to connect with students, be a buffer to enhance students’ sense of security, and build students’ confidence that we will make it through the COVID-19 crisis together, even at a distance.

Teachers are improvising, relying on online resources, and coming up with schedules for their students to follow—schedules that include a balance between group time, independent learning, and simply time to check in with one another. Read more

Bus driving past a school

The Heart of the Matter: Cultivating Compassionate and Mindful School Communities

Presenter linkChristine MasonPresenter linkMichele Rivers MurphyPresenter linkYvette Jackson
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Categories: School Improvement, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Based on Mindful School Communities, scheduled for release in February 2020.

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” —The Dalai Lama

Compassion and love are needed in all areas of our lives. Quite simply, people are hurting and in need of healing. Schools are no different.

Students, teachers, and whole school communities are wrestling with how best to understand and respond to the impactful nature of trauma and stress and how it collides with our ability to function, teach, learn, live, and just be. Sometimes, “students are too scared to learn” (Lacoe, 2013). For many of our students, the impact of stress and trauma is formidable, compromising their physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being and academic development (SAMHSA, 2014), playing out in the form of their physiological response system of fight, flight, or freeze (Schwartz, 2016). Read more