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Video!

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Getting Started With Trauma-Informed Practices

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When teachers use strategies tailored to children who have experienced trauma, all students reap the emotional and academic benefits.

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Grieving someone who is still alive (Pt 1)

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Grieving someone who is still alive (Pt 1)

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My guess is that when people read the title of this article they will react with either a, "what are they talking about? How can someone be grieving someone who is still alive and what the heck is ambiguous grief???" or a "holy crap, yes! I have felt exactly that way! Thank goodness WYG is finally covering this topic". This is one of those topics where if you have been there, you get it and if you haven't, you don't. Either way, hopefully you'll read on.

Before we dive in, if you clicked on this post because you feel like you are grieving someone with a terminal illness who has not yet died, there is another WYG article you should read before you read this article. Check out our article on Anticipatory Grief , which is about the grief that comes when we anticipate that we are going to lose someone.

In contrast to anticipatory grief, there are times in life when someone we love becomes someone we barely recognize. The person is still physically with us, but psychologically they are gone. There are a range of reasons this can happen. Some of the most common are things like addiction, dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and mental illness. If you have never lived through loving someone in such a situation, this can be hard to understand. The person you love is still there, sometimes they 'look' sick, sometimes they don't. But regardless of how they look, they do things they would never have done, they say things they would never have said, treat you in ways they never would have treated you, and they are not there for you in ways they previously were. This is sometimes referred to as " ambiguous grief" or "ambiguous loss ".

This may sound very abstract, but when it occurs in your life it is very concrete and real. Your mom, who always loved and supported you, doesn't recognize you, understand you or says hurtful things. You husband, who was always kind and considerate, is now lying and stealing to support an addiction. You son, who was brilliant and driven, is now struggling with delusions and hallucinations.

These things do not change our love for the person - we still love our mom with dementia, our husband with an opiate addiction, our son with schizophrenia. But this continued love doesn't change how deeply we miss the person they used to be, the person we lost. We may not feel like we have the same relationship with that person - our marriage no longer feels like a marriage when one spouse can no longer remember the other. The parent-child relationship no longer feels the same when a parent has to stop protecting, trusting, or helping a child in the same way due to addiction. The child-parent relationship becomes confused when a child has to care for a parent. Though we still have a relationship with the person it has radically changed and we grieve the relationship we used to have.

Our ' ambiguous grief' feelings may be sadness and yearning, anger and guilt, or a range of other emotions. These emotions can become even more complicated than the grief that comes after a death when the behaviors and words of the 'new' person causes us to question our old memories. Or worse, they can start to consume our brains as those old memories begin to fade. Another complication of ambiguous grief is that many people don't recognize it as grief. When those around us don't acknowledge our grief, or make us feel that we have permission to grieve this sort of loss, that can make you feel lonely and isolated. It can be a hard type of grief to open up about because we know others may not acknowledge it.

As usual, the big question is so what?! So what that it is grief? So what do I do about it?

Ambiguous Grief Tips: what to do when you are grieving someone who is still alive:

Remember that the present doesn't override the past. This can be easier said than done, but it is important to remember that the person your loved one is now doesn't change the person they were. Even if their words or behaviors now are difficult or hurtful, even if your relationship has changed and is not what it was, this doesn't change the person they were and the relationship you had. Cherish those positive memories, write them down, create a scrapbook of old photos, whatever you can.

Understand that the illness isn't the person. This sounds obvious, but it can be really tough when someone you love seems like they should be the same wonderful person they always were, they're not. Whether it is addiction, dementia, a brain injury, mental illness, or anything else, it is important to understand the illness. As much as we may still feel anger, frustration, or blame toward the person, understanding the illness can divert some of those feelings.

Acknowledge the grief and pain of the loss. Though society may not always recognize this type of grief, it is important that you give yourself permission to grieve this loss. Acknowledge and express the pain of the loss, rather than trying to ignore or avoid the pain.

Be open to a new type of relationship. When the person we love has changed, the relationship we have with them will inevitably change. This can feel like it is objectively and entirely a bad thing, but there is an opportunity for a new type of relationship. Will this new relationship always be easy? No. Hell no. In fact, many days it will be very very hard. But being open and seeking gratitude in your new relationship can be extremely helpful.

Connect with others who can relate. When many won't relate to ambiguous loss, finding a support group can be of help. There are support groups out there for caregivers of those with dementia, groups like Al-anon and Nar-anon for family members of those with addiction, and groups like NAMI who offer groups for family of those with mental illness.

Check out more on Ambiguous Loss by visiting the website of Pauline Boss, the woman who first labeled and researched this topic.
Have you dealt with ambiguous loss? Leave a comment to share your experience. Then subscribe to get all our posts right to your email.

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Ambiguous Grief: Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive

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My guess is that when people read the title of this article they will react with either a, "what are they talking about? How can someone be grieving someone who is still alive and what the heck is ambiguous grief???" or a "holy crap, yes! I have felt exactly that way!

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Great approach to requests.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Mindfulness is not only a popular topic for researchers and academics; it's also becoming quite the mainstream phenomenon.

One of the reasons for the popularity of mindfulness is its simplicity. It is easy (relatively, anyway), inexpensive, and can be practiced by anyone at any time.

Although it might sound like madness trying to teach mindfulness concepts to young children, it's actually perfectly suited for educational settings-and those settings in which it is most difficult to implement mindfulness are generally the ones that need it the most!

Read on to learn more about mindfulness in education, why it's a good thing, how it can be effectively incorporated into the curriculum, and what kinds of training and learning opportunities exist for you.

Before you start reading this article, I recommend you to download Week 1 of Mindfulness X for free. With this package, you will not just be able to understand mindfulness on a theoretical level, but you'll also have the tools to apply mindfulness in your work with clients or students.

You can download the package with PDF's for free on this page: https://bit.ly/2OUGkwI

What is Mindfulness Education?

"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally." - Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994)

Mindfulness education is exactly what it sounds like: the purposeful inclusion of mindfulness and mindful meditation principles, theories, and practices into education. (Click here to learn more about the definition of mindfulness.)

The goals of mindfulness education are to help students learn:

Techniques to calm and focus the mind

Mindful communication

Applying mindfulness skills to everyday life (iBme, n.d.)

If you do a quick Google search on "mindfulness education" or "mindfulness in education", our trusty search engine will turn up millions of results. Many of these results will take you to pages about specific training programs or curricula on incorporating mindfulness into education.

Some focus on teaching mindfulness to students. Some focus on teaching educators how to teach mindfulness to students. Others might focus on teaching the administrative staff, parents, or the community as a whole. While their targeted audience may differ, the end results are usually the same: positive outcomes.

The Research on Teaching Mindfulness in Schools

Mindfulness as a subject and guiding principle in school has been a popular topic of research in recent decades, which means we have a lot of information on how mindfulness is best applied in schools and how this benefits students, teachers, and the community at large.

How to Teach and Apply Mindfulness

Researcher Erica Baxter (n.d.) from Surya Chandra Healing Yoga has some helpful suggestions for those looking to implement mindfulness programs in their school:

1. Ensure that support comes from the top down.

2. Teachers and staff should have training to help them reinforce any lessons taught by professional mindfulness instructors.

3. Teachers should show full support for the mindfulness program to encourage their students.

4. Parents should be involved and incorporate some aspects of mindfulness practice at home; a separate course for parents may be a best practice.

Richard Burnett (2009) echoes some of Baxter's sentiments but gets a bit more specific as well. According to him, it's vital for teachers and instructors of mindfulness to:

Strike a balance between variety and structure in mindful activity; there must be some repetition to allow students to build up their practice, but too much and you will find them disengaged.

Offer a long-term, "drip feed" approach to mindfulness when possible; students may learn better with this method rather than the intense, all-at-once method that adults are subjected to.

Be flexible! Some exercises and lessons simply won't work with space and resources available to you in the classroom, and you need to be ready for that.

If you've decided to start incorporating mindfulness into your classroom, this evidence-based introductory lesson from the Mindful Schools organization can help you get started. It includes an exercise on mindful listening, a quick wrap-up, and a short journal entry to engage your students in mindfulness practice.

For more information and other ideas on how to get your students into mindfulness, check out the Activities and Teaching Resources page at the Mindful Teachers website-it's got a bunch of good suggestions!

25 Benefits of Incorporating Mindfulness in the Classroom

The Mindful Schools organization lists ten major areas in which studies have shown mindfulness can have a positive impact, including:

Attention and focus

Better grades

More effective emotion regulation

Better behavior in school

Greater empathy and perspective-taking

Better social skills

Reduced test anxiety

Less stress

Decreased frequency/severity of posttraumatic symptoms

Lower rates/severity of depression

These findings are indeed backed up by research; a 2015 study on mindfulness education in schools found that:

1. Mindfulness helps students and staff manage their stress more effectively and work through it more quickly.

2. Frequent mindfulness practice-even micro-sessions of a few minutes or less-imparts health benefits.

3. Research suggests that mindfulness programs can improve cognitive performance as well as resilience to stress.

4. Mindfulness programs are easily developed and adapted for specific ages and contexts.

5. It is relatively easy to incorporate mindfulness into schools, provided there is sensitivity to the developmental stages and needs of the students (Bostic, Nevarez, Potter, Prince, Benningfield, & Aguirre, 2015).

Further, a review by Erica Baxter (n.d.) found that mindfulness has proven to help children and adolescents with:

Reducing their anxiety.

Helping them reduce and/or manage their stress.

Improving their attention and ability to focus.

Managing their emotion reactivity.

Increasing their self-awareness and self-regulation.

Helping them find peace.

Encouraging their ability to calm themselves and regulate their emotions.

Improving their executive function and higher-order abilities (i.e., planning, strategic thinking).

Decreasing their test anxiety through enhancing memory and concentration, and reducing mind-wandering/daydreaming.

Mitigating or reducing ADHD symptoms.

What Does a Mindfulness Curriculum Include?

A mindfulness curriculum generally includes mindfulness content delivered in short weekly (or more frequent) sessions that involves both the principles of mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness.

Depending on the specific school and the program they choose, the curriculum may include information on important concepts and definitions (e.g., awareness, acceptance, mindfulness, meditation), exercises (e.g., the body scan, mindful breathing, mindful awareness of the senses), and other mindfulness content that can be used by students in class or at home (e.g., guided meditations, relaxation imagery, written instructions, videos).

For specific ideas on what to include in a mindfulness curriculum, check out the resources and activities listed below.

31 Resources and Activities to Implement Mindfulness

We'll start with the youngest group and work our way to adults. So first up-teaching mindfulness to toddlers and preschoolers!

Using Mindfulness in Early Childhood Education and Preschool

This great piece from Cassie Nguyen (2017) at TeachStarter describes 18 quick mindfulness activities you can use to promote mindfulness in your classroom.

You could implement the quick Mindful Breathing exercise:

Students can stand or sit for this activity.

sk students to put both hands on their belly.

Students should close their eyes, or look down to their hands.

Guide students in taking three slow deep breaths in and out to see if they can feel their hands being moved.

You may like to count "1, 2, 3" for each breath in and "1, 2, 3" for each breath out, pausing slightly at the end of each exhale.

Encourage students to think about how the breath feels, answering the following questions silently, in their mind.
o What is moving your hands? Is it the air filling your lungs?
o Can you feel the air moving in through your nose?
o Can you feel it moving out through your nose?
o Does the air feel a little colder on the way in and warmer on the way out?
o Can you hear your breath?
o What does it sound like?

Or, you might want to try the Body Scan exercise for children:

Students lay on the floor, with their eyes closed if they are comfortable (or they may prefer to look at the ceiling).

Encourage students to pay attention to their feet for 5 or 10 seconds.

Questions to ask during a body scan:
o How does this body part feel?
o Is it cold or warm?
o Does it feel tight or relaxed?
o Is all or part of that body part touching the floor?
o Or clothing?
o What does that feel like?

Move on to their toes, then ankles, then calves and knees. Continue body part by body part until you reach the head.

Question how each part of the body feels to bring students' awareness to their body in the moment.

If there is tightness or stress, imagine breathing the stress out of that part of the body with each exhale.

You could also try the Mindful Steps exercise:

This activity is best completed outdoors and if suitable, students may like to walk barefoot.

Give students a clear boundary for where they can walk during this activity.

Each student selects a small area where they can walk in a line for about 5 or 6 steps and back then back to where they started without getting into another person's way.

Begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Take 5 or 6 steps in one direction, turn slowly and then take 5 or 6 steps back to where you started.

While walking, students bring their awareness to their breath and their body.
o What does the ground feel like under your feet?
o Which part of your foot touches the ground first when you take a step?
o Does your body feel heavy or light today?
o Are you slouching when you walk?
o Or, is your back up quite straight?
o Try not to change the way you walk, but instead just notice how your body naturally moves.

If none of these catch your attention, perhaps you would like students to find the rhythm of their Heartbeat:

You might like to begin this practice with three deep breaths, or the Shark Fin activity (#4 above).

Students place their fingers or hands over the part of their body where they can best feel their pulse:
o On the side of their neck, under their jaw,
o Inside their wrist, or
o Over their heart.

Ask students to close their eyes and notice how quickly or slowly their heart is beating.

Encourage them to think about their current state of emotion and consider if this might be connected to how quickly or slowly their heart is beating.

Direct students to stand and jump up and down on the spot ten times.

Students return to sitting and feel their heartbeat again, noticing any changes.

Students may like to close their eyes and focus on their heartbeat until it slows back down.

Mindfulness Education for Elementary and Primary School

While many of the exercises above will work for older children as well, there are some exercises and activities specifically designed for children in elementary/primary school.

Kaia Roman (2015) from Mind Body Green offers 7 fun ways to teach mindfulness to children of this age, including the Bell Listening Exercise:

Ring a bell and ask the kids to listen closely to the vibration of the ringing sound.

Tell them to remain silent and raise their hands when they no longer hear the sound of the bell.

Then tell them to remain silent for one minute and pay close attention to the other sounds they hear once the ringing has stopped.

After, go around in a circle and ask the kids to tell you every sound they noticed during that minute. This exercise is not only fun and gets the kids excited about sharing their experiences with others, but really helps them connect to the present moment and the sensitivity of their perceptions.

You could also try Roman's Breathing Buddies exercise:

Hand out a stuffed animal to each child (or another small object). If room allows, have the children lie down on the floor and place the stuffed animals on their bellies.

Tell them to breathe in silence for one minute and notice how their Breathing Buddy moves up and down, and any other sensations that they notice. Tell them to imagine that the thoughts that come into their minds turn into bubbles and float away.

The presence of the Breathing Buddy makes the meditation a little friendlier and allows the kids to see how a playful activity doesn't necessarily have to be rowdy.

If you really want to engage the students' senses in their mindfulness practice, try the Smell & Tell exercise:

Pass something fragrant out to each child, such as a piece of fresh orange peel, a sprig of lavender or a jasmine flower.

Ask them to close their eyes and breathe in the scent, focusing all of their attention only on the smell of that object. Scent can really be a powerful tool for anxiety-relief (among other things!).

Another sense-focused exercise is called The Art of Touch:

Give each child an object to touch, such as a ball, a feather, a soft toy, a stone, etc.

Ask them to close their eyes and describe what the object feels like to a partner.

Then, have the partners trade places. Both this exercise and the previous one are simple, but compelling, ways to teach the kids the practice of isolating their senses from one another, and tuning into distinct experiences.

Click here to see the other mindfulness exercises for young students.
The Mindful Jar
This exercise by Karen Young (2015) at Hey Sigmund is a great tool you can use as an educator or a parent to introduce your charges to mindfulness.

Follow Young's instructions to create a mindful jar:

Start with a jar and fill it almost to the top with water. Into the water, add a few big dollops of glitter glue (or school glue and dry glitter). Pop on the lid and give the jar a shake.

Here are some words:
'Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you're stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That's why it's so easy to make silly decisions when you're upset - because you're not thinking clearly. Don't worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grownups too). [Now put the jar down in front of them.] Now watch what happens when you're still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you're calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer.'

The beautiful part of this exercise is that while they are learning about their emotional selves, they are also engaging in an act of mindfulness as they watch the glitter fall to the bottom of the jar.

The Mindful Snack
If it's around snack time, you might find this activity from Young (2015) to be even more engaging.

Here's how you do it.

Next time you have a bite to eat together, try mindful eating for a few minutes. Use a script like this to guide your children through the exercise:

'Let's try something called mindful eating. It's where you slow things down when you eat so you can notice things you don't usually notice. What does your food feel like to touch? What about the smell? What if you squish it a little - what does that feel like? Now take a bite but chew very slowly. Really notice your mouth moving up and down. Can you feel the food against your tongue and between your teeth. What does it taste like? What does it feel like? Keep chewing for a little while (20 to 30 seconds). When you're ready, notice what the food feels like as it moves down your throat and towards your belly.'

Mindfulness Education for High School Students

The tack you'll want to take with older students (those in junior high and high school) is a bit different-rather than focusing on being silly and having fun, they may appreciate a simple break from the grind and some good information on how mindfulness can help them.
A Mindful Moment
Start with a quick exercise that's simple yet effective, like beginning class with a mindful moment.

Here are the instructions from Sarah Beach at Left Brain Buddha (n.d.):

For middle and high school students, the school day is pretty busy! Science to math to history to PE to English to Spanish, punctuated by the crazy state-fair midway chaos known as "passing time." Even in elementary school, kids spend a lot of their day taking in information, responding to the environment, interacting with others, and otherwise just being "ON." We rarely give them a moment to pause, settle their nervous system, and refocus their attention and energy on a new task.

At the beginning of class, or after a transition, you can take a mindful moment: invite kids to close their eyes (if they're comfortable doing so), and take a few deep breaths. They can pay attention to breathing - what does it feel like when they breathe in and out? Or they can notice their thoughts - is their mind really busy or quiet right now?

A Mindful Break
This clever exercise comes from a middle school teacher at the 2015 Education Minnesota conference and can be a fun and engaging way for older students to practice mindfulness (and get a sense of autonomy and responsibility to boot!).

This is how to do it:

1. At the beginning of each class, assign a bell to one student. Pick a different student each class. During that day's lesson, the student is instructed to ring the bell when he or she feels the class needed a break (you may want to set some limits here, such as no more than two breaks during a 50-minute class).

2. When the student rings the bell, even if the teacher is mid-sentence, the class will stop. In silence, everyone will stand up and stretch, and then sit down for 30 seconds or so of mindful breathing. Then, the student who rang the bell will prompt students to silently think of something they are grateful for.

3. After this brief interruption (it should only take a minute or two), the class will resume where it stopped.

4. This is a quick practice that gives both students and teachers a well-deserved and often much-needed break. Giving students ownership over the break and mindfulness exercise enhances their engagement in the practice, and it can also give the teacher valuable information about when students' attention is waning.

Check in With Your Attention
If giving a student free reign with a bell doesn't sound like it will work in your classroom, try the attention check exercise instead.

In this exercise, you (the teacher) will keep control of the schedule and you can introduce it when you see fit. You can have students practice this exercise at any point in the class, even during the middle of a lesson if you think students really need it.

To implement it, all you need to do is stop whatever the class is doing and tell the students to hit pause and check in with their attention. Ask them:

Is your attention here, in class?

Was your mind wandering?

If so, where did your attention go?

At this point, you should be sure to tell them that a little mind-wandering is totally normal and healthy, but emphasize that they ultimately have control over their mind; they can catch their wandering brain in the act and gently guide it back to the present if they so desire!

Encourage them to take a moment to notice what their mind is doing and remind them that they have a choice about where to direct their attention.
End with a Mindful Moment
To bookend your mindfulness lesson (or your class in general), try this exercise. It's a good way to give "closure" to the lesson in a way that is likely more mindful, calm, and peaceful way than usual!

Here's what you do:

1. At the end of class, give students around 3 to 5 minutes to focus on their breathing. Instruct them to close their eyes if that feels comfortable, and simply focus on their breath-coming in, and going out.

2. Tell the students to think about what they have learned and accomplished in class today.

3. Give them a few quiet minutes to settle and bring themselves back into balance.

4. End with a positive statement; this can be about how much you care about them, how much you believe in them, or how hard they worked today.

This simple activity can act as an excellent closing activity for your lesson.

To see these exercises from Sarah Rudell Beach in more detail, read about them here.

Mindfulness Education for Continuing and Higher Education

If you work with college students, graduate students, or continuing professionals (or if you belong to one of those groups yourself), never fear-there are mindfulness opportunities and resources for you too! Not only can most of the activities and exercises above be adapted for use with young adults, and not only do most of the mindfulness-based stress reduction () and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy exercises (MBCT) also apply for college students, there are many organizations that specifically target this audience in both mindfulness research and application.

If you're interested in making mindfulness a central component of your education-related career, you should definitely get familiar with the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE). This organization is described as:

"a multidisciplinary academic association with an international membership of educators, administrators, staff, students, researchers, and other professionals committed to the transformation of higher education through the recovery and development of the contemplative dimensions of teaching, learning, and knowing" (ACMHE).

You might also be interested in the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Mindfulness for Educators program, a program designed to help educators teach, manage stress, and balance their work and life more effectively. Learn more by clicking here.

If you're a college student or if you work directly with college students, you should know about Koru Mindfulness. Koru Mindfulness is:

"an evidence-based curriculum specifically designed for teaching mindfulness, meditation, and stress management to college students and other young adults."

It consists of three core components:

1. Koru Basic - an introduction to mindfulness and meditation, taught as a weekly, 75-minute class over four weeks by a trained and certified Koru Teacher.

2. Koru 2.0 - an "advanced" class for students who have completed Koru Basic and are eager for more mindfulness; this course also consists of weekly, 75-minute classes taught over four weeks.

3. Koru Retreat - a half-day silent mindfulness retreat for students wanting to try a more intense mindfulness experience.

Koru Mindfulness also offers training for teachers to deliver the mindfulness curriculum. Click here to learn more about all of Koru's offerings.

Mindfulness Education in the UK and Ireland

If you're based in the UK or Ireland and you're interested in learning more about mindfulness education (as either a student/participant or as a teacher or administrator), you have several options available to you. Check out the organizations and links below to learn more.

The Mindfulness Initiative Training for Kids (UK, link)

Oxford Mindfulness Centre MBCT Teacher Training Pathway (UK, link)

Professional Training in the Applied Use of Mindfulness for Children from the British Mindfulness Institute (UK, link)

Mindfulness Centre Professional Training (Ireland, link)

Irish Mindfulness Institute, Mindfulness Courses (Ireland, link)

Irish Mindfulness Academy Courses for Individuals, Professionals, Diploma in Mindfulness and Positive Psychology, Mindfulness for Wellbeing in Schools (Ireland, link)

Being Mindful Online Mindfulness Training (online, but based in Ireland, link)

The Mindfulness in Schools Project (Training)

The Mindfulness in Schools Project is perhaps the most well-known and influential mindfulness in education training program in the UK, and they offer tons of helpful resources, classes, and full-length trainings that you may find helpful.

Check out the links below to see for yourself:

For other resources and UK-based training programs on parent and teacher mindfulness, check out this link.

Mindfulness Education in Australia and NZ

There are also a few different options in Australia and New Zealand, including a couple that have really taken off. Check out the links and organizations in this list to learn more:

Mindfulness for Primary School Classroom Teachers One-Day Training (Lismore Area, Northern NSW) (Website)

Mindfulness Skills for Teacher Well-Being (Australia) (Website)

Whole of School Mindfulness Programs (customized to the school; in Australia) (Website)

Kids Matter AU Upcoming Sessions (Australia) (Website)

Mindfulness Meditation Australia Courses (Australia) (Website)

Pause, Breath, Smile Educator Training from the Mindfulness Education Group (New Zealand) (Website)

Mindful Parenting and Teacher Training Programmes from Mindful Schools NZ (New Zealand) (Website)

The Mindfulness in Education Network Conference

The Mindfulness in Education Network (or MiEN) is an organization that was established by students, colleagues, and peers of Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. This group came together in 2001 to affirm that mindfulness can act as a treatment and prevention measure to the increasing stress, conflict, and confusion in both educational settings and in the world overall (www.mindfuled.org).

Each year since 2008, the MiEN organizes a conference to host mindfulness researchers, educators, instructors, and anyone interested in the benefits of mindfulness in education. This year's conference has come and gone, but you can learn more about past conferences on MiEN's website. To see information on these conferences, click here (2018 conference) or here (2008 to 2017 conferences), and keep an eye out for the 2019 conference!

Recommended Books and Handbooks

As a hot topic in psychology and in pop culture lately, it's no surprise that there are a ton of books on mindfulness out there. If you're interested in learning more, check out our recommendations here:

Important TED Talks

If TED Talks are more your "style" than books, you're in luck! There are five great TED Talks on mindfulness, specifically mindfulness in education, that you can watch whenever you find the time:

Mindfulness in Schools by Richard Burnett

Mindfulness in Education, Learning from the Inside Out by Amy Burke

Why Aren't We Teaching You Mindfulness? By AnneMarie Rossi

All it Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes by Andy Puddicombe

Mindfulness and Neural Integration by Daniel Siegel

A Take Home Message

I hope this piece has sparked your interest in learning more about incorporating mindfulness in education, or-better yet-sparked your interest in actually doing it!

The research behind mindfulness in education is not completely unanimous in its positive findings, and there may be some as-yet-unknown factors that impact outcomes, but it's pretty clear that practicing mindfulness doesn't do any harm!

If this piece captured your attention and you want to dive deeper into the possibilities presented by incorporating mindfulness into education, please refer to the links above and the references to learn more.

Do you have any experience incorporating mindfulness into the classroom? Have you encountered it as a student, as a teacher/instructor, or both? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section!

Thanks for reading, and may you stay present and grateful for each moment!

References

Baxter, E. (n.d.). Mindfulness in schools: Benefits for students, teachers, and parents. Surya Chandra Healing Yoga. Retrieved from http://www.suryachandrahealingyoga.com/images/mindfulnessInSchools_ericaBaxter.pdf

Beach, S. R. (n.d.). 5 mindfulness practices to bring to your classroom. Left Brain Buddha. Retrieved from http://leftbrainbuddha.com/5-mindfulness-practices-bring-classroom/

Bostic, J. Q., Nevarez, M. D., Potter, M. P., Prince, J. B., Benningfield, M. M., & Aguirre, B. A. (2015). Being present at school: Implementing mindfulness in schools. Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics, 24, 245-259. doi:10.1016/j.chc.2014.11.010

Burnett, R. (2009). Mindfulness in schools: Learning lessons from the adults - secular and Buddhist. Mindfulness in Schools. Retrieved from https://mindfulnessinschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mindfulness-in-schools-dissertation-Burnett.pdf

Campbell, E. (2013). Research round-up: Mindfulness in schools.

https://ibme.info/ (Inward Bound Mindfulness Education website)

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go there you are. London, UK: Piatkus.

http://www.mindfuled.org/

www.mindfulschools.org

Nguyen, C. (2017). 18 amazing mindfulness activities for the classroom. Teach Starter: The Chalkboard. Retrieved from https://www.teachstarter.com/blog/classroom-mindfulness-activities-for-children/

Roman, K. (2015). 7 fun ways to teach your kids mindfulness. Mind Body Green Relationships. Retrieved from https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-18136/7-fun-ways-to-teach-your-kids-mindfulness.html

Young, K. (2015). Mindfulness for children: Fun, effective ways to strengthen mind, body, spirit. Hey Sigmund. Retrieved from https://www.heysigmund.com/mindfulness-for-children-fun-effective-ways-to-strengthen-mind-body-spirit/

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Mindfulness in Education: 31+ Ways of Teaching Mindfulness in Schools

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Last Updated on Sharing is caring. Mindfulness is not only a popular topic for researchers and academics; it's also becoming quite the mainstream phenomenon. One of the reasons for the popularity of mindfulness is its simplicity. It is easy (relatively, anyway), inexpensive, and can be practiced by anyone at any time.

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Mindful Schools | Mindfulness for Your Students, Teachers, and School Community

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Mindful Schools transforms school communities from the inside out. We've trained over 50,000 teachers and educators who have impacted over 3 million children worldwide.

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Alison, a young five-year-old I taught recently, struggled with separation anxiety at the beginning of the year. She had a hard time saying goodbye to her dad when he dropped her off in the mornings. On one particularly difficult day, she went through all the usual routines-blowing a kiss, waving goodbye at the window, drawing a picture for her dad-but was still distressed.

Though upset, Alison knew what to do. She grabbed her stuffed animal and made a beeline to the quiet place. After ten minutes of cuddling with her stuffy and looking at a book, she joined the group, happily and on her own. Not that Alison wasn't sad the next day when her dad left, but she had a way to help herself feel better.

Based on ideas in Jane Nelsen's book Positive Discipline in the Classroom, the quiet place is a space in my classroom where children can go voluntarily to comfort themselves. The quiet place is different from the time-out space: in my classroom these are two separate places with different purposes.

I introduce the quiet place in the first week of school, before we launch into academics, before we learn to use classroom materials, before we even begin thinking about our hopes and dreams for school or what our classroom rules should be.

During this week I introduce basic classroom routines such as responding to the quiet signal, raising a hand to speak during meetings, circling up, and walking in a line down the hall. Just as these classroom routines provide a sense of order and security, the quiet place reassures children that their personal emotional needs will be taken care of. With this reassurance, children will be free to think about the needs of others and able to open their minds to learning.

Introducing the quiet place

I begin by talking with the children about times when we're too sad or upset to think. I tell them that everyone feels that way sometimes and that by taking some time alone, we can help ourselves feel better. Then, when we feel better, I say, we'll make better decisions about taking care of ourselves and others.

Young children tend to like enclosed, private spaces. I prepare such a space ahead of time. But now the children and I think together about its contents. If the purpose of the quiet place is to help us feel better, what might we put there? Pillows, stuffed animals, books, and drawing materials are usually the first things children mention. After gathering some of the materials the children name, I ask them to help arrange the items in the space.

Teaching when and how to use the quiet place

Although I sometimes suggest that a student go to the quiet place (I never tell or insist that a student go), my goal is for students themselves to know when it would benefit them to go.

So, once the quiet place is set up, we talk about some specific reasons why someone might use it. The typical causes of distress for children may differ depending on their age.

"You might feel sad because you miss your mom," a new kindergartner might say.

"You might be upset because someone cheated at checkers," a first grader might say.

A typical seven-year-old's response might be, "You might feel mad because someone wouldn't sit with you at lunch."

And an eight-year-old might suggest, "You might feel angry because you couldn't play kickball at recess."

Next, we talk about how to go to the quiet place, how to be in it, and how to come back, all without disturbing others in the class. We name specific actions: walk in a normal, calm way; keep our hands to ourselves when we walk to the spot and back; keep our mouths quiet or only humming softly while we're there; and so forth.

But talking isn't enough. Children also need to see what these expected behaviors look like and experience what they feel like. So after we've named the behaviors, we model them. First I demonstrate going to the quiet place, staying there a while, and coming back. Then I let the students demonstrate. I allow plenty of time so that everyone who wants to demonstrate can do so. Because children will be using the space when they're upset, this rehearsing is especially important. (See the article "Bringing Classroom Rules to Life" for more about modeling.)

Additional tips for effective use

Get clear on what you will and won't allow in the space.

It's important to let the children help create the quiet place. At the same time, for safety and other reasons, the teacher needs to set some limits. For example, I don't allow smooth rocks (even though some children find them soothing to touch) because they can be thrown. I don't allow music because children too easily get absorbed in the music and forget to come back. One year, students wanted to use our reading corner for the quiet place. I vetoed that because it was important to preserve a nice space for reading.

Teach children how long to stay in the quiet place.

I tell them to stay "until you feel calm" or "until you feel you can take care of your problem." This usually translates to a five- to ten-minute stay.

Make sure children don't use the quiet place to avoid doing something.

Some children may use it to avoid doing a hard assignment, working with a certain partner, or sitting through a meeting. In these cases, I never tell children they can't go to the quiet place. I do tell them they'll have to make up the work they missed, perhaps during recess or choice time. Usually, the children feel better very quickly and return to the task at hand.

Watch for children who are very reluctant to use the space.

Occasionally when I suggest that a child use the quiet place, the child will absolutely refuse or will only go if I go with him/her. There are many possible reasons for this. Whatever the reason, I know it will take longer for these children to learn to comfort themselves. To help them along in the process, I come up with some interim steps, such as bringing a comfort item to their seat or coming to sit next to me when they're upset.

Have a plan in place for children who are too upset to use the quiet place.

Sometimes a child is too distressed to use the quiet place: the child might need one-on-one attention from an adult or might not be able to use the quiet place without disturbing other children. In this case, it's important to have another plan that provides for the child's safety and minimizes disruption to the rest of the class.

The ultimate goal: helping children find the quiet place within

As the year goes on and children become more adept at using the quiet place, I begin to see them managing their feelings in the moment without needing the physical space.

Surprisingly, this is often true for some of the most strong-willed children. Louisa was an energetic, highly determined six-year-old who hated to lose. She argued when she was tagged and cried when she couldn't be first. Early in the year, after losing a game and at my suggestion, Louisa would go to the quiet place just as she was about to have a tantrum. She'd snuggle, she'd cry quietly, she'd brood. Then she'd come back to join the group when she felt better.

By the middle of the year, when Louisa lost a game, I often saw her manage her feelings without needing to remove herself physically from the group. Instead, she would separate herself emotionally for a moment. She would bow her head, clench her fists, pull her knees up to her chin. A minute later, she would be recovered and ready to play again.

Teaching children how to keep themselves in control in emotionally charged situations will help them enormously throughout their schooling and lives. In the case of Louisa, one of her strengths was that she cared so deeply about things. The quiet place helped her develop the inner control that would allow her to use her strong emotions effectively without erasing them.

Teachers need a repertoire of tools and techniques to help our Louisas, Alisons, and all students learn self-care, self-control, and self-discipline. The quiet place can be one important element in a repertoire for young children.
Deborah Porter is a primary grades teacher at the Heath School in Heath, Massachusetts. She has twenty-eight years of teaching experience at the primary and preschool levels and has led Responsive Classroom workshops for the past sixteen years. She is co-author of Rules in School.

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Alison, a young five-year-old I taught recently, struggled with separation anxiety at the beginning of the year. She had a hard time saying goodbye to her dad when he dropped her off in the mornings. On one particularly difficult day, she went through all the usual routines-blowing a kiss, waving goodbye at the window, drawing a picture for her dad-but was still distressed.

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School shootings like the recent one in Santa Clarita, Calif., have focused the nation's attention on school safety. And schools across the U.S. are wrestling with how to prevent themselves from becoming the site of the next tragedy.

Many schools are turning to highly visible "hardened" security measures. For example, at least eight states now have laws mandating active shooter drills in schools. But there's little research yet that shows that those drills are effective. Meanwhile, a new comprehensive report from the U.S. Secret Service underlines the agency's previous findings that there is one safety approach that does work: threat assessment, as part of a comprehensive program of social and emotional support for students.
Active shooter drills can scare vulnerable children
A new law in Illinois requires students to participate in active shooter drills at school. The drills often involve students hiding in the classroom and sometimes evacuating the school. Some parents welcome the preparation.

"I don't see any way that the drill can do more harm than if your child was caught up in a real situation and did not know what to do," says Ronick Frazier, who has two daughters in Champaign, Ill., schools.

Another Champaign parent, Dianne, says she has seen the harm these drills can do. Her daughter Rory, 7, is on the autism spectrum and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (We aren't using Dianne's full name to protect her daughter's privacy.)

In the spring, Rory's school had a "hard lockdown drill" in which students were told to stay in their classroom, remain silent and keep calm. Dianne says Rory came home upset and worried about bad guys with guns.

"It was heartbreaking. She was screaming and yelling. She loves school, and she kept yelling, 'I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back.' " After seeing Rory's reaction, Dianne says she doesn't think any kids should have to participate in drills like these.

"Fair enough," says Melissa Brymer of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. "But an emergency can happen at any point in a school day."

Brymer believes these drills can save lives, but as one recent study from Ball State University found, there's little evidence to prove that.

The study says that's partly because these incidents are so rare that there aren't enough examples for social scientists to find reliable patterns in.

Child psychiatrist Steven Schlozman says researchers have collected anecdotal evidence showing that these drills can be challenging for kids with anxiety and developmental disorders, like Rory.

"Despite people being supercareful to make this a more palatable exercise for them, they still get pretty, you know, at best unnerved and at worst pretty traumatized," Schlozman says.
Schools with lockdowns still have shootings
Meanwhile, the recent Secret Service report has shed new light on security measures such as active shooter drills.

The investigators combed databases for as many incidents as they could find in which a current or recently former student brought a weapon to a K-12 school and harmed someone. They excluded drug- or gang-related incidents. They identified 41 targeted school attacks from 2008 to 2017.

According to the report, 83% of the attacks were over in five minutes or less. And 68% of the schools already had a lockdown procedure in place - making it the most common security measure among schools in the report. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean a lockdown didn't limit the scope of an attack.

It's also worth noting, since much of the concern over lockdown drills looks at their impact on the youngest children, that only one of the targeted attacks in the report took place at an elementary school.

The report's lead author, Lina Alathari, says rather than focusing solely on what happens after an attack begins, schools need a much more comprehensive approach, emphasizing "multidisciplinary" prevention in the years, months and days before a student actually shows up at school with a weapon. That means bringing together teachers, administrators and mental health professionals, along with law enforcement if needed.

That may be surprising coming from an agency known for its metal detector sweeps and guys with the earpieces. But Alathari says the bulk of what the Secret Service does involves prevention and threat assessment.

She defines threat assessment as a proactive approach in which schools "identify students who are doing concerning behavior or may be in distress and getting them the help they need before they even resort to violence as an option."

One common source of distress, according to the report, is bullying and ostracism. Four out of five of these attackers were bullied at school, and in most cases the bullying was severe and took place over a long time period. Attackers were much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of bullying, although that was fairly common as well.

In the aftermath of the Columbine attack in 1999, in which two Colorado students killed 13 people at their high school and injured more than 20 others before taking their own lives, the Secret Service published its first review of similar incidents. Back then, 71% of attackers had been bullied. Since then, Alathari says, "it's interesting": Despite two decades of anti-bullying legislation, anti-bullying assemblies and anti-bullying curricula in schools, today the incidence is even higher.

"Assess the climate of your school," she says to school leaders. "What is the perception of bullying? What kind of intervention is taking place?"

Alathari says there is some evidence that a better school climate can directly save lives.

Alathari found that 9 out of 10 attackers give a warning sign in the form of concerning or threatening statements. The report includes anecdotes of such warnings, including this one:

[He] tweeted, "It won't last...It'll never last" and texted his ex-girlfriend asking her to meet after school so he could say goodbye. He also sent her a Facebook message that said, "read my messages tomorrow from 7:15 to 12:30." The attacker posted on Instagram, "Tell my mom I love her," and included an emoji image of a gun."

Those messages came from a 15-year-old student who fatally shot four of his classmates and injured one other in his high school cafeteria, before killing himself.

But why don't people report these warning signs? Over a decade ago, the Secret Service conducted a small study in which it talked to "bystanders" - students who had heard warnings from a fellow student before a planned attack. In six cases a shooting was prevented, and in a further nine cases a shooting happened.

In the bystander report, students who came forward told investigators they did so because they had a strong relationship with at least one adult at the school and they thought their concerns would be taken seriously. Students who did not come forward said that they thought the school would not take appropriate steps or they would get in trouble themselves.

Like the Ball State study, Alathari emphasizes that targeted attacks of this kind are extremely rare. The new report excluded attacks that seemed to be related to drugs, gang violence or disputes that merely spilled over onto school property. They were left with an average of four shootings or stabbings per year across hundreds of thousands of schools, and the report found no upward trend in the frequency or severity of attacks over time. That's yet another reason, she says, to focus on prevention efforts that can improve the school climate overall - whether or not the worst-case scenario happens one day.

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Active Shooter Drills May Not Stop A School Shooting - But This Method Could

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School shootings like the recent one in Santa Clarita, Calif., have focused the nation's attention on school safety. And schools across the U.S. are wrestling with how to prevent themselves from becoming the site of the next tragedy. Many schools are turning to highly visible "hardened" security measures.

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From the inside out.

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Kids who experience trauma can be silent sufferers. That's partly because trauma is stored in the nonverbal part of the brain so it's not something easily identified, talked about, or expressed verbally. It may only show up through behaviors. Trauma is also in the perspective of the person experiencing it, so an experience may be traumatic for one person but not for another. Because we cannot typically know which children have experienced trauma, it's important to use trauma-informed practices with all children and provide universal, trauma-informed supports throughout schools and classrooms. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is key for ensuring this happens, and this blog discusses why and how.

Adult SEL Skills Are Directly Tied to Our Ability to Be Trauma Sensitive

Trauma-informed practices are primarily about providing kids safe spaces and environments. Adults need social-emotional competencies to be able to foster this type of environment so that kids feel supported and can thrive. To be able to recognize when someone is experiencing an emotion or not feeling safe, adults need to have and use good listening skills and understand other perspectives, seeing as best they can through the child's eyes. Adults also provide safe environments by approaching kids with empathy and understanding, validating feelings and behavior, and building relationships. When we aren't calm we respond more quickly to triggers and often in negative ways, so it's important to manage our stress and control our impulses. Trauma-informed practices also means building social-emotional competencies for students to empower all who are affected by adversity and help them cope with the trauma. It would be difficult to teach, model, and foster these skills if we did not have them ourselves.

Supporting Student SEL Is a Trauma-Sensitive Practice

SEL helps children survive and cope in various situations. Trauma affects kids' social-emotional skills, such as their ability to identify, express, and manage emotions. Children exposed to trauma may internalize their feelings because they don't have vocabulary to express their experiences, or they may externalize aggression, anger, and fear because they learn to perceive situations as dangerous.

SEL teaches kids to connect their actions to their thoughts and feelings by noticing feelings and physical sensations in their bodies, such as heat (embarrassment, shame), pressure (stress), tingling, muscular tension (anger, nervousness). When kids start understanding the physical sensations of their bodies and connecting them to emotions, only then can they learn how to name and describe their feelings, such as sadness, frustration, or anger. This is how they safely learn to express their feelings in a healthy way, verbally or nonverbally, and learn the coping strategies for managing their feelings as well.

While not all kids will experience trauma, they will all face challenges at some point in their lives, so all can benefit from learning skills for managing adversity. A trauma-sensitive environment that supports kids' need to feel safe and supported-paired with strong adult social-emotional competencies and SEL supports for students-helps ensure kids will cultivate healthy student behaviors and have opportunities to thrive in the face of difficulties and hardships. So why not get started by making those explicit connections between your trauma-sensitive and SEL practices!

See how our Second Step SEL curriculum helped this Utah school district and its community after experiencing a traumatic series of suicides and deaths in 2015.

Second Step clients can use this alignment chart to help create a trauma-sensitive school.

Read more of Kim's articles on the Committee for Children blog, and check out this SEL eBook, which is a collection of articles about SEL as it relates to restorative practices, trauma-informed practices, MTSS, and character education.

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SEL and Trauma-Informed Practices-Why and How They're Connected

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It's important to use trauma-informed practices with all children. SEL is key for ensuring this happens. Read why and how.

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'COGNITIVE' VS.'NONCOGNITIVE': RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY___ PDF

"A name can matter a lot," educator David Conley wrote in a recent Education Week commentary. For years, social science researchers have used the term "noncognitive" to distinguish emotions, beliefs, and character from content knowledge, which they called "cognitive."

Peter Benson, "Sparks": How Youth Thrive
"Every teenager has a spark something inside that is good, beautiful, and useful to the world. Sparks illuminate a young person's life and give it meaning and purpose... Just ask a teen: 'Tell me what it is about you that gives you joy and energy? What's going on in those moments when life feels the richest and the fullest, with purpose and hope? What is your spark? I'm dying to know.'"

Peter L. Benson (1946-2011) was one of the world's leading authorities on positive human development.

Recent Commentary
This Is What Anger Looks Like. Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught? by Jennifer Kahn (NY Times, 9.15.13)

The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools by David Kirp (NY Times, 2.9.13)

Giving Cognition a Bad Name by Mike Rose (Education Week, 1.15.13)

Rethinking the Notion of 'Noncognitive' by David T. Conley (Education Week, 1.23.13)

Reading, Math and Grit by Joe Nocera (NY Times,9.7.12)

School of Hard Knocks by Annie Murphy PaUL (NY Times, 8.23.12)

Perhaps it's time to regard noncognitive dimensions as integral to thinking and learning, Conley says.

Are we not observing a higher form of thinking when we see students persist with difficult tasks, such as overcoming frustration; setting and achieving goals; seeking help; working with others; and developing, managing, and perceiving their sense of self-efficacy? Are these qualities not at least as important as knowing how well students recall information about the year in which the Civil War began, or how to factor a polynomial? Might what we observe when we look for noncognitive factors be a more complex form of cognition-a result of executive functioning by the brain as it monitors and adjusts to circumstances to accomplish specific aims and objectives?

A mounting body of research affirms what Conley suggests: the vital mutuality of academic, social, and emotional learning. Indeed, for researchers and educators who value social and emotional learning (or SEL), the noncognitive label has always been a misnomer. Before highlighting the research tied to SEL-which is just gathering steam-let us chart some of the influential frameworks in this burgeoning field.
Core social and emotional competencies
The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) at the University of Illinois-Chicago, identifies five interrelated sets of cognitive, affective, and behavioral competencies that evidence suggests contribute to student growth and mastery. CASEL believes these competencies can and should be taught to all students, K through 12. Daniel Goleman's landmark book Emotional Intelligence provides the theoretical foundation.

Self-awareness: The ability to accurately assess one's feelings, interests, values, and strengths and to maintain a well-grounded sense of self-confidence.

Self-management: The ability to regulate one's emotions to handle stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles; to set and monitor progress toward personal and academic goals; and to express emotions appropriately.

Social awareness: The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures; to understand social and ethical norms for behavior; and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Relationship skills: The ability to build strong relationships with diverse individuals and groups-communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, resisting inappropriate social pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking and offering help when needed.

Responsible decision-making: The ability to make constructive and respectful choices about personal behavior-taking into consideration ethical standards, safety concerns, social norms, the realistic evaluation of consequences of various actions, and the well-being of self and others.
Character
In 1992, the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics hosted a gathering of experts in ethics and character education to find ways to work together, primarily by developing a common language of core ethical values that transcend religious, political and socioeconomic differences. The Aspen Declaration on Character Education identified six "pillars of character": trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.

The current interest in character education recognizes these virtues but also aims to untwine and promote a web of skills and habits linked to achievement.

Journalist Paul Tough's popular book How Children Succeed, for example, argues that the "hidden power" of character influences why some children succeed while others fail. He focuses on skills like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence-and on the particular experiences of children at either end of the socioeconomic ladder. Tough maintains that character skills like these arise from encountering and overcoming failure. He illuminates the extremes of American childhood: "for rich kids, a safety net drawn so tight it's a harness; for poor kids, almost nothing to break their fall" (New York Times, August 23, 2012).

The "character education movement"-and the Character Education Partnership, a national advocacy group-draws energy from a wide swath of initiatives, from moral education and service learning to school safety. "Character education is simply good education," the Character Education Partnership argues. "It helps solve behavioral problems and improve academic achievement."
Positive discipline
The business of managing disruptive behavior, in and outside classrooms, has vexed educators for centuries. Today's apparent rise in school violence and bullying, coupled with zero-tolerance policies, has moved disruptive student behavior to center stage.

However, suspending and expelling students for such reasons does more harm than good, the research increasingly suggests (e.g., American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy Statement, 2013). At worst, it produces what some call the "school to prison pipeline" (e.g., Teaching Tolerance, 2013).

"Positive discipline" invokes a non-punitive approach. At the school level it addresses conflict resolution creatively through practies like peer mediation, peer juries, peace circles, and restorative justice. At the classroom level, strategies like the "Guided Discipline" program developed by Educators for Social Responsibility, help teachers organize and manage their classrooms in ways that increase students' learning and cooperation, self-management, responsible decision making, and disciplined work habits.
The benefits of social and emotional learning
The large plurality of definitions and frameworks linked to social and emotional learning pose formidable obstacles to assessing SEL's benefits. Which "interventions" (to use the language of research) hold promise and by what measures?

Some answers appear in a recent meta-analysis of 213 positive youth development, SEL, character education, and prevention interventions, by Joseph Durlak et al. (2011). It reaffirms the following earlier findings from an array of discrete studies, summarized in several academic briefs prepared by CASEL.

Student attachment to school is strongly influenced by the learning environment. Interventions that make the learning environment safer, more caring, and more participatory and that enhance students' social competence have been shown to increase student attachment to school. In turn, students who are more engaged and attached to school have better attendance and higher graduation rates, as well as higher grades and standardized tests scores (e.g., Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Osterman, 2000).

Interventions that improve classroom climate and functioning and enhance student attachment to school decrease rates of high-risk behaviors. When students are attached to school and to prosocial teachers and peers, they are more likely to behave in prosocial ways themselves (e.g, Wilson et al., 2001; Battistich et al., 2000).

High-risk behaviors in students are associated with poor academic performance. Likewise, poor academic performance is a risk factor for a variety of high-risk behaviors, while academic achievement is a protective factor (e.g., Blum et al., 2000; Maguin & Loeber, 1996).

Creating more caring and psychologically safe classroom environments also improves students' social and emotional skills. In supportive atmospheres, for example, students feel more comfortable approaching and interacting with teachers and peers, thereby strengthening their relationship skills and their ability to successfully navigate the social learning environment of the classroom (e.g., Zins et al., Rimm-Kaufman, 2006; Johnson & Johnson, 1999).

Incorporating cooperative learning techniques in the classroom enhances the quality of student learning and academic performance when compared to individualized learning. However, unless the students have good social and emotional skills- knowing how to manage and appropriately express emotions, solve problems, address conflicts, and understand the perspectives of others-the academic benefits of cooperative learning groups can be minimized or even negated (e.g., Munro et al., 2006; Johnson et al., 2000; Solomon et al., 1988).

By providing students with good decision-making and refusal skills, SEL instruction encourages students to participate in behaviors that support their positive development (e.g., Linares et al., 2005; Wilson et al., 2001).

In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough pairs his stories of individual students, teachers, and principals with the stories and research of psychologists determined to unravel the dynamics of persistence, curiosity, self-confidence, and more. He introduces us, for example, to Angela Duckworth's work on grit and self-control; Martin Seligman's investigations of optimism; Gabrielle Oettingen's research on self-regulation and goal setting; Madeline Levin's findings on the specific psychological challenges of children raised in affluence; and Claude Steele's studies on stereotype threat.

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SEL in Secondary Schools: Research & Commentary

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'COGNITIVE' VS.'NONCOGNITIVE': RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY___ PDF "A name can matter a lot," educator David Conley wrote in a recent Education Week commentary. For years, social science researchers have used the term "noncognitive" to distinguish emotions, beliefs, and character from content knowledge, which they called "cognitive."

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Why School Climate should be every principal's top priority.

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Why School Climate should be every principal's top priority.

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Every once in a while, a research finding comes along that has paradigm-shifting significance. The University of Chicago recently produced one: principals' greatest influence on student achievement is through changes in school climate.

This is true across the achievement continuum; that is, principals in both lower- and higher-performing schools contribute to student gains mainly through improvements in school climate. This challenges conventional wisdom on the many roles principals are implored to prioritize, and compels changes in policy and practice so principals can channel their time and energy to benefit students the most.

According to study co-author and director of UChicago's Consortium for School Research Elaine Allensworth:

A lot of times people think school climate is something you work on and take care of so you can get to the real work of teaching and learning, but what we find is learning is inherently social and emotional. If students don't feel safe and engaged, they aren't learning.

This echoes the scientific consensus statements on How We Learn produced by the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development 's Council of Distinguished Scientists (and, indeed, it reinforces the very name of this blog: Learning Is Social and Emotional!). These findings validate the National Commission's focus on safe, inclusive learning environments as critical to improving academic achievement and genuine readiness for college, careers, and life.

The education sector can't treat this as one more report that comes across the transom. We need to identify and act on its implications. Here are a few that strike me:

Principals and their leadership teams need valid, useful, and timely measures of school climate to focus improvement efforts. In Chicago, they've been using the 5 Essentials survey for years, based on prior UChicago research on healthy school climates. In this study, UChicago researchers found that principals who improve student achievement organize teacher teams to continuously examine students' behavior, attendance, grades, and student work―in addition to test scores―to get a holistic and real-time view of the culture of the school.

Principal candidates need to be selected and developed with a focus on their role as leader of school climate. Chicago has become the fastest-improving big district in the country through its concerted effort to seed the principal pipeline through proactive recruitment of promising teacher-leaders to become assistant principals and a residency program for aspiring principal candidates, among other strategies. Every school system needs to strategically recruit and develop teacher leaders who have shown promise in the climate-strengthening skills and dispositions of effective principals (in contrast to a 2013 Bain & Co. study finding most school systems lack a systematic approach to identifying, attracting, or developing school leaders).

Principals' roles and responsibilities need to be updated to emphasize responsibility for healthy school climate and teacher leadership as the critical vehicle for achieving it. Principals have a lot of responsibility and only so many hours in the day, and they need clear, consistent signals as well as support for shifting their focus to improving school climate as their primary responsibility. This also requires principal supervisors to have the skills and orientation to coach principals in school-climate leadership. Mixed messages or reinforcement of recent emphasis on principals as instructional leaders or human capital managers will stifle progress.

Allensworth reinforced this last point in her remarks on the study's implications. She commented that principals are often inordinately concerned with improving test scores, channeling that concern into a focus on the tests themselves through test-prep or encouraging teaching to the test, despite a lack of strong evidence for these practices. She continued:

We just keep finding over and over again, the more students feel safe and supported in school ... the stronger the learning gains and the bigger the improvement in learning gains. It's easy to get caught up in all the other things you could be doing as a principal and lose sight of the importance of students feeling safe and supported.

These are wise words from an esteemed researcher and someone who has contributed to sustained improvements in Chicago Public Schools. The challenge to all of us who are invested in improving education outcomes is to listen, learn, and act on what we now know about how students learn.
Ross Wiener is a vice president at the Aspen Institute and executive director of the Education & Society Program.

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Why School Climate Should Be Every Principal's Top Priority

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Every once in a while, a research finding comes along that has paradigm-shifting significance. The University of Chicago recently produced one: principals' greatest influence on student achievement is through changes in school climate. This is true across the achievement continuum; that is, principals in both lower- and higher-performing schools contribute to student gains mainly through improvements in school climate.

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence; Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development. Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

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Every day at Weiner Elementary School starts with a dance party, usually to Best Day of My Life by American Authors - and that's before the 7:50 a.m. bell even rings.

Then comes the morning assembly, where all 121 students and the staff gather for 20 minutes in the cafeteria of the school in Weiner, Ark. They sing songs and learn about an artist, a musician and an international city of the week.

They celebrate birthdays. A lucky student is crowned Student of the Day. And Pam Hogue makes it her goal to be an educator instead of a principal.

That assembly - and the many other things this school does to create a sense of community and happiness - is part of what experts call school climate.

"It's a feeling in a building," Hogue explains. "When you walk in here, it just feels right. It looks like a place where learning is happening."

And, like a feeling, school climate is hard to define, difficult to measure and can swing positive or negative.

A study published in the Review of Educational Research today suggests that school climate is something educators and communities should prioritize - especially as a way to bridge the elusive achievement gap. The authors analyzed more than 15 years of research on schools worldwide, and found that positive school climate had a significant impact on academics.

And here's the biggest takeaway: There's no link between school climate and socioeconomic status. In other words, there are plenty of happy schools in low-income neighborhoods, too.

"Obviously you need to have a great math teacher that can teach math, but those social and emotional connections really help in the academic area too," says Ron Avi Astor, a professor at the University of Southern California and a co-author of the study. "That creates a lot of opportunities for the low-income schools," by giving reformers more tools to think about, he says.

When Pam Hogue took over as Weiner Elementary's principal three years ago, tardiness was a problem. Enrollment was down. The community was losing faith in its public schools.

Weiner is a rural town with a population of less than 700. A majority of the kids come from farming families - soybeans and rice, mostly - and more than 99 percent receive free and reduced-price lunch.

Hogue sat down with a faculty team to envision the school they wanted - a school with the tagline "A great place to be a kid."

Now, students are rarely late (no one wants to miss out on that assembly). Average attendance is 99.93 percent this year. And most importantly, Hogue says, people in the school - students and staff - are happy.

This idea of creating a good school culture isn't new, but 2016 has been a big year for urging schools to measure it.

For the first time ever, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to include non-academic factors - like school climate - in how they gauge school success. Earlier this year, the Department of Education released an online toolbox to help administrators better measure and understand the school climate. One recent brief even linked a positive environment with improved teacher retention.

The potential payoffs are big, says Joaquin Tamayo, director of strategic initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education.

"Improving school climate is tough, it's tedious, it's incremental," he says. "But when folks can do it right, and when they really put not just their mind but their heart into it, it's just such a beautiful thing."

There's still a lot of work to be done in terms of defining, and measuring, a school's climate. A great school culture in the Bronx, for example, might require different resources than a school like the one Pam Hogue runs in northeast Arkansas.

But the new study's co-author, Ron Avi Astor, says the best schools transcend the culture of the community around them. They may differ in design, but they can feel very similar.

"They kind of see themselves as vehicles to change society - that these kids are going to go out and not just reflect where they came from and who they are, but change all that," he says. "And those are the most exciting schools."

Pam Hogue sees school climate as a launching point - a way to catapult kids toward opportunities outside their immediate environment.

"What we want to do is give our kids not only the skills but also the attitudes - things like confidence - to choose where they go in their life," Hogue says. "I want them to have the skills and the confidence to make that change."

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How A Happy School Can Help Students Succeed

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Every day at Weiner Elementary School starts with a dance party, usually to Best Day of My Life by American Authors - and that's before the 7:50 a.m. bell even rings. Then comes the morning assembly, where all 121 students and the staff gather for 20 minutes in the cafeteria of the school in Weiner, Ark.

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Help Kids Succeed Using Clifton StrengthsExplorer | Gallup

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Learn how the StrengthsExplorer online talent assessment helps 10- to 14-year-olds unlock their potential.

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Medical Career +

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"I love the posters I ordered. I put two in my office and 2 out in the waiting room of the Behavioral Health and Psychiatry Clinic at UCSF Childrens' Hospital Oakland, where I work.

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Being a 21st-century educator is a tall order. In my 15 years in the classroom, my most important "helpers" are technology, movement, and networking. Here's why.

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Onward! Emotional Resilience for Educators!

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Onward! Emotional Resilience for Educators!

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Onwardthebook.com is the companion website to the book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elena Aguilar.

Just like this website, the book details how to:

cultivate resilience

uncover your true self

understand emotions

use your energy where it counts

adopt a mindful, story-telling approach to communication and community building

create an environment of collective celebration.

Need a boost of courage?
A little inspiration?
Onward is here for you.

Jump in anywhere or
click here for an introduction.

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Onwardthebook.com is the companion website to the book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elena Aguilar. Just like this website, the book details how to: cultivate resilience uncover your true self understand emotions use your energy where it counts adopt a mindful, story-telling approach to communication and community building create an environment of collective celebration.

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$29.00

Systematically create a positive school climate, dramatically increase teaching time, foster academic success, eliminate bullying and decrease behavioral issues. School climate impacts all achievement!

Dr. Becky Bailey delivers a fresh perspective called "The School Family," creating a fundamental shift in education and classroom management. Step into a world where intrinsic motivation, helpfulness and connection govern your classroom.

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Creating the School Family: Bully-Proofing Classrooms Through Emotional Intelligence incorporates everything you need to successfully create and teach 12 classroom structures, integrating social-emotional well-being into your existing curriculum. This new title is essential for early childhood and elementary educators! Your journey to a problem-solving, caring, bully-free and academically successful classroom begins here!

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English

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Adults

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Creating the School Family: Bully-Proofing Classrooms Through Emotional Intelligence incorporates everything you need to successfully create and teach 12 classroom structures, integrating social-emotional well-being into your existing curriculum. This new title is essential for early childhood and elementary educators! Your journey to a problem-solving, caring, bully-free and academically successful classroom begins here!

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Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) | Healthy Schools | CDC

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The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child, or WSCC model, is CDC’s framework for addressing health in schools. The WSCC model is student-centered and emphasizes the role of the community in supporting the school, the connections between health and academic achievement and the importance of ev…

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How Schools are "spirit murdering" our black and brown students.

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How Schools are "spirit murdering" our black and brown students.

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Commentary

It's time to acknowledge racism is systemic in American schools

In February of 2019, a positive behavior support coach who was employed by the district in Madison, Wis., allegedly physically assaulted and ripped the hair out of the head of an 11-year-old Black girl. In the same school district, several teachers and substitutes have been fired or resigned earlier this academic year after reports they used racial slurs in the classroom. In the neighboring school district of Middleton, Wis., a school bus driver was fired after the district confirmed he had slapped a Black child. All these incidents in Wisconsin happened within months of each other.

In Binghamton, N.Y., four 12-year-old Black girls reported they were strip-searched at their school for acting too hyper and giddy in January. School officials likely assumed the girls were on drugs because their Black joy was unrecognizable. Of course, no drugs were found and the district denies strip searching the girls. However, the district does admit that asking students to remove some of their clothing is in compliance with a "sobriety check". The girls' parents dispute the district's claims, and a civil lawsuit from the parents and a third-party investigation are still ongoing.

Last Halloween, 14 staff members at Middleton Heights Elementary, 30 miles west of Boise, Idaho, were involved in dressing up as Mexicans and the border wall for Halloween. The district's superintendent issued a public apology and placed the teachers on paid administrative leave.

More From This Author:
'Grit Is in Our DNA': Why Teaching Grit Is Inherently Anti-Black
Dear White Teachers: You Can't Love Your Black Students If You Don't Know Them

Sadly, incidents like these fill my social-media timeline on a weekly basis. With regularity, school districts' spokespersons portray these incidents as isolated events, the work of a few overzealous, culturally insensitive but "good" teachers. These responses never acknowledge how racism is systemic, institutionalized, and structural, or how racism breeds and is maintained by violence.

Physical and psychological attacks on Black and Brown children's bodies and culture are more than just racist acts by misguided school educators; they are the spirit murdering of Black and Brown children. This type of violence toward children of color is less visceral and seemingly less tragic than physical acts of murder at the hands of White mobs and White self-appointed vigilantes, the shooting of unarmed people of color by police officers in their own homes and communities, or the senseless violence in some Black communities, which are all conditions of racism.

What I am talking about is a slow death, a death of the spirit, a death that is built on racism and intended to reduce, humiliate, and destroy people of color.

Legal scholar Patricia Williams coined the term "spirit murdering" to argue that racism is more than just physical pain; racism robs people of color of their humanity and dignity and leaves personal, psychological, and spiritual injuries. Racism is traumatic because it is a loss of protection, safety, nurturance, and acceptance-all things children need to enter school and learn.

The spirit murdering of Black and Brown children leaves a trail of unanswered questions: How do children learn after being physically assaulted or racially insulted by a person who is supposed to protect them, love them, and teach them? How does a Black or Brown child live, learn, and grow when her spirit is under attack at school, and her body is in danger inside the classroom? How does a parent grapple with this reality? How are children's imagination and humanity stunted by the notion that they are never safe in their schools because of the color of their skin or the God they pray to? Where does the soul go to heal when school is a place of trauma?

School officials continue to misdiagnose the spirit murdering happening in their schools every day, even in a time when folks are screaming in the streets that Black Lives Matter, demanding immigration rights, calling to end police brutality, standing up to Islamophobia and transphobia, and demanding racial justice. When schools mirror our society's hate, educational justice becomes out of our reach.
Related Video In 2016, Bettina L. Love, the author of this Commentary, spoke to Education Week about African-American girls and discipline. Here's what she had to say:
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How Schools Are 'Spirit Murdering' Black and Brown Students

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Commentary In February of 2019, a positive behavior support coach who was employed by the district in Madison, Wis., allegedly physically assaulted and ripped the hair out of the head of an 11-year-old Black girl. In the same school district, several teachers and substitutes have been fired or resigned earlier this academic year after reports they used racial slurs in the classroom.

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Hidden Brain article

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In the early 1990s, James Heckman traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas. He was there to see something that had been described to him as a miracle. It was a program for students who had dropped out of high school.

He learned that the program took high school dropouts and converted them into high school graduates within a few months. "I said, 'Wow, this is amazing,'" Heckman recalls.

The program that gave young people a second chance is now known widely across the country. It's called the GED.

Heckman, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and a Nobel laureate, wanted to know whether, on average, people with a GED were as successful as people with a high school diploma. He started by looking at their test scores.

"What really surprised me was their test scores were virtually the same," he says.

Within a few months, the GED program was allowing students to catch up with peers who had spent years in high school. But then Heckman looked further: Were GED grads holding on to jobs? In long-term relationships? Staying out of trouble?

The short answer was, no.

What was going on here? Why were GED recipients struggling so much more as adults if they had the same test scores as high school graduates?

This week, we untangle the mystery that James Heckman discovered in Corpus Christi, and the astounding implications of his findings for public policy.

Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Laura Kwerel, and Thomas Lu. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain.
Additional Resources:
"Intergenerational and intragenerational externalities of the Perry Preschool Program," HCEO Working Paper by James J. Heckman and Ganesh Karapakula, 2019.

The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life, edited by James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz, 2014.

"Quantifying the Life-cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program," by Jorge Luis García, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf and María José Prados, 2017.

"Understanding the Mechanisms Through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes," by James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, and Peter Savelyev in the American Economic Review, 2013.

"Effects of the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program on Children's Achievement and Behavior Through Third Grade," by Mark W. Lipsey, Dale C.Farran and Kelley Durkin in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2018.

"Our Proud Heritage: Two Teachers Look Back-The Ypsilanti Perry Preschool, Part I," by Louise Derman-Sparks and Evelyn K. Moore, 2016.

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What's Not On The Test: The Overlooked Factors That Determine Success

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Smarts matter. But other factors may play an even bigger role in whether someone succeeds. This week, we speak with Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman about the skills that predict how you'll fare in life.

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Ideas for K-8 Classroom

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In our work with teachers and counselors around the United States, we are in a unique position to see what trends and common issues face schools.

One particularly strong trend is an emphasis on social and emotional learning (SEL) to help students to succeed in a complex and rapidly changing world. This is no surprise to teachers. They know that the time spent in building classroom community and social/emotional skills pays handsomely in positive attitudes and greater classroom productivity.

A growing body of research validates these teachers' years of experience, demonstrating that developing students' social and emotional competence is essential for both academic and life success. It's shown that SEL positively affects the process of teaching and learning, addresses issues like bullying and discipline, improves school climate, and makes a positive difference in the lives of children and youth.

"So, how do we fit SEL lessons into a packed curriculum?" educators often ask.

A year ago, Lynea and another experienced counselor, Caroline Jones, used CASEL's research to review and distill their most effective SEL activities from their combined 60+ years of counseling experience into our newest course, Thrive! Social/Emotional Learning for Academic and Life Success.

I Can Be Grateful

An important part of the Thrive! curriculum is developing gratitude. Studies show that doing so can help maintain a more positive mood, contribute to greater emotional well-being, relieve stress and increase academic performance.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, here are 11 quick and easy ways to help nurture a sense of gratitude to nourish them long after "gratitude season" is over. Give one or more a whirl - and be sure to let us know how it goes by sharing your class' experience in the comments!

1. Grate-full-ness Moments
Have students share things for which they are grateful or something specific a classmate has done that was helpful, kind, thoughtful, etc. Sprinkle these moments throughout the day.

2. Gratitude Journals
Have one available for the whole class or individual ones for the students.

3. Gratitude Wall
Devote bulletin board or wall space for students to write their comments of gratitude.

4. Gratitude Placemats
Have students decorate their own paper placemats for a class party with things like quotes, synonyms, quality values, gratitude statements and pictures.

5. Gratitude Notes
Have students write notes of appreciation to others in class and around the school, including bus drivers, school board members, support staff, teachers, subs, other students, etc.

6. "Diamond" Words
Taking after Robert Bender'sToads and Diamonds - a retelling of the the French fairy tale "The Fairies" - have students make individual mail pockets to receive gratitude notes from each other.

7. Gratitude Garland
Write thank you sentences on strips of construction paper and staple into a garland. Some schools start the garland at the office and wrap throughout the whole building. Others might do it in their building's wings or just classrooms.

8. Gratitude Quotes
Have students find quotes about being grateful or write their own. You can also supply some quotes.

9. Gratitude Doodling
Have students draw something or someone for whom they are grateful. They can also use free-form doodling and share what their doodle means at a class meeting.

10. Gratitude Ribbon Game
Get a large spool of ribbon and give it to a student in the first row who keeps hold of the ribbon but passes the spool to the next person. This should continue until every student is holding onto a piece of the ribbon. Then use an object with a hole in it and give it to the student with the first piece of ribbon. As you play music, the students should pass the object along. When the music stops, whoever is holding the object has to give a compliment to the person sitting to their left. If time, continue playing until every student has been the recipient of a compliment.

11. Gratitude Dance
Show the"Gratitude Dance" on YouTube and have the students dance along. If they get excited about this, they can video themselves at various places around the school doing the gratitude dance. This video can be shared at class meetings or an assembly.

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11 Ideas for Cultivating Gratitude in the K-8 Classroom - Yoga Calm

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Facebook Twitter Google+ Pinterest In our work with teachers and counselors around the United States, we are in a unique position to see what trends and common issues face schools. One particularly strong trend is an emphasis on social and emotional learning (SEL) to help students to succeed in a complex and rapidly changing world.

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Teaching Procedures, Routines, and Rules During the First Week of School in Second Grade

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These kids are out of Control: Classroom management for Equity

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These kids are out of Control: Classroom management for Equity

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"These Kids Are Out of Control": Why We Must Reimagine "Classroom Management" for Equity

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Today's classrooms reimagined If you're looking for a book on how to "control" your students, this isn't it! Instead, this is a book on what classroom learning could be if we aspire to co-create more culturally responsive and equitable environments―environments that are safe, affirming, learner-c...

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop-but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior. Kounin and Gump called this the " ripple effect," and it demonstrated that efforts to control a classroom can backfire.

"The teacher who is interested in controlling ripple effects can generally do so best by giving clear instructions to the child rather than by exerting pressure on him," Kounin and Gump wrote.

Decades later, classroom management is still a thorny issue for teachers. Nearly half of new teachers report that they feel "not at all prepared" or "only somewhat prepared" to handle disruptive students, in part because the average teacher training program devotes just eight hours to the topic, according to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. This lack of training comes with a cost, as teachers report losing 144 minutes of instructional time on average to behavioral disruptions every week, which comes out to roughly three weeks over the course of a year.

Recent research confirms what Kounin and Gump discovered decades ago. A 2016 study found that while negative attention-reprimands like "Stop chitchatting!"-may temporarily stop misbehavior, students eventually became more likely to engage in disruptive behavior. Students in the study felt disengaged, had difficulty concentrating, and weren't able to effectively regulate their thoughts and emotions-a vicious cycle that "actually amplifies students' inappropriate behavior," the study authors explain.

8 Proactive Classroom Management Strategies

Instead of handling disruptions after they've happened, it can be more effective to set up conditions in which they are less likely to occur. Here are eight classroom strategies that teachers have shared with Edutopia, all backed by research.

1. Greet students at the door: At Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC, Falon Turner starts the day by giving each of her students a high-five, handshake, or hug. "During that time, I'm just trying to connect with them.... It's kind of like a pulse check to see where they are," she says.

In a study published last year, greeting students at the door helped teachers set a positive tone for the rest of the day, boosting academic engagement by 20 percentage points while reducing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points-adding roughly an hour of engagement over the course of the school day.

For older students, give plenty of warning if you need them to follow instructions. Reminders and cues are helpful ways to encourage students to follow instructions without being overtly controlling or forceful. For example, if you can anticipate a disruption-such as students getting out of their seats if they finish an assignment early-give a short reminder of what they should do instead.

Reminders are commonly verbal, but can also be visual (flicking the lights to signal that it's time to be quiet), auditory (ringing a small bell to let students know they should pay attention to the teacher), or physical (using a hand signal to let students know to get back in their seats).
Courtesy of Emily Polak
But that doesn't mean choice is always bad. Giving students a sense of ownership in the room, paired with clear expectations for behavior, can have surprisingly positive effects. A welcoming space can reduce anxiety and boost academic performance. Emily Polak, a ninth-grade teacher in Madison, Alabama, gave her room a cozier feel by adding a couch, a loveseat, rugs, a coffee table, and posters. Her students decide where to sit-but if they can't get their work done, they get moved back to a desk. "Discipline issues have significantly decreased. My students seem to feel more relaxed and more motivated in a setting that honors their choices," Polak says.

It's also helpful to avoid using the word don't, suggests Alyssa Nucaro, a sixth-grade English teacher in Memphis. Students are more likely to listen to instructions that include clear reasons.

6. Set clear expectations: Instead of just displaying rules for behavior, have a discussion with your students about why those rules matter. Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher in Portland, Maine, works with his students to create a list of norms-words such as inclusive, focused, and considerate -to build a sense of community. "It helps us own the behavior in the classroom," Shaddox says. "Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together. These are words that we believe in."

A 2017 study found that a teacher's nonverbal cues-such as smiling and making eye contact-can "reduce physical and/or psychological distance" with their students, boosting students' positive feelings toward the teacher and the course material while improving behavior.

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

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Research shows that students who feel safe and supported by adults at school are better able to learn.

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The Culture Code deciphers the secrets of highly successful groups like SEALS, Team Six, IDEO, San Antonio Spurs, Pixar, etc.
Daniel Coyle presents the argument that to achieve such successful behaviour you have to work 3 different skills that complement each other and that together result in team performance at the highest level. The book, naturally, is organized in three main chapters in which the author explores one skill at a time, presenting his theory and giving lots and lots of real examp...more

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The Culture Code deciphers the secrets of highly successful groups like SEALS, Team Six, IDEO, San Antonio Spurs, Pixar, etc. Daniel Coyle presents the argument that to achieve such successful behaviour you have to work 3 different skills that complement each other and that together result in team performance at the highest level.

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Not too long ago, many educators who complained of burnout were probably greeted with a collective shrug from school leaders. Teacher exhaustion or stress have often been dismissed as signs of weakness and an inability to cope. With schools and districts providing little in the way of support, the burden was always on educators to deal with whatever was dragging them down.

Although this scenario still plays out in too many schools, districts are becoming more aware and sympathetic to the pressures teachers face in school every day and the adverse impact it has on the profession and students. This acknowledgement leads to - hopefully, eventually - strategies and programs designed to support educators.

Experts caution, however, that policymakers resist a once-size-fits-all approach. Yes, educators are burned out, they are stressed, they are fatigued, they are demoralized, and many are now coping with trauma-all conditions with similar symptoms that require proper diagnosis to treat effectively. The trauma could be their own - or their students'.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than half of all U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma.

Whether you're a teacher, paraprofessional, counselor, or school resource officer, every staff member cares deeply about students. And that means being exposed to the traumas students bring into school every day, including poverty, grief, family problems, racism, drug abuse. The emotional and physical toll is often severe. Even if they have not endured trauma themselves, educators can begin exhibiting symptoms similar to those of their students - withdrawal, anxiety, depression, and chronic fatigue.

Secondary traumatic stress is sort of the consequence of being a good teacher. If you care about your students, you're probably not going to avoid it" - Jessica Lander, teacher

This is called secondary traumatic stress (STS), defined by the National Child Trauma Stress Network (NCTSN) as "the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another."

Secondary traumatic stress has long been acknowledged as a condition affecting professions such as nurses, child welfare workers, first-responders, and counselors. It's taken a while, but STS is "beginning to be actualized as a real condition affecting teachers," says Steve Hydon, clinical professor and director of the School Social Work Program at the University of Southern California.

"What was once referred to as stress or educators 'having a bad day' - which might still be happening - has evolved. Schools are realizing the very real presence of STS."

The condition is likely more prevalent than anyone may realize, says Jessica Lander, a high school teacher in Lowell, Mass.

"Secondary traumatic stress is sort of the consequence of being a good teacher. If you care about students, you're probably not going to avoid it."

'It Drains Us'

Lander likely helped a lot of educators begin to understand STS last year with an article she wrote for the Harvard Graduate School of Education titled "Helping Teachers Manage the Weight of Trauma," a short primer on the condition complete with recommended resources. KQED MindShift picked up the story, which was soon widely shared across social media.

Research examining the impact of STS on educators, however, remains fairly thin.

A 2012 study conducted by the University of Montana did conclude that there is an increased risk for STS in school personnel. The study analyzed over 300 staff members in six schools in the northwest United States. The researchers found that "approximately 75 percent of the sample exceeded cut-offs on all three subscales of STS. Furthermore, 35.3 percent of participants reported at least moderate symptoms of depression."

The tendency to conflate conditions persists, despite the similarity in symptoms, says Hydon.

"Compassion fatigue," for example, is often used interchangeably with STS. Compassion fatigue "generally sets in over time, hence the 'fatigue'." explains Hydon. "Secondary traumatic stress can set in almost immediately because of a student experience."

Like fatigue or burnout, STS quickly spills over into educators' personal lives and likely hastens their exit from the profession.

"It seems like teachers have in some ways become case workers," LeaAnn Keck of Trauma Smart told Edutopia. "They get to know about their students' lives and the needs of their families, and with that can come secondary trauma."

Jennifer Pacatte, a teacher in Rochester, NY, considers herself fortunate that she has a network of support outside the school. When she began her career in the mid-1990s, she admits she didn't quite realize what she was was getting herself into beyond the role she had been trained for.

"I was not really prepared for how my students' lives outside of school would seep into the classroom and how that would so deeply affect me," she recalls.

"Every day, I would go home and think about my kids and their problems. Educators take that on, and it drains us. For newer teachers nowadays, it has to be even worse. They don't have the capacity to deal with the impact."

Keeping Educators Healthy

Data from the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) showed that 46 percent of America's children had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE) with the number rising to 55 percent for children aged 12 to 17. One in five U.S. children have two or more of these experiences.

In the small rural district in eastern Washington where Steve Stroschein teaches, the number of ACEs students have experienced is staggering.

"More of our kids are affected by drug abuse, violence at home, poverty," he says. "We're a different school now than when I started in 1990, or even 2000."

As president of the Clarkston Education Association, Stroschein was concerned by the impact student trauma was having on educators in the district, particularly those just starting out. "As educators, our focus is always on the students, but we have to bring it back to ourselves. Our educators are stressed. They're struggling."

In 2018, he teamed up with the district superintendent to launch a modest initiative to help "keep our teachers healthy," Stroschein says. "We're emphasizing community-building within the school. Giving them a person to talk with, providing them with resources. We're a small district so we can make more of an effort to check in on all our staff to see how they're doing."

"It's important that they know we care. We can't leave our educators out on an island by themselves."

Last May, representatives from 39 National Education Association affiliates echoed Stroschein's concern at a gathering in Chicago to discuss trauma-informed schools. Participants noted that many members felt isolated as they neglected their own mental and physical health while they assisted students dealing with trauma.

In the resulting report, NEA and the National Council of State Education Associations issued a series of recommendations around trauma-informed schools, including advocating for comprehensive mental health and employee assistance program supports for all educators. Acknowledging the need for self-care, NEA and NCSEA also urged affiliates to promote a campaign to counter the narrative that it's somehow selfish to look after yourself.

Not Only About Self-Care

Steve Hydon says educators have a responsibility to be aware of the importance of self-care and be proactively engaged in it.

"But it is also the school's responsibility to understand that trauma is inevitable and can impact anyone," he adds. "If we want healthy teachers in our classrooms, schools must acknowledge the importance of things like staff appreciation, involvement in decision-making, vacation time, mental health awareness and professional development training on ways to build and value self-care."

It's critical that these efforts are school or district-wide, says Jessica Lander, because an inordinate emphasis on self-care or "resilience" without adequate supports places too much of the burden on the individual educator.

"What was fascinating to me when I wrote the article last year," Lander recalls, "was the number of teachers who responded by saying, 'Oh my gosh, I have been feeling these things for years, and I didn't know it had a name.'"

That can be isolating for educators, making it more likely that they think it's just an individual problem that they alone have to address.

"If the teacher doesn't know what he or she is going through," Lander says, "the school or district has an obligation to tell them, 'We are going to name it and we are going to help you.'"

It's the compassionate and right thing to do, she adds, but "no teacher will do their best work if they are suffering from STS. The bottom line is strategies to support educators are always going to help students."

Resources

NEA: Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma-Informed Schools
NEA and its affiliates are actively engaged in finding ways for schools and educators to address the issue of trauma and its implications for learning, behavior, and school safety.

National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Understanding the Impact of Trauma Work on Professionals

TraumaAwareSchools.org
Managing Secondary Traumatic Stress

Edutopia
Are You At Risk for Secondary Traumatic Stress?

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'I Didn't Know It Had a Name': Secondary Traumatic Stress and Educators

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Not too long ago, many educators who complained of burnout were probably greeted with a collective shrug from school leaders. Teacher exhaustion or stress have often been dismissed as signs of weakness and an inability to cope. With schools and districts providing little in the way of support, the burden was always on educators to deal with whatever was dragging them down.

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Below are a collection of recorded meditations, described in the book and provided here for download for free. For a full explanation of these materials, pick up a copy of or sign up for one of Elena's interactive workshops for educators.

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Self-Care: Why it's So Hard & How to Start

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Self-Care: Why it's So Hard & How to Start

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Why It’s So Hard for Teachers to Take Care of Themselves | Cult of Pedagogy

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As a whole, teachers aren’t great about taking care of themselves. But that can change, and these four steps can help make that happen.

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Listen to my interview with Elena Aguilar (transcript):
Sponsored by simpleshow videomaker and Screencast-O-Matic

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

When talking about a profession that loses 50 percent of its workforce in the first five years of their careers, it would be an understatement to say teaching is challenging. It traps us in small rooms with an unpredictable assortment of personalities, energies, and needs. It forces us to make hundreds of small, exhausting decisions every day. And over and over again, it puts us in predicaments that test our confidence, wear out our patience, and break our hearts. You can learn all the techniques, plan outstanding lessons, and set up a water-tight classroom management system, but to do this work and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require.

And at this particular moment in history, teaching may be harder than ever. Systems have been put in place that make the work seem almost impossible, and the powers that be seem to be rooting against our success. A lot can be done to change that, to make the challenges of teaching more satisfying and less...soul-sucking, but on most days it can seem like those changes are pretty far outside of our sphere of influence. Finding the courage and energy to push for change despite how hard it is? That requires resilience, too.

And our teacher training never prepares us, never teaches us exactly how to develop that resilience. In fact, in my own training, the topic of my emotional state as a teacher never came up once.

The good news is that we now have a resource that focuses entirely on the topic of teacher resilience. In her book, Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Teachers, instructional coach Elena Aguilar walks us through twelve habits that teachers can develop to strengthen their emotional resilience. The book and its companion workbook are organized around a year-long calendar; Aguilar recommends that teachers work through the book slowly.

"The workbook has over 365 exercises, many of which you'll probably want to repeat more than once," she says. "Ideally people will be engaging in this learning with friends and colleagues so that they can have the kinds of conversations that will make this learning really sink in and stick."

Let's take a peek at the 12 habits now. My hope is that in getting a better understanding of the factors that contribute to emotional resilience, you'll see areas that you can improve for yourself, and this in turn will allow you to not only stick with this incredibly important work, but find new ways to effect change, inspire others, and thrive.

12 Habits that Build Resilience

In the book, Aguilar explains how developing each of these habits contributes to resilience. She recommends focusing on a different habit each month, taking the whole month to learn about, reflect on, and develop practices that strengthen that habit. Below each habit is the month Aguilar suggests as an ideal time to focus on it: This is based on a typical American school calendar, where the school year starts around August/September and ends around May/June. If your calendar is different, you may want to make adjustments accordingly.

1. Know Yourself

Suggested month: June

Taking the time to reflect on and get clear about your values, your preferences, your skills and aptitudes, and your sociopolitical identity can help you develop a strong sense of purpose. This makes you more likely to respond to difficult situations in ways that are consistent with that purpose. "Being really anchored in your purpose," Aguilar explains, "being really clear about what you want to be doing in life, helps you deal with challenges and setbacks."

2. Understand Emotions

Suggested month: July

Emotions "can be tremendous resources and sources of energy," Aguilar says. They key is figuring out "how to have healthier relationships with them, how to understand them, name them, accept them, and then work with them." During this month, Aguilar has teachers examine the way emotions influence our thinking (and vice-versa) and how to work with them, instead of against them.

She's especially interested in how we deal with anger. "There have been times when I've acted from anger, and it hasn't been productive," she says. "And there are other times when I figured out how to use my anger as a fuel and as energy, how to act from a place of kindness and compassion, but not suppress my anger."

3. Tell Empowering Stories

Suggested month: August

"The space where we can have the greatest impact on our resilience is between a thing that happens and how we interpret and make sense of that thing," Aguilar says. That interpretation takes the form of a story we tell ourselves.

"So for example, a student rolls her eyes at you. That's the thing that happens," she says. "How you make sense of and interpret that event is precisely the point where either your resilience can be drained or filled, because you could interpret her eye rolling as This student doesn't respect me, or you can interpret that event as, This is very typical behavior from 12-year-olds, and I'm going to move on to the next part of the lesson. In that moment, if we can hone our ability to expand that space between what happens and how we respond and how we interpret it, we have so much more power then to cultivate our resilience."

4. Build Community

Suggested month: September

If we develop habits that nurture relationships with our colleagues, students, parents, and administrators, we strengthen our resilience. "There's actually medical research saying that isolation is more dangerous to your physical health than smoking," Aguilar says. "Teaching can be such a lonely experience, and I think anything that we can do to begin cementing those connections will just help us so much when things get rough." The beginning of a school year is an ideal time to start, and by putting relationship-building habits in place early, that community can be a source of strength all year long.

5. Be Here Now

Suggested month: October

"Learning how to be in the present moment without judging it can help us to experience acceptance. It helps us to have clear-headedness so that we can make choices in our responses." Developing habits of mindfulness, where we focus on what is happening right now without judgment, can help us to circumvent a "triggered" reaction to daily challenges and instead respond calmly and thoughtfully. Daily meditation or even brief moments of focusing on our breath can help us hit that "pause button" and bring ourselves to that place of calm.

6. Take Care of Yourself

Suggested month: November

"It's really hard to build community or to cultivate compassion or be a learner-some of the other habits-when you're just sick, when you're worn out," Aguilar says. So this month, she recommends focusing on the habits of physical self-care, digging into the reasons why teachers so often fall short in this area. "I think people know what to do," she says. "We know we should be eating more leafy greens and exercising more and so on, but why is it so hard?" Uncovering those reasons can help with developing habits that work.

7. Focus on the Bright Spots

Suggested month: December

During this month, Aguilar guides teachers to practice giving more attention to what is working, rather than what's not. "Our brains have a negativity bias," she explains, "so everything that is challenging, that is potentially a threat, appears really vividly and clearly to us, because of the way our brains are wired, and so one of the skills that we need to hone is the ability to see all the things that are going well or even just okay."

In the classroom, for example, we can prompt ourselves to regularly notice students who are paying attention and on-task, rather than giving all our attention to the few students who aren't. By developing this habit, we increase our sense of empowerment, which in turn builds greater resilience.

8. Cultivate Compassion

Suggested month: January

When we practice compassionate thinking for others and ourselves, we become better equipped to handle difficult situations. "Cultivating compassion, broadening our perspective on how we see a situation, helps us to empathize with others, to see the long view, to take ourselves out of the drama of the moment," Aguilar says. So when students misbehave, a colleague is short with us, or a parent challenges one of our decisions, being in the habit of viewing these situations through the lens of compassion can help you not take that behavior personally, which leads to smarter, less reactive decision-making.

9. Be a Learner

Suggested month: February

"Resilient people are curious," Aguilar says. "Resilient people experience a challenge and turn around and say, Wow. That was really hard. That pushed me to my limits. What can I learn from that? Just that question alone immediately propels you into a place of being able to build your resilience." So this month, teachers are encouraged to reflect on who they are as learners, to better understand the stages of the learning process, and to practice seeing challenges as invitations to curiosity.

10. Play and Create

Suggested month: March

One tool for building resilience that is easy to overlook is the habit of play. "I think it's a human right to be creative, to create, enjoy, and appreciate art," Aguilar says. "Playing and creating can unlock inner resources for dealing with stress, for solving problems...it can help us see different things and find different approaches to tackle challenges." This month-which may hit right around spring break-teachers are encouraged to build regular periods of play and creation into their daily lives.

11. Ride the Waves of Change

Suggested month: April

The end of the school year inevitably brings all kinds of changes; some of these can completely throw us off track if we're not prepared for them. Aguilar recommends teachers spend this month looking at "how we can harness our energies to manage those changes and also direct our energy to the places that we can make the biggest difference." This practice includes slowing down, facing and dealing with fear, and mindfully evaluating situations to determine which responses will have the most impact.

12. Celebrate and Appreciate

Suggested month: May

As the school year winds down, we have lots of opportunities to celebrate our own accomplishments and those of our students and colleagues. This month, teachers are encouraged to develop daily habits of gratitude and to carry those habits throughout the year. "Even in the hardest moments," she says, "if we can shift into a stance of appreciation, we can build our resilience."

Build the Habits Over a Year

The best way to make all 12 of these habits stick is to work through them slowly, over the course of a year. Even better, do it with a group of committed colleagues.

To support you in that journey, Elena Aguilar is offering several resources:

The Onward Workbook is the companion to the book and contains 365 daily exercises aligned with the monthly habits.

The Onward website at onwardthebook.com offers downloadable mediations, printables, a self-assessment and related blog posts and videos.

The Onward Facebook page will offer private groups for each of the 12 habits, so you can study and practice that habit within a larger community.

Come back for more.
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12 Ways Teachers Can Build their Own Resilience

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Listen to my interview with Elena Aguilar (transcript): Sponsored by simpleshow videomaker and Screencast-O-Matic This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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Teacher Resilience; Why its so Important

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Teacher Resilience; Why its so Important

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Educators encounter hundreds of moments like these every day. We are challenged over and over and over by things that students do, or the unplanned fire drill, or the announcement of a mandatory meeting on Wednesday afternoon, or an upset parent showing up at our door five minutes before school starts, or the broken copy machine, or a request that we cover someone else's class during our prep because their sub didn't show, or any number of other things. Alone, these are minor inconveniences, but the sum total of these moments feels exhausting, depletes our resilience, and contributes to burnout. There is no moment more important for educators to attend to than this one between stimulus and response. If we slow down and examine these moments, if we cultivate new responses, we might just transform our schools into places where we all thrive.

Change is the only thing we can count on. It will rain when we wish it wouldn't, kids will say obnoxious things when we're exhausted, leaders will come and go. However, we have tremendous power in how we interpret what happens and, therefore, in how we respond to big and little incidents that we didn't anticipate, don't want, or don't like. The opportunity for resilience originates in how we make sense of the things that happen, because interpretation dictates actions. There are many ways to interpret a student's obnoxious comment at the end of a rainy Friday, and each of those interpretations will lead us to act in a different way. Each of those actions will have intended and unintended consequences, ripples of impact on ourselves, our class, and our relationship to that individual student. We can make a choice in these moments.

Let this sink in: We can pinpoint the exact moment when resilience can be cultivated. You can actually do something about how you experience every day; you don't have to be a victim of the turmoil and unpredictability of the world. Change is a given in life; how you respond is within your control.

I have no doubt that we all enter this field of work because we want to positively impact young people. The key to achieving our purpose lies in the moment between stimulus and response. We can meet our commitment to educational equity when we examine this moment and cultivate behaviors different than those in which we habitually engage. By cultivating resilience, we can fulfill the intentions that brought us into this profession. In addition, with this knowledge, we can do something about the exodus of teachers who quit because of burnout. We can offer our students more stability and continuity, as well as role models for managing the inevitable challenges of life.
RESILIENCE: THE WHAT, WHY, AND HOW
Simply put, resilience is how we weather the storms in our lives and rebound after something difficult. The most important thing to know is that you can increase your resilience; it's a set of adaptive behaviors. In this book, I hope to guide you in a journey to discover the resilience that already exists within you, and to discover many ways to cultivate your resilience.

Resilience is in great part about our attitude and behaviors; that's what we'll focus on in this book. However, it's also important to acknowledge that our ability to be resilient is also connected to our circumstances, which we may have only limited ability to influence. Furthermore, researchers have found that there are neurobiological underpinnings of emotional resilience (Osório, Probert, Jones, Young, and Robbins, 2017). This research seeks to understand why there's such variation in the way people respond to adversity: Some people overcome unbelievable hardship, whereas others' lives are completely derailed by intense levels of stress. Various mechanisms in our bodies, and specifically our brains, work in concert to make us more or less stress resilient across our life span. Our genetic makeup may play a role: We may actually be born with a set amount of resilience. The emerging field of epigenetics is exploring this question of how stressors that our ancestors experienced might impact our level of resilience.

Although this research is interesting and someday may point to very useful implications, we'll focus on this fact: A substantial amount of our ability to be resilient is fostered in our daily habits. This is good news. Here's an expanded definition of resilience, which forms that basis for this book. Resilience is

A way of being that allows us to bounce back quickly from adversity, and stronger than before, so that we can fulfill our purpose in life.

An adaptive, dynamic process that includes an individual's interactions over time in a complex environment. Context plays a role; resilience is not simply a function of one individual's behavior. Who we are and where we are impact our ability to cultivate resilience.

Cultivated through engaging in specific habits and by fostering specific dispositions.

What enables us to thrive, not just survive.

WHY WE MUST FOCUS ON RESILIENCE
Schools are stressful places. Regardless of whether you teach in an established, well-resourced private or suburban school or in an underfunded school in an underserved community, teaching is emotional work and is inherently stressful. In part, this is the nature of being in a helping profession and serving young people in complex organizations. Healthy stress can be okay; it can challenge us and help us develop. However, in many of our schools, healthy stress is frequently displaced by toxic stress. Toxic stress occurs when demands consistently outpace our ability to cope. Toxic stress first manifests as decreased productivity, and escalates to more serious symptoms such as anxiety, dissociation, frustration, and, eventually, burnout. Roughly half a million US teachers leave the profession each year-a turnover rate of over 20% (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014).

School leaders-both site leaders and central office leaders-must focus on boosting the resilience of staff as a lever for school transformation. Teacher attrition among first-year teachers has increased about 40% in the past two decades ( Ingersoll, Merrill, and Stuckey, 2014). A range of factors, such as morale, accountability expectations, and salaries, certainly contribute to the attrition problems, but stress and poor management of stressors are also rated as a top reason why teachers leave the profession (Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond, 2017).

Burnout is physical and emotional fatigue-and surely we can do something about that. This rate is much higher in urban areas, in secondary classrooms, and in hard-to-staff content areas such special education, math, science, and foreign languages (Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond, 2017). It is estimated that teacher turnover costs school districts upwards of $2.2 billion per year (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014) and the cost of replacing a teacher in an urban district exceeds $20,000 per teacher (Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond, 2017). For site administrators, turnover rates may be comparable, particularly in urban areas, but the data is not systematically collected as it is for teacher attrition.

Lack of resilience, therefore, has a financial cost and contributes to staff instability, which in turn negatively impacts student learning and experience. High turnover rates at schools make it hard to accumulate professional capital, hinder the implementation of programs, contribute to low levels of trust among stakeholders, and make staff and student culture fragile. It would simply make good sense, from a financial perspective, to focus on increasing staff resilience.

The end goal, of course, is not just to retain warm adult bodies in classrooms but to meet the needs of our students. Kids need passionate, effective, committed educators. In order to retain such people, school leaders need to provide teachers with resources to meet the challenges they'll encounter in their work so that they can learn from those challenges, surmount them, and fulfill their purpose. And our purpose is to ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every single child thrives-academically, socially, and emotionally. We must cultivate resilience so that all children feel that they belong to a resilient community, so that all children graduate and are eligible for the college or career of their choice, and so that all children have an expansive tool set to contribute to our society.

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Why It's So Important That Teachers Cultivate Their Own Resilience | KQED

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Educators encounter hundreds of moments like these every day. We are challenged over and over and over by things that students do, or the unplanned fire drill, or the announcement of a mandatory meeting on Wednesday afternoon, or an upset parent showing up at our door five minutes before school starts, or the broken copy machine, or a request that we cover someone else's class during our prep because their sub didn't show, or any number of other things.

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Positive Feedback and Ratio of Interactions | Safe 

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Research Citations on the Efficacy of Positive Feedback and the Ratio of Interactions

Download a PDF of this article.

There is evidence in the research literature that positive feedback and a 3:1 (at a minimum) ratio of positive to negative interactions works to motivate students. The following quotes, taken from Discipline in the Secondary Classroom advocate for these strategies. Accompanying references support each statement. Page numbers indicate the page in Discipline from which the quote is drawn.

***Positive Feedback

"...you can significantly increase the probability that your feedback will encourage and motivate students to behave more responsibly in the future" (Lalli et al., 1999; Silva, Yuille, & Peters, 2000). [pg. 151]

"...they provided specific and descriptive confirmation of what you did correctly" (Alberto & Troutman, 2003). [pg. 153]

"...remember that students' motivation to engage in any behavior will be related to the degree to which they value the rewards of that behavior AND their expectation of succeeding at the behavior" (Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001; Laraway, Snycerski, Michael, & Poling, 2003). [pg. 145]
"...observational studies regularly show that most teachers pay significantly more attention to students' misbehavior than they do to students' positive behavior. In 1971, Dr. Wes Becker wrote about studies he had done with elementary-level teachers who had been reprimanding and reminding students about out-of-seat behavior during work periods. He encouraged the teachers to reprimand students more immediately and more consistently:
"Don't miss a single student who gets out of their seat at the wrong time."
"The teachers assumed this would decrease the out-of-seat behavior. In fact, the number of students getting out of seat at the wrong times actually increased.
"Dr. Becker called this phenomenon the Criticism Trap because, although the teachers thought they were doing something effective (for example, reprimanding or issuing a consequence for an inappropriate behavior), the students who were starved for attention were getting out of their seats, at least in part, to get their teachers to look at them and talk to them. The students' need for attention was satisfied when their teachers told them to get back in their seats-which they typically did, at least initially. This, of course, tended to reinforce the nagging on the part of the teacher because the students usually sat down when asked to do so. But before long the students would realize, consciously or unconsciously, that they were not getting attention when they were doing what the teachers wanted, so they would get out of their seats again. The teachers would reprimand again, giving the desired attention, and the students were again reinforced for getting out of their seats. Although these studies were done at elementary level, the phenomenon can continue into secondary level" (Becker & Englemann, 1971). [pg. 157]

***Ratios of Interactions

"One of the most essential behavior management strategies is also perhaps one of the most difficult to implement. This strategy involves making the effort to interact with every student more frequently (at least three times more frequently) when the student is behaving appropriately than when he or she is behaving inappropriately (Henderson, Jenson, & Erken, 1986; Martens, Lochner, & Kelly, 1992) [pg. 156]

***References

Alberto, P. A., & Troutman, A. C. (2003). Applied behavior analysis for teachers (6th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Becker, W. C., & Engelmann, S. (1971). Teaching: A course in applied psychology. Columbus, OH: Science Research Associates.

Cameron, J., Banko, K., & Pierce, W. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst, 24, 1-44.

Henderson, H. S., Jenson, W. R., & Erken, N. (1986). Variable internal reinforcement for increasing on-task behavior in classrooms. Education and Treatment of Children, 9, 250-263.

Lalli, J. S., Vollmer, T. R., Progar, P. R., Wright, C., Borrero, J., Daniel, D., et al. (1999). Competition between positive and negative reinforcement in the treatment of escape behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32, 285-296.

Laraway, S., Snycerski, S., Michael, J., & Poling, A. (2003). Motivating operations and terms to describe them: Some further refinements. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36, 407-414.

Martins, B. K., Lochner, D. G., & Kelly, S. Q. (1992). The effects of variable-interval reinforcement on academic engagement: A demonstration of matching theory. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 25, 143-151.

Silva, F. J., Yuille, R., & Peters, L. K. (2000). A method for illustrating the continuity of behavior during schedules of reinforcement. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 145-148.

Download a PDF of this article.

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Positive Feedback and Ratio of Interactions

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Research Citations on the Efficacy of Positive Feedback and the Ratio of Interactions Download a PDF of this article. There is evidence in the research literature that positive feedback and a 3:1 (at a minimum) ratio of positive to negative interactions works to motivate students.

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Meaningful Feedback for Students: 5 Research-Based Tips | Edutopia

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Grieving someone who is still alive (Pt 2)

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Grieving someone who is still alive (Pt 2)

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Powerful article on grief.

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Way back we wrote an article on 'ambiguous grief' aka grieving someone who is still alive. To keep it to reasonable internet reading length, we really only told half the story. If you know anything about Pauline Boss, the ambiguous grief guru, you know she talks about two (and really more like two and a half) types of ambiguous grief. One is what we covered last time - grieving someone who is physically still in your life, but who is 'psychologically absent'. This means they are no longer the person they used to be (think dementia, addiction, traumatic brain injury, etc) If you are looking for more on that, you can check out that first post here. But Pauline Boss talks about a second, equally as significant, type of ambiguous loss - grieving someone who is physically absent.

From grieving break-ups and divorces to runaways, incarceration, immigration, foster care, estrangements, military deployments, adoption, and others. The list of these types of losses is long, so it is no surprise we get questions about them all the time. Pauline Boss describes them saying they occur when someone is 'physically absent but psychologically present'. By psychologically present she means that the person left to grieve is thinking about the absent person all the time. They are worried, they are distracted, devastated, sad, and stressed, and on and on.

These losses are open-ended, and that is in large part what Boss explores. The nature of these losses is that they create a unique stress response because of the uncertainty - a person is "gone, but not for sure". It is often unclear if or when the person will return, leaving those grieving confused and sometimes consumed by the loss. The safety of the missing person is frequently unknown. This leaves the grieving person left fluctuating between moments of hope and moments of feeling completely hopeless.

This ongoing uncertainty, according to Boss's research of over forty years, shows that this can "prevent resolution of the loss, and freezes the grief process, paralyzing couple and family functioning". As with all grief, there are no universals and there are certainly many, many cases when this doesn't occur. But the risks are increased because it becomes harder to use some of the coping strategies that work in grieving death-related losses. People often struggle to adapt or reconstruct their identity. They struggle to find meaning when circumstances or facts are unknown.

This can be complicated further by the fact that society doesn't have accepted norms or rituals around these losses. People don't often don't know how to acknowledge grief when someone has died, and they certainly don't know how to acknowledge and support it in the cases of adoption or incarceration or almost anything else on the list. The uncertainty, according to the research of Boss and her colleagues, increases the likelihood for hypervigelence (when your senses are oversensitive), anxiety, anxious attachment (when you are overly clingy and attached to a person, because you worry they will disappear), and symptoms of depression. If you've been this, it might sound familiar - every time the phone rings you startle, thinking on some level it could be news about your loved one. You can't focus because you are fixated on their safety. You extend your worries to other's you are attached to and to yourself. You obsessively feel like you can or should be doing more or doing something differently, or you obsessively think they should be doing more or doing something different.

And to boot, sometimes this type of ambiguous loss is stacked on other types of ambiguous losses. Maybe someone has physically disappeared from your life because they couldn't handle your grief after a death. Now you are left grieving both. Maybe someone with an addiction disappears for days or weeks on end, and then they do show up they are 'psychologically absent', leaving you managing both types of ambiguous loss.

I hear you screaming, "Yes! This is me! I don't need you to explain it, I need you to tell me what to do about it!"

I know, I know. The good news is, Pauline Boss has some concrete, evidence-informed guidelines. The bad news: there are no quick or easy fixes. Though she creates a nice little checklist of six tasks that can help in building resiliency, they are each an ongoing process and flexible, depending on your needs and the situation.

She suggests those dealing with an ambiguous loss should:

Finding Meaning

Adjusting Mastery

Reconstructing Identity

Normalizing Ambivalence

Revising Attachment

Discovering New Hope

Easy enough, right? Hmmm . . . . maybe not so easy.

First, let's consider what the goals are here. Boss tells us the unique challenge of this particular loss is that it is uncertainty that is ongoing and a lack of closure. Therefore, she says the goals of the above is to help people better learn to live with that uncertainty, rather than trying to resolve the situation. Since there is no clarity or solution, you have to learn to cope with that reality. Each of her six guidelines help with that.

If you want to check these out in depth, check out Boss's recent book "Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work With Ambiguous Loss" . For now I just want to mention a couple of highlights.

First, Boss things we can increase the flexibility of our thinking to help us cope with uncertainty when we learn to live with "two truths". There are countless instances where she says we think we need to either be one thing or another - hopeful or hopeless, optimistic or pessimistic. There are times where we limit what our identity looks like by believing it must be all or nothing. Instead, Boss says that living with ambiguous loss means finding more flexibility. For instance, one might consider thoughts like:

John is both missing and still part of our family.

I believe Jim is dead and I am hopeful Jim is not dead.

I both a wife and no longer a wife.

I both want certainty and don't want Jen to be dead.

Boss further tells us that many things that will help us are relational interventions. This might mean considering our identity now. Who am I now? Who is my family now? What are our roles? Is my identity more fluid that I once knew? What does it mean to be a good mother now compared to in the past? Looking at identity roles can help in finding ways to cope with the present, rather than being fixed in an identity that worked only in the past.

She encourages us to reconsider mastery, suggesting that we often want answers and clarity, but it serves us to remember that sometimes there are no answers. Hard as it is to sit with, the world isn't always fair and just, suffering is universal, and the temptation to blame (others and ourselves) to that we can create a sense of certainty is often inaccurate and doesn't help us cope. Instead, she advocates using techniques to tolerate these realities of the world by focusing on taking care of oneself - yoga, meditation, and whatever self-care helps you just be.

Boss suggests we also get real about our emotions. She thinks we need to admit the pressure we feel to 'get over' things and acknowledge that there are some things we never get over, we just learn to live with them. She encourages us to learn the difference between emotions and behaviors. She gives us permission to feel whatever we feel without judgment while becoming aware that we have control to make sure those feelings don't turn in to actions or behaviors. Even though I might think no one understands what I am going through, I still have the control to reach out to others anyway to avoid isolation and find support I never would have predicted.

Finally, she encourages us seeking ways we can both hold on and let go. She allows a space for grieving the ongoing and uncertain loss, while also making space for new attachments and hopes, being open and communicative about both. She reminds us that we can redefine hope, meaning we can become more comfortable and balanced in our ambiguity. This is no easy feat, but redefining our concepts of fairness and justice, finding space to laugh as the absurdities of the situation, and embrace hope where we can find it.

It all sounds so simple in a nice little list, when in reality is is long and complex and you may find a counselor is the best thing to help you through some of her suggestions. Alternately, some of this might already resonate and you might be thinking about where you can implement some of these ideas. Wherever you are, leave us a comment to let us know your thoughts about this type of ambiguous grief and how to cope.
As always, subscribe to get all of our posts right to your inbox!

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Ambiguous Grief: grieving someone who is still alive (part 2)

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Way back we wrote an article on 'ambiguous grief' aka grieving someone who is still alive. To keep it to reasonable internet reading length, we really only told half the story. If you know anything about Pauline Boss, the ambiguous grief guru, you know she talks about two (and really more like two and a half) types of ambiguous grief.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Vol. 70

No. 1

Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?

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Abstract

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

Feedback Essentials

Progress Toward a Goal

"But There's No Time!"

Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement.

Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback was among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has "struggled to understand the concept" (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don't even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is-and isn't.

What Is Feedback, Anyway?

The term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feedback, strictly speaking.

Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. I hit a tennis ball with the goal of keeping it in the court, and I see where it lands-in or out. I tell a joke with the goal of making people laugh, and I observe the audience's reaction-they laugh loudly or barely snicker. I teach a lesson with the goal of engaging students, and I see that some students have their eyes riveted on me while others are nodding off.

Here are some other examples of feedback:

A friend tells me, "You know, when you put it that way and speak in that softer tone of voice, it makes me feel better."

A reader comments on my short story, "The first few paragraphs kept my full attention. The scene painted was vivid and interesting. But then the dialogue became hard to follow; as a reader, I was confused about who was talking, and the sequence of actions was puzzling, so I became less engaged."

A baseball coach tells me, "Each time you swung and missed, you raised your head as you swung so you didn't really have your eye on the ball. On the one you hit hard, you kept your head down and saw the ball."

Note the difference between these three examples and the first three I cited-the tennis stroke, the joke, and the student responses to teaching. In the first group, I only had to take note of the tangible effect of my actions, keeping my goals in mind. No one volunteered feedback, but there was still plenty of feedback to get and use. The second group of examples all involved the deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by other people.

Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how "good" or "bad" my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is-advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn't do that would warrant such advice.

In all six cases, information was conveyed about the effects of my actions as related to a goal. The information did not include value judgments or recommendations on how to improve. (For examples of information that is often falsely viewed as feedback, see "Feedback vs. Advice" above and "Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades" on p. 15.)

Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Compare the typical lecture-driven course, which often produces less-than-optimal learning, with the peer instruction model developed by Eric Mazur (2009) at Harvard. He hardly lectures at all to his 200 introductory physics students; instead, he gives them problems to think about individually and then discuss in small groups. This system, he writes, "provides frequent and continuous feedback (to both the students and the instructor) about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed" (p. 51), producing gains in both conceptual understanding of the subject and problem-solving skills. Less "teaching," more feedback equals better results.

Feedback Essentials

Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.

1. Goal-Referenced

Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke-why? To make people laugh. I wrote a story to engage the reader with vivid language and believable dialogue that captures the characters' feelings. I went up to bat to get a hit. If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback (nor am I likely to achieve my goals).

Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course. If some joke or aspect of my writing isn't working -a revealing, nonjudgmental phrase-I need to know.

Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvious to everyone. I don't need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess. For example, a teacher might say,

The point of this writing task is for you to make readers laugh. So, when rereading your draft or getting feedback from peers, ask, How funny is this? Where might it be funnier?

As you prepare a table poster to display the findings of your science project, remember that the aim is to interest people in your work as well as to describe the facts you discovered through your experiment. Self-assess your work against those two criteria using these rubrics. The science fair judges will do likewise.

2. Tangible and Transparent

Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don't laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching.

Even as little children, we learn from such tangible feedback. That's how we learn to walk; to hold a spoon; and to understand that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. The best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it.

Alas, far too much instructional feedback is opaque, as revealed in a true story a teacher told me years ago. A student came up to her at year's end and said, "Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don't know what it means." "What's the word? " she asked. "Vag-oo," he said. (The word was vague!)

Sometimes, even when the information is tangible and transparent, the performers don't obtain it-either because they don't look for it or because they are too busy performing to focus on the effects. In sports, novice tennis players or batters often don't realize that they're taking their eyes off the ball; they often protest, in fact, when that feedback is given. (Constantly yelling "Keep your eye on the ball!" rarely works.) And we have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on "teaching" that they fail to notice that few students are listening or learning.

That's why, in addition to feedback from coaches or other able observers, video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape-captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.

3. Actionable

Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. Thus, "Good job!" and "You did that wrong" and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, What specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don't know what was "good" or "wrong" about what they did.

Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply presenting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that "many students were bored in class." That's a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, "I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student."

Such care in offering neutral, goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That's why I always ask when visiting a class, "What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?" In my experience as a teacher of teachers, I have always found such pure feedback to be accepted and welcomed. Effective coaches also know that in complex performance situations, actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn't work.

4. User-Friendly

Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproductive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.

Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement ("I was confused about who was talking in the dialogue you wrote in this paragraph"). They don't offer advice until they make sure the performer understands the importance of what they saw.

5. Timely

In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don't want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn't. I say "in most cases" to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don't want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I perform. That's why it is more precise to say that good feedback is "timely" rather than "immediate."

A great problem in education, however, is untimely feedback. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance-think of writing and handing in papers or getting back results on standardized tests. As educators, we should work overtime to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.

Before you say that this is impossible, remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher, or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool-part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it. Peer review is another strategy for managing the load to ensure lots of timely feedback; it's essential, however, to train students to do small-group peer review to high standards, without immature criticisms or unhelpful praise.

6. Ongoing

Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it. What makes any assessment in education formative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. In summative assessment, the feedback comes too late; the performance is over.

Thus, the more feedback I can receive in real time, the better my ultimate performance will be. This is how all highly successful computer games work. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris, you know that the key to substantial improvement is that the feedback is both timely and ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over-sometimes even right where you left off-to get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback. (This powerful feedback loop is also user-friendly. Games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing need, pace, and ability to process information.)

It is telling, too, that performers are often judged on their ability to adjust in light of feedback. The ability to quickly adapt one's performance is a mark of all great achievers and problem solvers in a wide array of fields. Or, as many little league coaches say, "The problem is not making errors; you will all miss many balls in the field, and that's part of learning. The problem is when you don't learn from the errors."

7. Consistent

To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.

Progress Toward a Goal

In light of these key characteristics of helpful feedback, how can schools most effectively use feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The key is to gear feedback to long-term goals.

Let's look at how this works in sports. My daughter runs the mile in track. At the end of each lap in races and practice races, the coaches yell out split times (the times for each lap) and bits of feedback ("You're not swinging your arms!" "You're on pace for 5:15"), followed by advice ("Pick it up-you need to take two seconds off this next lap to get in under 5:10!").

My daughter and her teammates are getting feedback (and advice) about how they are performing now compared with their final desired time. My daughter's goal is to run a 5:00 mile. She has already run 5:09. Her coach is telling her that at the pace she just ran in the first lap, she is unlikely even to meet her best time so far this season, never mind her long-term goal. Then, he tells her something descriptive about her current performance (she's not swinging her arms) and gives her a brief piece of concrete advice (take two seconds off the next lap) to make achievement of the goal more likely.

The ability to improve one's result depends on the ability to adjust one's pace in light of ongoing feedback that measures performance against a concrete, long-term goal. But this isn't what most school district "pacing guides" and grades on "formative" tests tell you. They yield a grade against recent objectives taught, not useful feedback against the final performance standards. Instead of informing teachers and students at an interim date whether they are on track to achieve a desired level of student performance by the end of the school year, the guide and the test grade just provide a schedule for the teacher to follow in delivering content and a grade on that content. It's as if at the end of the first lap of the mile race, My daughter's coach simply yelled out, " B+ on that lap!"

The advice for how to change this sad situation should be clear: Score student work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre-and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.

"But There's No Time!"

Although the universal teacher lament that there's no time for such feedback is understandable, remember that "no time to give and use feedback" actually means "no time to cause learning." As we have seen, research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning. And there are numerous ways-through technology, peers, and other teachers-that students can get the feedback they need.

So try it out. Less teaching, more feedback. Less feedback that comes only from you, and more tangible feedback designed into the performance itself. And, of course, send me some feedback on this article at gwiggins@authenticeducation.org.

Feedback vs. Advice

› You need more examples in your report.

› You might want to use a lighter baseball bat.

› You should have included some Essential Questions in your unit plan.

These three statements are not feedback; they're advice. Such advice out of the blue seems at best tangential and at worst unhelpful and annoying. Unless it is preceded by descriptive feedback, the natural response of the performer is to wonder, "Why are you suggesting this?"

As coaches, teachers, and parents, we too often jump right to advice without first ensuring that the learner has sought, grasped, and tentatively accepted the feedback on which the advice is based. By doing so, we often unwittingly end up unnerving learners. Students become increasingly insecure about their own judgment and dependent on the advice of experts-and therefore in a panic about what to do when varied advice comes from different people or no advice is available at all.

If your ratio of advice to feedback is too high, try asking the learner, "Given the feedback, do you have some ideas about how to improve?" This approach will build greater autonomy and confidence over the long haul. Once they are no longer rank novices, performers can often self-advise if asked to.

Feedback vs. Evaluation and Grades

› This is a weak paper.

› You got a C on your presentation.

› I'm so pleased by your poster!

These comments make a value judgment. They rate, evaluate, praise, or criticize what was done. There is little or no feedback here-no actionable information about what occurred. As performers, we only know that someone else placed a high or low value on what we did.

How might we recast these comments to be useful feedback? Tip: Always add a mental colon after each statement of value. For example,

"Good work: Your use of words was more precise in this paper than in the last one, and I saw the scenes clearly in my mind's eye."

"This is a weak paper: Almost from the first sentence, I was confused as to your initial thesis and the evidence you provide for it. In the second paragraph you propose a different thesis, and in the third paragraph you don't offer evidence, just beliefs."

You'll soon find that you can drop the evaluative language; it serves no useful function.

The most ubiquitous form of evaluation, grading, is so much a part of the school landscape that we easily overlook its utter uselessness as actionable feedback. Grades are here to stay, no doubt-but that doesn't mean we should rely on them as a major source of feedback.

References

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.

Mazur, E. (2009, January 2). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50-51.

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Advice, evaluation, grades-none of these provide the descriptive information that students need to reach their goals. What is true feedback-and how can it improve learning?

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Connecting SEL to School Improvement

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Which is more effective in improving team performance: using positive feedback to let people know when they're doing well, or offering constructive comments to help them when they're off track?

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It's the secret to high-performing teams - and strong marriages.

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The research is clear. Community engagement can be a driving force for student success. "Parents, families, educators, and communities - there's no better partnership to assure that all students PreK through high school - have the support and resources they need to succeed in school and in life," says former National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel. According to the NEA's Parent, Family, Community Involvement in Education policy brief, "The positive impact of connecting community resources with student needs is well documented. In fact, community support of the educational process is considered one of the characteristics common to high-performing schools." But how do you start the process of connecting your school to the community? Take a look.

Bring the community into your school

Schools can start by considering small ways to improve the lives of their students and families. Perhaps this could involve seeking community donations for in-school washing machines so that students can have clean clothes. Or your school could try soliciting food donations from local businesses for a school pantry so that families can have food at home over weekends.

Thanks to local and community support, West Side High in Newark, NJ has started Lights On, a Friday night program where high school students can hang out and socialize safely. The program also runs three nights a week during the summer, so that students can stay off the streets. Local volunteers and businesses can offer to cook or cater dinner throughout the year - they serve 6400 meals! - or donate to an Amazon wish list of recreational items. In a neighborhood plagued with violence, the program is working. "I haven't lost any more kids to gun violence since the start of the school year," Principal Akbar Cook says. The school also installed free washer/dryers, so that students can do their laundry and have clean clothes to wear to school, which increased attendance. The local community donates detergent and dryer sheets so that students can easily do their laundry at no cost.

Look for local partners who can work with your school and its families. This could involve connecting to a local mental health resource or a free medical clinic for school visits or neighborhood wellness visits.

At the Faubion School in Portland, Oregon, Trillium Family Services provides on-site mental health and wellness prevention services. Rather than parents having to take time off from work to take their child to see a doctor, dentist, or therapist, the student can be seen while at school.

5 simple ways to bring the outside community in

1. Business/corporate in-school mentoring programs

2. Skype sessions with experts or business/political leaders

3. Bring in guest speakers or hands-on demonstrations from the community

4. Invite organizations or companies to teach electives or take over a class for a day

5. Allow organizations or companies to attend or sponsor school events.

Your starter list of whom to contact

senior living facilities

farms or greenhouses

nature centers

the parks department

local military outposts or veterans groups

homeless shelters

nonprofit organizations

local companies

local laboratories or science centers

community centers

youth groups

Elements for success

The National Association of School Psychologists shared a downloadable list of the necessary elements of effective school-community partnerships. One of the most important factors in developing a strong and lasting partnership is having a designated school contact person to liaise with and manage the school-community partnerships over time. Constant turnover or inconsistent leadership can break down a partnership. "Coordinators help maintain partnerships with community agencies and facilitate effective communication and collaboration among the leadership team, specialized instructional support personnel, service providers, school personnel, parents, families, and members of the community," says NASP. They also recommend working on a plan for sustainability. How will the program last, grow, evolve, and expand over time? "Develop a plan to maintain your community partnerships across multiple school and fiscal years. Try to create a diversified funding stream to support service delivery work from multiple funders." Sustainability is also helped by routine reflection and evaluation.

If you are interested in helping schools and communities work together, learn more about our MEd in Curriculum & Instruction: Community Engagement in Education program.
Jennifer L.M. Gunn spent 10 years in newspaper and magazine publishing before moving to public education. She is a curriculum designer, teaching coach, and high school educator in New York City. She is also co-founder of the annual EDxEDNYC Education Conference for teacher-led innovation and regularly presents at conferences on the topics of adolescent literacy, leadership, and education innovation.
Tags: Administrative Leadership, Assistant Principals, Community Engagement, Principals

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Getting Started With Building School-Community Partnerships

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The research is clear. Community engagement can be a driving force for student success. "Parents, families, educators, and communities - there's no better partnership to assure that all students PreK through high school - have the support and resources they need to succeed in school and in life," says former National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel.

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ESSA specifies that Local Education Agencies that receive $30,000 in Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (SSAE) must direct portions of that money toward three priorities:

- Well-rounded educational opportunities (20% of the budget)
- Safe and supportive practices (20% of the budget)
- Effective use of technology (at least some portion of the budget)

This is good news for social and emotional learning (SEL) for two reasons.

1. The SSAE program gives districts greater flexibility in how budget dollars are spent.
2. SEL supports all three of the requirements listed above.

Read on to learn more about how SEL helps meet requirements for obtaining Title IV funds.
Safe and Supportive Learning
Research shows that schools are typically safer when SEL initiatives are in place. SEL can help students demonstrate positive behaviors and interact with peers and educators in positive ways. Strong social and emotional skills also contribute to decreased behavior incidents such as violence and bullying, and risky behaviors such as substance abuse.

Additionally, research shows that healthy teacher-student relationships are critical to creating effective learning environments. When students feel they can trust in and are supported by their teachers, they are more likely to engage, succeed, and demonstrate positive behavior in school. Get ideas for building safe and supportive learning environments by developing students' social and emotional skills and fostering strong relationships.
Well-Rounded Education
To be successful in today's society, students need social and emotional skills that will help them creatively solve problems, analyze situations, communicate with and respect others, and evaluate and reflect. Embedding SEL into core instruction makes learning more meaningful for students and engages them in the learning process.

One example of a highly effective, researched-based SEL program that facilitates a well-rounded education is Aperture Education's Evo Social/Emotional System. Aperture Ed's tools help students develop the critical SEL competencies needed to achieve success in school as well as post-secondary environments and the workplace. The Evo SEL system enables schools to gain insight into students' social and emotional needs. Robust reporting helps educators provide targeted SEL curricula based on assessment findings. From lessons on cultivating critical problem-solving skills to activities that strengthen decision-making, the Evo SEL intervention strategies span different instructional settings and grade levels. Social and emotional interventions can also be administered universally, in small groups, individually, or at home.
Effective Use of Technology
Technology helps educators conduct a variety of SEL assessments quickly and easily. Critical data can be gleaned from SEL baseline, formative, and benchmark assessments. This data can guide instruction and help educators create tailored interventions customized to students' specific needs. One research-based and validated assessment is Aperture Education's Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). This measure provides an in-depth assessment of students' social and emotional needs and can be used as a summative assessment to measure student gains as well. The DESSA-mini is a shorter version of the DESSA and provides quick and easy benchmark reporting to help educators make informed decisions about ongoing student needs.

The new ESSA guidelines give districts much greater flexibility in directing dollars toward SEL programming. Additionally, SEL supports the three requirements set forth by SSAE for Title IV funds. Contact our SEL experts to learn more about how SEL supports Title IV grants.

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Did You Know? You Can Leverage Title IV Grants for SEL Programming!

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ESSA specifies that Local Education Agencies that receive $30,000 in Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (SSAE) must direct portions of that money toward three priorities: - Well-rounded educational opportunities (20% of the budget) - Safe and supportive practices (20% of the budget) - Effective use of technology (at least some portion of the budget) This is good news

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The public dialogue on gun violence is all wrong and activists are wasting a huge opportunity to reduce violence in schools. Gun control is a dead-end. The country is so divided that no changes will realistically reduce school violence. The same is true for arming teachers. Instead, schools should focus on the root causes of violence and implement social-emotional development programs.

A History of Violence

Since the 1999 Columbine massacre, prevention efforts have primarily focused on profiling. Figure out what the typical school shooter looks like and find him before he commits the crime.

This approach hasn't worked. Time and again the killer is found before the massacre and it is still not prevented. Eric Harris had a website with a "hit list" that was reported to police a full year before he and Dylan Klebold massacred 13 people at Columbine High School. Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people earlier this year after countless red flags, including introducing himself to others as a "school shooter." And there is a yet unfinished story of a boy who told classmates he wanted to shoot up his school and commit suicide. Police investigated, and the student was moved to a different school. It is unclear whether the new school is even aware of the situation or what they are doing to monitor his behavior or address any mental health issues.

The Profile

Numerous studies by the CDC, the Department of Education, and even the Secret Service havedetermined risk factors correlated with school violence. They've found that there is no "typical" profile for a school shooter. However, one finding stands out: Most violence in schools is committed by students or former students with mental health problems.

A common knee-jerk reaction is that we should find these people and prevent them from access to guns. But, that doesn't address the underlying mental health problem or tendency toward violence. In fact, such an approach might prevent people from seeking help if they know they will be tracked.

If we really want to prevent violence, we need to address mental health and work toward healing and social-emotional development.

No Way Out

The behavior most highly correlated with school homicides is previous suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts. In the Secret Service study, 78 percent of attackers had either attempted suicide or had suicidal thoughts before the attack. Beyond the risk of these young people becoming homicidal, many more will eventually harm or kill themselves.

Among people between the ages of 10 and 35, suicide is the second leading cause of death. If we address the underlying causes of suicide, we will also address homicides.

Identifying these students on a case by case basis is difficult, but with broadly implemented social-emotional programs in place it's unnecessary. All students benefit regardless of their emotional well-being.

Suck It Up

Bully behavior - both bullying and being bullied - is also highly correlated with school homicides. But the logic of today's "Anti-Bullying" campaigns is flawed. They aim to eliminate bullying, but bullying doesn't itself cause suicide or homicide. It's another symptom of poor social-emotional development.

Some look disdainfully upon Anti-Bullying campaigns believing that facing playground conflicts builds resilience. That may be, but telling a child to "suck it up" or "deal with it" on their own may actually result in students becoming less resilient over time.

We should neither seek elimination of conflicts nor stand aside and let them take place, hoping that children learn the right lessons. We don't ask students to solve math problems on their own. We can't expect them to navigate complex social situations without the guidance of an adult.

Tell Me About Your Childhood

An Adverse Childhood Event (ACE) is abuse, neglect, or trauma that causes high levels of stress. The greater the number of ACEs a person experiences, the higher the likelihood that person will be involved in violence or experience mental health and social problems. In other words, ACE experiences are cumulative.

But so are experiences with protective factors like strong family or community support, social connectedness, a relationship with a caring adult, problem solving skills, and access to mental health services. Protective factors are the opposite of risk factors. Actions and activities that promote protective factors may actually prevent the negative effects of trauma, help people heal, and reduce the likelihood of violence.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

SEL is the best tool we have available for violence prevention. It teaches relationship-building and fosters connectedness - protective factors that counter the effects of ACEs. And research shows that teaching SEL alongside traditional academic skills significantly improves overall academic performance.

As common as it is to see a therapist or take anti-depressants, mental health treatment remains a stigma, especially for children. But SEL is mental health by a different name, and because it can be beneficial for all students, it removes the stigma. I call it "surreptitious mental health."

If we can teach children to express their thoughts and feelings, ask for their needs and wants, and resolve conflicts verbally, we can dramatically reduce violence.

The Left and Right can easily coalesce around this issue. If SEL can prevent violence and improve academic performance, why isn't every school district making it a top priority?
Stanley Buchesky is the Managing Partner of The Edtech Fund and was the Trump Administration's "Beachhead" team CFO for the U.S. Department of Education from January to June, 2017.
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The Answer to School Violence Is Social-Emotional Learning | RealClearEducation

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The public dialogue on gun violence is all wrong and activists are wasting a huge opportunity to reduce violence in schools. Gun control is a dead-end. The country is so divided that no changes will realistically reduce school violence. The same is true for arming teachers.

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Taking Action

At the early childhood and elementary level, we developed six modules that provide teachers with specific skills, activities, and structures to teach, embed, and use each day. At the beginning of the school year, our first module is "Creating a School Family." For six weeks, teachers must establish a strong sense of belonging, acceptance, and understanding with their students-an understanding that as a class family, we will collectively learn, succeed, and work together.

The "learning plan" modules that follow specifically teach our students about the brain states, growth mindset, executive function skills, mindfulness, and characters or values. The learning plan is the core of our work and leads to building a true sense of ownership, trust, and strong relationships. Each year, the SEL committee updates the modules based on new learning and ideas.

At the secondary level, we added a "seventh-hour" class for students that we call "Impact Hour/CPC," with the latter standing for College Prep Course. This time is dedicated to conversations essential to building trust, mutual respect, and a connection to school and life. Throughout the year, students have the same Impact Hour/CPC teacher. The Impact Hour mirrors the modules at the elementary level. We also have student representatives on our secondary SEL committees, which has further added student voices to the development of our activities, providing important ideas and leveraging student ownership.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Our district is on the right path by putting SEL at the core of our practices, but we recognize there is so much more to do! This shift in practice has led to more recognition of the importance of relationships, a greater understanding of diverse backgrounds and experiences (not only of our students but also of our staff!), and more honest conversations among school leaders and faculty on what types of adult learning are necessary to continue fostering a true, equitable environment.

As we continue to strengthen our work and teach essential skills to students, our focus on learning about neuroscience, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and restorative efforts has made us as adults more conscious of our words, actions, and understanding of others, and more aware of the importance of our recognition, understanding, and intentions. When adults begin to have internal shifts in their thinking and behaviors, the heavy lifting can begin to occur with workaround-implicit bias, inequities, access, meaningful participation, and other large-scale practices that in time will lead to true culturally sustaining practices that support each and every student.

One of our favorite sayings is, Cognitive functions are built on emotional platforms. We are proud of the Ferndale School Family for putting our beliefs into action and knowing what's best for our students.

***
Join more than 5,000 educators in 100+ sessions at the 28th Annual Model Schools Conference in Orlando, Fla., from June 28-July 1, 2020.

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Why and How One District Prioritized Social-Emotional Learning

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Taking Action At the early childhood and elementary level, we developed six modules that provide teachers with specific skills, activities, and structures to teach, embed, and use each day. At the beginning of the school year, our first module is "Creating a School Family."

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5 Key Culturally Responsive Teaching moves

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5 Key Culturally Responsive Teaching moves

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Walk-Through tool

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Walk-Through tool

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Social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life. In fact, core development abilities such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness and agreeableness can be as or even more important than cognitive intelligence in determining future employment. Despite these competencies being related to consequential life outcomes, it can be challenging for educators to find effective ways to prioritize, teach and assess social and emotional skills.

Developing these core life abilities through social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical to a child's development, as it directly correlates to success and happiness as an adult. For many children, school is the only place where any deficiencies in these abilities can be addressed before they become active members of society.

Combining these skills with academic development creates high-quality learning experiences and environments that empower students to be more effective contributors in their classrooms today and in their workplaces and communities tomorrow.

Is SEL worth the investment?

According to "Ready to Lead," a report for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) based on a national principal survey on how SEL can prepare children and transform schools, there is data to support the importance of embedding social and emotional development in schools. The report cites a 2011 meta-analysis that found that students who receive high-quality SEL instruction have achievement scores on average of 11 percentile points higher than students who did not receive SEL instruction.

However, the benefits of SEL do not end at graduation. A recent study from The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) looked at five primary social and emotional skills-open-mindedness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness-to determine which are the strongest indicators of success. The study revealed a lack of SEL regularly correlated with unfavorable outcomes such as an increased chance of unemployment, divorce, poor health, criminal behavior and imprisonment.

To further justify the advantages of SEL, the report shared that advances in neuroscience imply developing SEL skills in kindergarten "can have long-term academic benefits on students' reading and vocabulary, including in high poverty schools, suggesting that SEL may assist in closing achievement gaps." It also stated, "researchers at Columbia University concluded that for every dollar a school spends on social-emotional learning programs, it sees an eleven dollar return on its investment," indicating the investment in SEL is worthwhile.

The development of these skills has shown overall positive results, including better academic performance, improved attitudes, behaviors and relationships with peers, as well as deeper connection to school, fewer delinquent acts and reduced emotional distress (student depression, anxiety, stress and social withdrawal).

When it comes to translating those skills beyond the classroom, the OECD explains that subjective well-being can be defined as having a positive mental state; when reviewing the impact of SEL on adolescents, the results-which mirror findings from adult samples-indicate more ties between SEL skills and life satisfaction than between cognitive skills and life satisfaction by nearly 10 percent. Emotional stability appears to be the most relevant of the top SEL skills that correlate to life satisfaction, with consciousness and extraversion showing relevance in job and life satisfaction.

How do teachers feel about SEL?

According to the CASEL report, "Ready to Lead," interest in and support for SEL are high among teachers and school administrators. Principals, specifically, are eager for the expertise, training and support necessary to effectively implement new programming. The survey findings state that while a majority of principals (97 percent) believe teaching SEL skills in school will improve student behavior, learning and development, only 35 percent report their school has developed a plan for teaching students social and emotional skills. What's more, only 40 percent of principals anticipate it will improve academic performance, which is an indicator of the disconnect between SEL support and implementation.

A United States national teacher survey called "The Missing Piece", a report for CASEL, supports the idea that teachers widely endorse SEL. Ninety-five percent of those surveyed believe that SEL skills are teachable and that the curriculum can benefit students from all backgrounds.
Social-emotional skills support student achievement, but embedding SEL into the school day can be complex.
If you're launching a new SEL program or enhancing an existing one, these tips will help you avoid common implementation mistakes.

When will SEL become a priority?

Although the vast majority of education stakeholders agree SEL is important, it has remained on the sidelines while education leaders have instead focused on academics alone-as opposed to the development of the whole child.

Given the support that SEL has in the education community, it may just be a matter of time before it is widely adopted. Developing an emphasis on SEL in schools will lead to a more supportive space for students to freely share their creative ideas, shamelessly ask questions and learn academic concepts while building lifelong skills. The widespread advancement of SEL will require a gradual and grand shift in pedagogy. In the process, we can forge a more well-rounded education system to produce more socially responsible citizens who are better prepared to work together to build communities, nations and, ultimately, a better world.

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The Future of Education Depends on Social Emotional Learning: Here's Why - EdSurge News

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Social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life. In fact, core development abilities such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness and agreeableness can be as or even more important than cognitive intelligence in determining future employment.

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Great article that supports adult SEL

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What is Teacher Self-Care and How to Practice It

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Discover what self-care is, why it’s important for teachers, and how to bring self-care activities in your daily life and in the classroom.

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The busyness that comes with starting the new school year can come as a shock to the system when you're still in relaxed holiday mode.

Check out our 10 tips for surviving the shift, and for making your wellbeing a priority.

How to keep that relaxed holiday feeling

1. Reconnect to your purpose

Try to do one thing each week that reminds you why you became a teacher in the first place.

Get started: Use a teaching strategy that you and your students all enjoy to remind you of the difference you're making in their lives.

2. Adopt a growth mindset in your teaching

There's great value in trying new things and accepting mistakes as opportunities to learn. We could all do with a reminder of the power of 'yet'. It can be helpful to see yourself as a learner (just like your students) and to spend time reflecting on new ideas, considering what you have learnt and acknowledging areas that you find challenging.

Get started: Check out Developing a Growth Mindset in Teachers and Staff.

3. Focus on kindness and gratitude

An act of appreciation or kindness produces positive emotions, stronger social connections and improved wellbeing. Consider simple ways you can build gratitude and kindness into your day. And the best thing? Kindness and gratitude are contagious, so imagine the benefit to your classroom!

Get started: Each night, recall three good things that have happened during the day. To make it easy to keep track, check out the Gratitude Journal app.

4. Create clear boundaries between home and school

Set a reasonable time for leaving school each day (and stick to it). Find ways to turn off your teacher mindset, so that you can relax when you get home.

Get started: Try developing an end-of-day 'ritual' to help you switch mindsets. It may include changing your clothes when you get home, heading out for an afternoon walk, or spending time with family and friends. In addition, try to limit the amount of school work you bring home.

5. Set up effective debriefing and mentoring structures

Teaching can be an emotionally taxing job that throws up many different challenges. Set up structures that help you to focus on solutions rather than problems. While a venting session may make you feel better in the short term, it doesn't solve the problem and may make you feel stuck.

Get started: Consider using a debriefing structure to help manage your thinking about challenging situations. Or team up with a supportive colleague and set up a formal mentor relationship structure.

6. Establish good sleeping habits

Good-quality sleep is one of the most important aspects of maintaining your physical and psychological health. This can be a tough ask after the late nights and long sleep-ins you've probably indulged in during your holiday break!

Get started: Develop a regular bedtime routine, which may include taking a warm bath, reading quietly for a while or having a warm milk drink. Consider using a sleep app.

7. Build up your emotional resilience

Think of proactive ways to manage the stress in your life. Meet regularly with friends and family, spend time on hobbies you enjoy, read or watch things that make you laugh, and build into your daily routine proven stress-busting activities such as yoga, meditation or exercises that involve deep breathing.

Get started: There are lots of great (and free) apps to help you manage stress. These include the ReachOut Worrytime , ReachOut Breathe and Smiling Mind.

8. Keep focused on your goals

Setting goals is a great way to give you direction, focus and motivation. Try to ensure that all your goals are achievable, measurable and have an end point. It can be helpful to break a larger goal into more manageable sub-goals.

Get started: Think of something that, if you do it today, will make you feel satisfied and accomplished. Then do it!

9. Reward yourself

The improved physical and psychological health that comes from prioritising your wellbeing is a reward in itself, but there's also value in using tangible rewards when you meet particular goals.

Get started: Consider simple and practical ways to reward yourself whenever you reach a goal or sub-goal: take a walk in nature, soak in a warm bath, cook your favourite dinner or indulge in a massage.

10. Build new connections and relationships

Building new relationships and connections is key to our wellbeing. Take the time to get to know the students, parents and staff members in your school community.

Get started: Consider ways to develop student-focused relationships. See Wellbeing Fives for some practical ways to do this.
Professor Kinman, Gail. "Teacher wellbeing: how to mentally prepare for a new school year". The Guardian. 20th August 2014

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Follow these 10 powerful tips from ReachOut Schools to surviving the shift back to school, and for making your wellbeing a priority.

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Reminder

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A Snapshot of the PBiS 4:1 Ratio In a Middle School Classroom

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There is no easy path, but SEL is worth it.

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There is no easy path, but SEL is worth it.

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Opinion

SEL has an $11 return on every $1 investment. So what are we waiting for?

Not long ago the two of us gave a talk to a group of mental-health professionals about the teaching of emotional intelligence. Afterwards, a leading child psychiatrist approached us to applaud our appeal for greater social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools. The psychiatrist added: "We're going to need another 8,000 child psychiatrists in the United States to deal with all of the mental-health problems our children are having."

"You misunderstood us," Marc responded. "We want to put you all out of business."

The ultimate goal of the SEL field is to weave the teaching of social-emotional intelligence throughout children's education so lives are enhanced and crises are rare. But, as the eminent psychiatrist was pointing out, we have a long way to go.

This winter marks the 30th anniversary of the first scholarly publication on emotional intelligence. In it, Peter Salovey of Yale University and John D. Mayer of the University of New Hampshire challenged the proposition that emotions mostly cloud judgment and get in the way of rational thought. Instead, Salovey and Mayer said, when we use emotions wisely, we make better decisions and have improved mental health and relationships.

A few years later, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ( CASEL) was founded to support high-quality, evidence-based SEL as essential curricula from preschool through high school. SEL was formally defined as attitudes and competencies that foster self- and social awareness and the abilities to manage one's own and others' emotions and behavior, make responsible decisions, and nurture positive relationships.

Over the past two decades, research has shown that SEL skills can be taught, and that when schools embed SEL into the school day with fidelity, it improves children's lives, the culture of the school, and even teacher well-being. Schools report increased academic success, enriched relationships between teachers and students, and decreases in aggression. And SEL has been shown to be a financially sound investment: According to a 2015 cost-benefit analysis, for every dollar invested in SEL, $11 were saved from reduced delinquency, substance abuse, and the like.

A January 2019 report from the Aspen Institute's National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development concluded that SEL is not an educational fad; it is integral to education. In addition, emotional intelligence is greatly needed in the workplace, say reports from CEOs, the World Economic Forum, and analysts of the future of work

American youths now rank in the bottom quarter of developed nations in global comparisons of well-being and life satisfaction. Suicides among 15- to 19-year-olds have risen 47 percent over the past two decades. More than 1 in 3 college freshmen have a diagnosed mental-health condition. School bullying and harassment remain significant problems. Corporal punishment is still allowed in classrooms in 19 states, and suspensions and expulsions are disproportionately applied to black students.

So while the importance of SEL has been formally and informally recognized, its promise has not been fulfilled. Why?

Each year the two of us give dozens of presentations to educators, parents, and business professionals all over the world. When asked to describe their emotional state, three-quarters of the participants have difficulty coming up with a meaningful "feeling word." And when we ask them for strategies they'll use to maintain their focus, they are equally at a loss. "I'll leave my feelings at the door," they say, or "I'll drink a lot of coffee." Or more fashionably, "I'll be mindful." Are these strategies useful for someone exhausted at work, a teenager paralyzed with performance anxiety, or a preschooler going through her parents' grueling divorce?

Despite the field's firm grounding in science and widespread support for SEL among parents, educators, and students, SEL is not yet taken as seriously as subjects like math or physics. Emotions often are marginalized as a woman's interest. And they're frequently viewed as someone else's issues, not one's own. When we ask audiences if they need help learning to regulate their emotions, a few people usually raise their hands. If we ask them if the people around them need help regulating their emotions, nearly all the hands go up. It's also possible that many of us cling to the outdated belief that children require strict discipline, not a focus on their feelings, to attain success in adulthood. This, despite decades of evidence linking harsh discipline to detrimental outcomes, and emotion regulation and interpersonal skills to positive outcomes.

Developing true social-emotional skills is hard and lifelong work, and, regrettably, Americans are attracted to quick fixes-we like to buy SEL kits, have a school assembly, make classroom rules, and move on. But it isn't enough for educators to attend a workshop, go on retreat, or adopt a school "program" for an hour a week. This is particularly so because the demands on our social-emotional skills are constantly changing, requiring the skills themselves to be dynamic.

More funding is needed to implement SEL approaches that achieve the standards that states are adopting. And SEL must be incorporated upstream into preservice teacher training, rather than offered solely as professional development after teachers are already working in the field.

CASEL encourages schools to adopt developmentally sequenced, learner-centered, and culturally relevant SEL approaches with demonstrated positive impacts. The approaches should include explicit training in competencies like emotion recognition, self-regulation, and interpersonal problem-solving for children and the adults interacting with them so they can be effective role models. Two comprehensive approaches to SEL that meet these criteria are PATHS, a SEL curriculum for K-5, and RULER, a pre-K-12 approach to SEL that we helped develop and named for the skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions.

Of course, many emotional challenges have roots in systemic social problems like inequality, racism, sexism, and poverty, but we can still improve the ways we deal with the feelings that result. And there will always be a need for child specialists in cases of organically based mental illnesses or severe trauma.

It's time to start acting on the evidence for what really works instead of treating emotional problems that could have been prevented in the first place. Let's address the biases, old-fashioned pedagogies, and ill-informed policies at the school, state, and federal levels that undermine what research shows is best for our children and the adults who are educating them.

Published in Print: January 22, 2020, as Soft Skills Are Hard to Master

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Sorry, There's No Easy Toolkit for Social-Emotional Learning. But It's Worth the Work

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Opinion Not long ago the two of us gave a talk to a group of mental-health professionals about the teaching of emotional intelligence. Afterwards, a leading child psychiatrist approached us to applaud our appeal for greater social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools.

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The Classroom Calming Corner - Watson Institute

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Does a student become overwhelmed in a busy classroom? Help them relax & increase class participation by having a classroom calming corner.

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How to Create a Calm Down Corner in 5 Easy Steps - The Art of Education University

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Do you have students who have a hard time controlling their emotions? Are you unsure of the best approach to help meet your students’ social and emotional needs? One strategy to try is called a calm down corner. A calm down corner, sometimes referred to as a mindfulness corner, is a designated space…

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Calm corners are such an incredible tool to have in your counseling office or classroom. It provides a safe place for students to use and improve their self regulation skills. To make calm corners work there are a couple skills and rules that need to be in place.

Going to the Space

When introducing the space, it is important to spend time practicing going to the calm corner. I like to focus on two adjectives for the transition: calmly and quickly.

Explain to students why calmly and quickly is so important for them, their classmates, and the classroom community. Calmly and quickly, shows we are working hard and doing our best to get back to calm. We are also being respectful of others who are working.

Now, I'm not naive. Often students are using the calm corner when they are angry or frustrated. There shouldn't be a penalty for a less than perfect transition. Rather practice with students, help them understand the why, and reflect with them after about ways to make that transition smoother.

In the Calm Corner

In the calm corner, students should go through 4+ steps. These steps make the calm down process interactive. It also pushes students to reflect on how they are feeling and focus on using strategies to get back to calm. These are the steps I use in my Calm Corner resource.

1. Do a feelings check.

2. Use a calming strategy.

3. Do a feelings check.

4. If calm, return to activity or debrief with teacher.

5. If not calm, use the same strategy or another strategy.

6. Do a feelings check.

7. Return when calm or with adult support.

Calming Strategies

Students often do not have a toolbox full of calming strategies they know to use. This may even be a new concept for them. Review why calming strategies are helpful. Calming strategies get us back to calm, ready to learn, or other phrase that explains the purpose and value.

It is helpful to practice a selection of calming strategies and determine which strategies work best. Introduce 2-4 strategies to students.

I like to have the student reflect on four questions:

Students can create a calming strategy keychain or toolbox that is specific to them. When they go to the calming corner, they can chose their specific strategies.

Check out this resource for individualizing calming strategies for students.
Coping Strategy Workbook with the Coping Captain
and this blog post: Help Your Students Develop Coping Skills .

Leaving the Calm Corner

Part of an effective calm corner is students being able to tell when they are ready to return. The student should know that they are looking to be close to calm or at least ready to talk or work on a simple activity.

In the process described above, the student checks in on how they feel after using strategies. If they are not calm, they can repeat the strategy or try a new one.

Obviously, this cycle should not go on endlessly. Consider putting in a stop point where the student checks in with an adult. Timers are perfect for this.

Rejoining Class/Activity

Spending a short amount of time in a calm corner may help big feelings get smaller, but students might also be ready to rev back up again if met with frustration.

Consider having re-entry activities if your classroom or office uses the space frequently. These activities should be simple and frustration-free.

Again, emphasize and model that transitions from the break area should be calm and quick.

Outside the Calm Corner

One missing element that can sabotage a calm corner is if there is an audience (a.k.a. gawking classmates) that does not know what to do when someone is using the space.

If the student using the space is driven by attention, classmates laughing or staring while they are in the space can reinforce negative behaviors.

Teach students what to do when another student is using the calm corner. Make the rules clear and hold students accountable.

Keep working.

Give the person space.

Make sure the student has privacy (no staring or talking).

The break spot is a calm, quiet place.

Important Notes

Consider how the break spot is working for each student. If the student is using the space inappropriately or using it to avoid tasks, consider changes you can make that would eliminate these reinforcers.

Choose a good spot. The spot shouldn't be too isolated or too close to things. Students need space to calm and refocus, but also keep track of and be interested in returning to class. Make sure you have good visibility of the space. Make the spot comfortable.

Pin for Later!

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6 Ways to Make a Calm Corner Work - Social Emotional Workshop

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Calm corners are such an incredible tool to have in your counseling office or classroom. It provides a safe place for students to use and improve their self regulation skills. To make calm corners work there are a couple skills and rules that need to be in place.

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This post What is Hygge and 20 Ways to Practice Hygge contains affiliate links. I earn a commission off items purchased through these links. To learn more visit my About Me page.
Guys. I have been a tried and true follower of hygee all my life and didn't realize it until now. Hygge is all the rage these days, my friends. The world is becoming a difficult place to live in so practicing hygge is helping folks get by. Pronounced "hoo-ga," this lifestyle comes to us thanks to the Danish, who take claim to the concept and have paved the way for all things cozy.

So what is hygge specifically? It's the art of bringing cozy elements into your home, elements that make you feel safe, warm, comfortable, and all around full of well being. Who wouldn't want that? Let's take a look at 20 ways to practice hygge and see if this lifestyle isn't perfect for you.

1. Candles. Candles everywhere.
This is one of the easiest ways to practice hygge! The Danish love their candles. Pounds upon pounds of wax are burned in Danish homes each year, and there is no need to wonder why. Candles add warmth, comfort, and ambiance to any space. Scented candles can help promote relaxation as well. So don't go skimpy on the candles.

If you need some good candle recipes, try my easy Lemon Essential Oil Candle Recipe, This White Fir Candle Recipe, or even this easy Crockpot Candle Recipe.

4. Teacups and saucers to sip and snack from.
What could make you feel cozier than drinking from a cute cup? Find a cup and saucer set and make it yours. It will be perfect for hot chocolate, tea, and of course, cookies. Here is a vintage inspired tea set I bought and use daily!

5. Plenty of warm beverages on hand.
This is one of the tastiest ways to practice hygge. Warm beverages make you feel warm all over! Make sure you have plenty of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate in the pantry. Then sip slow and enjoy. If you need a good beverage recipe, check out this Immune Boosting Tea recipe.

7. Plenty of good books to read.
Nothing lowers your blood pressure faster than relaxing with a good book. Practicing hygge means keeping a shelf of good books on hand so you are always ready to curl up and dive in. If you need a book suggestion, you can always read the YA novel I wrote,

9. Indoor nature elements.
Nature can help us feel more relaxed and at ease, so bringing nature indoors is important. This means plenty of potted plants, natural sunlight, stones, and natural wood. If you need a little help, check out my Tips for Growing Succulents, Where to Find Reclaimed Wood, and my Uses for Amethyst.

13. Simple pleasures.
Figure out what some of your favorite simple pleasures are and practice them regularly. This could be taking a walk with the dog, watering your plants, or doing a craft. If you love to meditate, check out my DIY Meditation Station.

14. Comfort foods.
What are your favorite comfort foods? Stew? Chili? Pot roast? Keep some comfort food recipes and ingredients on hand. After all, what could make your soul happier than a happy stomach? Here is an excellent recipe for Missisippi Pot Roast and

15. Fresh flowers.
Flowers help delight all of our senses! Check out this post on The Benefit of Fresh Flowers and see how flowers can be good for your whole body.

16. Twinkle lights.
Soft lighting via fairy or twinkle lights can help you feel at ease. They are so charming and fit perfectly in any space. Need fairy lights of your own? You can find some here.

17. Vintage décor pieces.
Vintage décor pieces can help us feel nostalgic which helps us feel more relaxed and at ease. Find a vintage piece or two that resonates with you and display it proudly.
18. Meaningful artwork.
Find a few pieces of artwork that speak to you and help you feel relaxed when you look at them. Then display them and enjoy.
19. Soft bedding.
A safe and comfortable space to sleep in is essential! Treat yourself to beautiful bedding, lots of pillows, and even linen spray. Here is a simple recipe for DIY Essential Oil Linen Spray you hafta try!

20. Stationary.
Writing and journaling can help us feel less stressed and even help us connect better with others. Keep some pretty stationary on hand. When you get some down time, write a note or two.

There you have it, 20 ways to practice hygge and really get comfy and cozy. If you could afford to lose a little stress in your life, take a cue from the Danish and give these 20 ways to practice hygge a try!

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Ways to Practice Hygge - The Homespun Hydrangea

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This post What is Hygge and 20 Ways to Practice Hygge contains affiliate links. I earn a commission off items purchased through these links. To learn more visit my About Me page. Guys. I have been a tried and true follower of hygee all my life and didn't realize it until now.

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Tips for families

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Tips for Parents

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No matter what age you teach, social-emotional learning is an essential part of your curriculum. Social skills books for kids are crucial in the classroom for supporting conversations about social-emotional issues. That's why we gathered 50 (yes, 50!) social skills books for kids, including lots of great recent ones you may not have seen yet, that you can share to help kids build empathy, talk about emotions, navigate tough experiences, and more.

(Just a heads up, WeAreTeachers may collect a share of sales from the links on this page. We only recommend items our team loves!)

Books About Managing Fear and Anxiety and Taking Risks

1. Brave Every Day by Trudy Ludwig

Camila and Kai are both scared about their class's field trip to the aquarium, though they show it in different ways. It turns out that supporting each other helps them both.

Buy it: Brave Every Day on Amazon

2. A Case of the Zaps by Alex Boniello and April Lavalle

Robot Pi's class is planning a class trip to "where it all started, Olde Silicon Valley." (Ha!) It's supposed to be exciting, but Pi's worries quickly kick into "overdrive." The fun robot metaphors give kids helpful language for talking about anxious feelings. Bonus: We appreciate the incidental use of they/them pronouns for the main character!

Buy it: A Case of the Zaps on Amazon

3. The Whatifs by Emily Kilgore

Scary "Whatifs" follow Cora everywhere, and it only gets worse as she prepares for her big piano recital. Her outlook changes when Stella challenges her to turn her bad Whatifs into good ones.

Buy it: The Whatifs on Amazon

4. Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall

Jabari is definitely ready to jump off the diving board. He's finished his swimming lessons and passed his swim test, and he's a great jumper, so he's not scared at all. Also check out the sequel Jabari Tries to talk about perseverance!

Buy it: Jabari Jumps on Amazon

5. The Camping Trip by Jennifer K. Mann

Ernestine is super excited to go camping for the first time with her aunt and cousin-until they reach the campsite, that is. Then everything feels scary, and she misses her dad.

Buy it: The Camping Trip on Amazon

6. Anita and the Dragons by Hannah Carmona

Fear of "dragons" almost overcomes Anita as she and her family prepare to emigrate from their home in the Dominican Republic. Her brother reminds her, "They aren't real dragons. They're just planes in the sky."

Buy it: Anita and the Dragons on Amazon

7. The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken

Zoom meets Beautiful Oops! in this book about the creative process and the way in which "mistakes" can blossom into inspiration.

Buy it: The Book of Mistakes on Amazon

8. Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle by Chris Raschka

Learning to ride a bike is one of the most important milestones of childhood, and this book captures the emotional ups and downs of the experience.

Buy it: Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle on Amazon

9. The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds

The words of her teacher are a gentle invitation to express herself. But Vashti can't draw-she's no artist.

Buy it: The Dot on Amazon

Books About Friendship

10. Rulers of the Playground by Joseph Kuefler

One morning, Jonah decided to become ruler of the playground. Everyone agreed to obey his rules to play in King Jonah's kingdom ... everyone except for Lennox, because she wanted to rule the playground too.

Buy it: Rulers of the Playground on Amazon

11. A Friend for Henry by Jenn Bailey

Henry, who has autism, eagerly wants a new friend. But many of his classmates aren't quite the perfect fit he imagines. Then he builds blocks with Katie, and their tower is just right.

Buy it: A Friend for Henry on Amazon

12. Daisy by Jessixa Bagley

Teasing makes Daisy feel terrible. She spends much of her time alone, collecting treasures-until she realizes someone else is adding to her treasure shelf.

Buy it: Daisy on Amazon

13. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Meet Brian, the invisible boy. Nobody ever seems to notice him or think to include him in their group, game, or birthday party ... until a new kid comes to class.

Buy it: The Invisible Boy on Amazon

14. Ways To Make Friends by Jairo Buitrago

Friendship books are some of the most important social skills books for kids to have in the classroom. Toad works hard to make new friends. He tries lots of different strategies, including some unusual ones. We like that his experiences let kids know that sometimes making friends can feel hard or tiring, and that's OK!

Buy it: Ways To Make Friends on Amazon

Books About Identity

15. What Are Your Words? A Book About Pronouns by Katherine Locke

This is one of our favorite social skills books for kids for supporting developmentally appropriate conversations about pronoun choices. Let kids know they have options for the words that feel right-and that it's important to respect others' choices too.

Buy it: What Are Your Words? A Book About Pronouns on Amazon

16. Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty

We love all the Questioneers books to use as engaging class read-alouds, but this one is especially awesome for talking about strengths, challenges, and finding your own way to shine. Aaron Slater has a tough time writing a story to share in class, until he lets his love of art lead the way.

Buy it: Aaron Slater, Illustrator on Amazon

17. Like by Annie Barrows and Leo Espinosa

This quirky ode to human connection is a fun way to launch conversations about similarities and differences. How are humans like mushrooms, excavators, and hyenas? We love social skills books for kids that get classrooms talking and wondering together!

Buy it: Like on Amazon

18. Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts

All Jeremy wants is a pair of those shoes, the ones everyone at school seems to be wearing. Though Jeremy's grandma says they don't have room for "want," just "need," when his old shoes fall apart at school, he is more determined than ever to have those shoes, even a thrift-shop pair that is much too small.

Buy it: Those Shoes on Amazon

19. Home Is In Between by Mitali Perkins

If you're looking for social skills books for kids related to code-switching-navigating multiple cultures-Shanti is a positive role model for students. When she and her family move to the United States from India, the worlds inside her home and in the larger community feel very different.

Buy it: Home Is In Between on Amazon

20. My Very Own Space by Pippa Goodhart and Rebecca Crane

A little rabbit is trying to read his book in peace, but there's so much going on around him! Maybe he needs some space just for himself. ...

Buy it: My Very Own Space on Amazon

21. My Shadow Is Pink by Scott Stuart

This child's family is sure his shadow is blue, but it's not-it's pink. And the shadow loves dresses and dancing, and it definitely wants to be seen as it really is.

Buy it: My Shadow Is Pink on Amazon

22. Eyes That Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho

This young girl is intensely proud of her "eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea." She also loves that her sister, mother, and grandmother all share the same special feature.

Buy it: Eyes That Kiss in the Corners on Amazon

Books About Overcoming Challenges

23. I Love Strawberries! by Shannon Anderson

Jolie desperately wants to grow strawberry plants in the family garden, but her parents aren't on board. She takes on the challenges of convincing them she's responsible enough, earning money to buy plants, and caring for the plants once she plants them. This is a good one for talking about how achieving a goal can include lots of different challenges along the way.

Buy It: I Love Strawberries! on Amazon

24. The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned To Read by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora

Mary Walker was born a slave and persevered through challenges her entire life. At age 114, she finally fulfilled her lifelong dream of learning to read. She's an inspiration for us all.

Buy it: The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned To Read on Amazon

25. Argyle Fox by Marie Letourneau

Argyle Fox, with his signature style, wants to play outside on a springtime day, but the wind is wreaking havoc with his fun and games. As soon as he builds a card tower, climbs into a giant spider web, or takes up his pirate sword, here comes the wind: Woosh!

Buy it: Argyle Fox on Amazon

26. Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson

Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah's inspiring true story is nothing short of remarkable. Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people-but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams.

Buy it: Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah on Amazon

27. Life by Cynthia Rylant and Brendan Wenzel

There are so many wonderful things about life, both in good times and in times of struggle.

Buy it: Life on Amazon

Books About Kindness

28. A Small Kindness by Stacy McAnulty

Add this to your social skills books for kids to encourage kindness in the classroom. Simple text and sweet illustrations show a diverse class spreading kindness from one person to another in lots of doable ways.

Buy it: A Small Kindness on Amazon

29. John's Turn by Mac Barnett

When it's John's turn to perform at the school assembly, he's nervous, but his love for dancing gives him confidence. His classmates cheer him on. This is a one of our new favorite social skills books for kids to talk about encouraging others and giving each person their "turn" to shine.

Buy it: John's Turn on Amazon

30. When We Are Kind / Nihá'ádaahwiinít'íigo by Monique Gray Smith

This bilingual English and Diné book uses art inspired by Navaho culture to show how simple kindnesses have a lasting impact. It would be lovely inspiration for a kindness-themed class book or bulletin board.

Buy it: When We Are Kind / Nihá'ádaahwiinít'íigo on Amazon

31. The Smile Shop by Satoshi Kitamura

Disappointment washes over a small boy when he drops the money he's saved down the drain. A stranger in a photography studio chooses to make an unexpectedly kind gesture.

Buy it: The Smile Shop on Amazon

32. Pass It On by Sophy Henn

When you see something terrific, smile a smile and pass it on! If you chance upon a chuckle, hee hee hee and pass it on. Should you spot a thing of wonder, jump for joy and pass it on!

Buy it: Pass It On on Amazon

Books About Grief

Equal parts affirming and hopeful, if you need social skills books for kids to help cope with a friend moving, this is the one. Daniela can't believe Evelyn won't live across the street anymore. But focusing on cherished memories and keeping in touch helps her manage.

Buy it: Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away on Amazon

34. The Circles in the Sky by Karl James Mountford

This folktale stars Fox, who wonders about a dead bird in the forest. This book gives classrooms an inclusive and gentle way to talk about death.

Buy it: The Circles in the Sky on Amazon

35. Rosa's Song by Helena Ku Rhee

Jae misses his village in South Korea but finds comfort with his new friend Rosa, who lives in his building. Then Rosa and her family have to move suddenly. This reassuring story is helpful for talking about coping with surprise disappointments.

Buy it: Rosa's Song on Amazon

36. Dadaji's Paintbrush by Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Ruchi Mhasane

A boy and his grandfather connect through painting. When the grandfather dies, the boy can't face his art for a long time. Finally, painting again helps him heal.

Buy it: Dadji's Paintbrush on Amazon

Books About Feelings

37. Big Feelings by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman

An energetic group of young friends has big plans for the day-until big, hard feelings get in the way. It'll take talking about it and being flexible to get the day back on track.

Buy it: Big Feelings on Amazon

38. I Am Okay To Feel by Karamo Brown and Jason "Rachel" Brown

A boy and his dad walk and talk about their feelings. We love how positive and relatable this book is for kids. Well-researched back matter gives adults lots of tools for talking with children about emotions too.

Buy it: I Am Okay To Fee l on Amazon

39. Great Big Feelings series by Hallee Adelman

These are invaluable social skills books that normalize big emotions for kids. Each book shares a relatable experience from a kid's perspective and ends with a positive coping strategy. These are also great examples of personal narrative writing (with details about feelings!).

Buy it: Way Past Afraid and Way Past Sad on Amazon

40. Cranky Right Now by Julie Berry

"I'm cranky right now and I have my reasons," says this main character. Bad moods happen to all of us. Get kids talking about how to sit with grouchy feelings and let them pass.

Buy it: Cranky Right Now on Amazon

41. The Shadow Elephant by Nadine Robert

Elephant feels really down. All his friends keep trying to distract him, but it turns out what he really needs is a friend to be with him and his hard feelings until they fade away. This is one of our new favorite social skills books for kids with a message that it's OK to just sit with difficult emotions.

Buy it: The Shadow Elephant on Amazon

Books About Honesty

42. Lying Up a Storm by Julia Cook

A storm is brewing ... whenever Levi doesn't like the truth, he kinda sorta makes up other stuff to say.

Buy it: Lying Up a Storm on Amazon

43. Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny Tiny Lie by Laura Rankin

Ruthie loves little things-the smaller, the better. So when she finds a teeny tiny camera on the school playground one afternoon, she can hardly believe her luck. She wants to keep the camera in the worst way, but there's one little problem: It isn't hers.

Buy it: Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny Tiny Lie on Amazon

44. I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

The bear's hat is gone, and he wants it back. Patiently and politely, he asks the animals he comes across, one by one, whether they have seen it. Each animal says no.

Buy it: I Want My Hat Back on Amazon

Books About Self-Control

45. Stop and Smell the Cookies by Gibson Frazier

If you're looking for a new social skills book for kids that tackles managing impulsivity in a positive and empathetic way, you need this one! Dash Gordon has big ideas, good intentions ... and a hard time reining himself in. When he's feeling down about having a tough day, his mom helps him learn a mindful breathing routine that really helps.

Buy it: Stop and Smell the Cookies on Amazon

46. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes

Lilly loves everything about school, especially her cool teacher, Mr. Slinger. But when Lilly brings her purple plastic purse and its treasures to school and can't wait until sharing time, Mr. Slinger confiscates her prized possessions.

Buy it: Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse on Amazon

47. My Mouth Is a Volcano! by Julia Cook

All of Louis's thoughts are very important to him. In fact, his thoughts are so important to him that when he has something to say, his words begin to wiggle, and then they do the jiggle, then his tongue pushes all of his important words up against his teeth, and he erupts, or interrupts others.

Buy it: My Mouth Is a Volcano! by Julia Cook

47. You Will Be My Friend! by Peter Brown

Today is the day the exuberant Lucy is going to make a new friend! But she finds it's harder than she had thought-she accidentally ruins the giraffe's breakfast and is much too big for the frogs' pond.

Buy it: You Will Be My Friend! on Amazon

48. Clark the Shark by Bruce Hale

Clark is a shark with zing, bang, and BOOM. He zooms into school, crashes through the classroom, and is rowdy at recess.

Buy it: Clark the Shark on Amazon

Books About Resiliency

49. Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae

Gerald the tall giraffe would love to join in with the other animals at the Jungle Dance, but everyone knows that giraffes can't dance ... or can they?

Buy it: Giraffes Can't Dance on Amazon

50. Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Peña

Milo feels like a "shook-up soda" as he takes the subway to visit his mom, who is incarcerated. He copes with his feelings by imagining the lives of his fellow passengers-and imagines the time when his family will be together again.

Buy it: Milo Imagines the World on Amazon

Use this four-step process when reading these social skills books for kids to reinforce the skills featured:

1. Describe: Talk with your students, and have them talk with one another, about what they think the main point of the story was. What social skills did the story define? How do you know? Why are these skills important? Can you make a connection to the story from your own life? Make a poster together, or have students write or draw in their journals about these social skills.

2. Demonstrate: Have a few students act out what the social skills look and feel like. Role playing different ways students can demonstrate these skills will help reinforce the behavior.

3. Practice: Plan activities where each child has to take a turn to practice the featured social skills.

4. Promote: Promote, support, and encourage children as they initiate and engage in behavior that demonstrates these social skills. Catch them being kind, flexible, honest, confident, and more!

Looking for more social skills books for kids? Don't miss:

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50 Children's Books for Teaching Social Skills

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This diverse collection of social skills books for kids helps launch classroom conversations about identity, perseverance, grief, and more.

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The Power of Morning Meetings: Secondary!

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The Power of Morning Meetings: Secondary!

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Can we bring the advantages of an elementary school strategy for building a classroom community to the higher grades?

©Shutterstock/ESB Professional

Morning meetings are a nearly ubiquitous feature in elementary classrooms. Students gather on a rug to discuss the calendar, the weather, the news, and how they're feeling as the day begins. It's a wonderful system for building community and trust and for setting the stage for a day full of learning.

But can that work when you're a teacher who starts the day three, four, seven, or eight times? Middle and high school students need classrooms that hinge on community and trust just as much as elementary students do-can we replicate the outcomes of the morning meeting in a way that makes sense developmentally and logistically in higher grades?

How Morning Meetings Work

How do morning meetings help classroom communities develop? When students first gather at the beginning of the year, the most immediate need is gathering knowledge-new names, news from the summer, and current interests, as well as who you are as a teacher and what the class is going to be like. Students are also figuring out whether they're going to be with people who like them and whom they like.
Courtesy of Laura Thomas
As students become more aware of who is in the room, they need to learn how to communicate with one another. What are the expected norms and processes for discussion? Next they learn how to cooperate, like how to not get in one another's way as they work toward a common goal.

As they gain skill in cooperation, they cross over into collaboration-a shared investment in the success of all members of the community. At each of these stages, they face conflict and successes and build the trust necessary to move to the next level.

Morning Meetings in Middle and High School

In upper grades, what should we do to focus our opening instructional moves on the deliberate creation and maintenance of a learning community, without sacrificing valuable instructional time?

First, we have to recognize that we'll get more out of our students if they feel safe, supported, and known well in our classrooms. The time spent building community will come back to us exponentially in fewer behavior issues and better student engagement.

Knowledge: Use names. Make sure you know your students' names and that they know one another's names. I'm always amazed to find that kids who have sat side by side for years don't know one another's names. Require them to use names in responding to one another.

Ask students to respond to an opening prompt with a piece of information about themselves, some news or insight that they can share with a partner. Keep the stakes low here (favorite band, worst movie ever, plan for surviving the zombie apocalypse, etc.). Be sure that you respond to the prompt as well-let students get to know you.

Build a classroom culture filled with rituals and traditions that make your class different from others, like greeting students with a handshake at the door, putting a silly question on the board at the start of class, or keeping a silly piece of classroom decor-I was partial to a plaster rooster and an upside-down Christmas tree.

Be sure students know you like them. And create space for them to know one another through (appropriate) humor.

Communication: Take the time to articulate what you mean by a quality discussion (or better yet, arrive at a description as a class). Build a T chart with specific expectations about what it looks and sounds like when people are communicating effectively, and use that chart to assess the quality of the communication processes as students move through review material in the earliest days of the class.

Offer feedback about what you see and hear. You could also get students' feedback-consider recording the class at work and then showing the recording to students so they can look for good examples of quality communication processes.

Cooperation: You can build and reinforce cooperation skills with traditional community builders, or do so through academic work-whatever makes the most sense to you. In either case, be sure to articulate what quality cooperation looks and sounds like, and then ask students to demonstrate it. Take the time to reflect together on the process and results.

Collaboration: When the class is at a collaborative stage, your job becomes maintenance. Use Google Class to take a quick survey at the start of class, focusing on a topic of the day-this can be a serious topic, but it doesn't have to be. Ask students to give feedback on their homework, to talk about how they approached a project, or to comment on the outcome of the big game the night before.

But what about when conflicts arise? Just remember: Kids want to be safe, just like we want to be safe. They want to be known and liked. They know they've been let down before-by their teachers and by their peers. Their peers will have to earn their trust, and teachers need to facilitate that.

That means setting clear expectations about classroom behavior, including responding to put-downs and unkind words. Such words are harbingers of the next level in the group's development. See them as such-lean into conflicts and refuse to let kids off the hook. If you stand your ground, insist on the behavior you want to see, and keep your sense of humor, you'll get there.

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Morning Meetings in Middle and High School

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Can we bring the advantages of an elementary school strategy for building a classroom community to the higher grades? ©Shutterstock/ESB Professional Morning meetings are a nearly ubiquitous feature in elementary classrooms. Students gather on a rug to discuss the calendar, the weather, the news, and how they're feeling as the day begins.

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Using Dialogue Circles to Support Classroom Management

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5 Steps to make it work

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The Power of the Morning Meeting: 5 Steps Toward Changing Your Classroom and School Culture

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Edutopia blogger Lisa Dabbs shares her own transformative experience with the Morning Meeting model and suggests five steps for integrating this practice into the classroom.

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The latest edition of The Morning Meeting Book preserves the essential content and guidelines for each of the four components that have helped thousands of elementary school teachers launch each school day with Morning Meeting. It also contains updates and a new format designed to meet the needs of today's educators.

Promote positive connections, academic growth, and productive behavior by starting each school day with Morning Meeting. Give your students a consistent time and place to gather, explore and practice social skills, build a sense of community, and prepare for the day of learning ahead.

The latest edition of The Morning Meeting Book preserves the essential content and guidelines for each of the four components that have helped thousands of elementary school teachers launch each school day with Morning Meeting. It also contains updates and a new format designed to meet the needs of today's educators.

The 4 th edition of this comprehensive, user-friendly book includes:

A full-color interior with photographs, icons, charts, and color coding to help you easily navigate the book's content

Expanded implementation guidance, including suggestions for resolving common Morning Meeting stumbling blocks

QR codes that connect you to videos of Morning Meeting in action

Online planning guides and other digital tools

A multitude of ideas for each component, from the tried-and-true to the new and innovative

A new chapter devoted to harnessing the power of the Morning Meeting structure to build community and foster connections outside the classroom setting

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Promote positive connections, academic growth, and productive student behavior by starting each school day with Morning Meeting.

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Morning Meetings: Building Community in the Classroom

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Morning Meetings: Building Community in the Classroom

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Morning Meetings: Building Community in the Classroom

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Starting the day with this 15-minute activity helps students regulate their emotions and focus on the day’s learning.

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K-12

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Morning Meetings From Pre-K to 12th Grade

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Daily discussions and team-building activities meet the physical, social and emotional, and spiritual needs of students.

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RP and Michigan Law:  What you need to know

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RP and Michigan Law:  What you need to know

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Michigan's new law on restorative justice has put pressure on schools to rethink their school discipline programs.

From the district level to individual classrooms, educators are being asked to follow a new set of guidelines when it comes to disciplining students who violate school policies.
Here's what Michigan educators need to know about this new law:
In December 2016, Gov. Rick Snyder signed a law that requires Michigan schools to consider using restorative practices as an alternative to zero-tolerance policies like suspension or expulsion, which have been shown to have an array of damaging effects on certain student populations. You can see a screenshot of the language from this bill below:

Essentially, schools are being asked to consider seven factors before resorting to the suspension or expulsion of students. You can see these seven factors broken down in the infographic below:

This law does not say that schools can never suspend or expel a student for deviant behavior. It simply asks them to be more intentional about who they are submitting to zero tolerance policies and why.

Before making any decisions, schools are asked to evaluate these factors and then ask:
Would a lesser intervention than suspension or expulsion appropriately address this behavior?
If the answer is yes, then schools ought to first turn to restorative practices.

If the answer is no, they still have the right to suspend or expel a student, so long as they can justify this response.

"We are giving school districts the flexibility to consider many factors when making decisions on disciplinary actions for students," Gov. Snyder says. "No longer will every student be immediately suspended or expelled due to misconduct. This is similar to measures we have taken to reform our criminal justice system by emphasizing restorative justice."

When dealing with the seven common infractions listed below, the state recommends trying restorative practices as a first step:

More serious crimes - such as bringing a firearm to school - are still grounds for automatic expulsion. What we're seeing here isn't zero tolerance against zero tolerance policies, but rather, a push away from our ineffective and harmful history of removing students in need from schools and toward a system with more positive and long-lasting effects.

Next Article → | View All Articles in the Restorative Justice Series

Do your students need more support in restorative justice & social-emotional learning?
Suite360 offers a digital library of customizable, grade-appropriate lessons on over 600 topics, including bullying, mental health issues, drugs, alcohol, vaping, and many more. This program aligns with restorative justice goals by allowing you to assign targeted lessons to students in in-school suspension (ISS) based upon their infraction.

Your Guide to Restorative Justice in Michigan Schools
This blog is the first in our upcoming series on Restorative Justice in Michigan Schools. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing articles on:
Explore Our RJ & SEL Options Subscribe to our blog to receive notifications when these blogs are released, and we'll send a copy straight to your inbox.

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What you need to know about Michigan's new restorative justice law [with infographics] | Michigan Virtual

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Michigan's new law on restorative justice has put pressure on schools to rethink their school discipline programs. From the district level to individual classrooms, educators are being asked to follow a new set of guidelines when it comes to disciplining students who violate school policies.

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A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

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A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Comprehensive. Program comparison. 330 pages of good info!

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How to Implement Social and Emotional Learning at Your School

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To implement SEL at your school, use these seven activities to help students build self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.

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Looking for a fabulous resource for igniting discussion about having a growth mindset with your kids? Look no further! These 10 TEDTalks are guaranteed to inspire children at school or home to reach their goals despite any difficulties or obstacles they may encounter.

I admit it, TEDTalks might just be my all-time favourite, free learning resource! But what is not to love??! Here we have ten fantastic growth mindset videos exploring important mindset themes such as stamina, perseverance, overcoming obstacles, reaching for the impossible, overcoming procrastination, striving to achieve your goals, and more, available at just the touch of a button! Love!

10 Growth Mindset Videos for Kids

Students who struggle in science courses often have the mentality that scientific process and discoveries are adult ventures. It's hard to imagine that experiments and the scientific method can apply to their current reality. Neuroscientist Beau Lotto teams with 12-year-old student (and scientist, yes, she's a published researcher with her classmates) Amy O'Toole. Science is for all ages, and scientific discoveries are not limited to the old, college-educated folk. O'Toole's talk will inspire budding scientists to reach their goals and help resistant science students to see that science is for everyone.

Angela Duckworth and grit are household names in education circles (and in many households as well). Her "grit" theory goes hand-in-hand with growth mindset. Her talk focuses on how grit or that stamina, hard work, and sticktoitiveness is more of a predictor of success than IQ and academic talents. Use this talk to start a discussion with your children about what it means to have grit and what obstacles they've had to overcome. You may be surprised at the stories you'll hear from your students or even your own children.

A mentee of Angela Duckworth (yes, the GRIT guru from the last TEDTalk) discusses how sometimes grit just isn't enough for some students. Anindya Kundu teaches college students about inequality and race in education. His TEDTalk focuses on young people who have overcome obstacles due to racial inequality, health, and poverty, sometimes with the help of others. Watch this with your children and be prepared to be inspired.

Talk about empowering. Adora Svitak was just 12 years old at the time of this talk. Her messages is to adult and kids alike. Embrace childlike wonderment and reach for the impossible. Watch this with your kids. You'll both learn a lot from this young, articulate, and fascinating speaker.

It's hard to imagine an 9-year-old giving a TEDTalk let alone starting his own business. Noah Diguangco refused to be "put into a box" by adults and accept the limits put on children in the world. He talks about how he can do anything and how he upcycled items to start his own business when he was seven. This talk is perfect for inspiring entrepreneurs or kids who have heard, "you can't do that."

It often seems like the opportunities at school are often given to the most outgoing children with inherent leadership skills, but introverts have so much to bring to education and the world, Susan Cain explains in her TEDTalk. These contemplative, amazing individuals may be in your classroom or home. Share this talk with them.

Tim Urban's TEDTalk may have you giggling because his message is so relatable to anyone who's even put something off. Waiting until the last minute to get things done can be a challenging habit to overcome, and Urban walks your children through his recovery (or lack thereof).

Hannah Nodskov was bullied mercilessly in middle school. Her TEDTalk focuses on the benefits of being bullied. Although it was incredibly painful, her bullies gave her the courage to be unique and forge her own path. Hannah is now a fashion designer whose gorgeous full-figured fashions have graced New York runways. Her story shows how adversity can turn into a passion and a way to show her bullies how amazing she really was and still is today. Hannah's talk will give your children a chance to reflect on their own experiences with bullying, whether they were the bully, the victim, or the bystander. Use this as a discussion to empower them and fight against bullying.

Another TEDTalk about bullying from two fifth graders, Jayden and Preston Garmo, reminds students to focus on positivity and the good in the world to combat the hate that comes with being bullied. It's always nice to see a message of healing and growth from elementary students. Share this with your children, old and young, to give them hope.

Liz Power's TEDTalk is about opportunity. Her presentation at TEDxYouth talks about "joblifting", where jobs are created for those struggling based on their talents. It began as a movement with her own non-profit, "Artlifting" where homeless and other struggling artists created their own works for sale to give them opportunities for growth and to fulfill their potential. For Powers, it's not about handouts; it's about opportunities. Ask your children and students how their own talents can be translated into opportunities for growth.

These 10 growth mindset TEDTalks to show your students and children range from the inspirational to the hilarious. No matter which ones you choose, they are bound to start important conversations with your children about resilience and their own personal talents. Which TEDTalks would you add to this list?

Looking for even more growth mindset learning resources? Check out our big list of Growth Mindset Picture Books and our list of Growth Mindset Books for 10-14 Year Olds, or this list of 15 Anti- Bullying Videos for Kids.

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

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Growth Mindset Videos: 10 Inspiring TEDTalks to Share With Your Kids

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Guaranteed to inspire kids of all ages, these 10 TEDTalks make the perfect jumping off point for opening discussion about growth mindset at home or school.