Blog

When Grace Dearborn started her career teaching high school students, she felt confident about how to teach but unprepared for managing behavior in her classroom. During more challenging disciplinary moments with students, she used her angry voice with them, thinking that would work. Instead, on one occasion, an escalated situation led to a student following her around the classroom for 15 minutes while she was teaching until security could come to escort the student out of the class .

What would happen if schools focused on kindness and gratitude before achievement and academics? This is a question that Andy Smallman not only entertained, but also acted upon. In 1994, Andy with a group of dedicated parents and their children started Puget Sound Community School [PSCS] “founded upon the belief that people are intrinsically compelled by their own curiosity and desires to learn, and when provided a positive and supportive environment…will enthusiastically pursue meaningful...

With states passing along the stressful challenge of knowing what to do with traumatized students to districts, and districts to schools, and schools to teachers, it is not difficult to understand why CASEL recently held a Congressional Briefing on Social and Emotional Learning and Teacher Education . The premise shared was that teachers themselves have difficult challenges so addressing these things with their students are presenting a problem. Panelists shared ideas and initiatives...

The Yolo County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) and Yolo County Children’s Alliance (YCCA) are excited to share Nurturing Children During Times of Stress: A Guide to Help Children Bloom. This guide for parents and caregivers, which we are launching during Child Abuse Prevention Month, contains tips and resources that parents and caregivers can use to promote resilience in their children and themselves. Nurturing Children During Times of Stress explains the effects of intense stress or...

When Christopher Gonzalez first entered John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, he noticed that students generally kept to themselves and their own cliques. “It was like a line you didn’t cross,” said Gonzalez, now a senior. The climate began to change more than a year ago: More greetings are exchanged in hallways. Virtually no one sits alone at lunchtime. Students from various cross sections of the school — gamers, artists, dancers, jocks and others — gather together in a small grassy...

An aging population, economic decline and generational poverty have contributed to Coos Bay-area housing issues Charles Buki wasn’t in Coos County to placate its residents. “You need to get your shit together,” he told a banquet room full of locals at their highly-anticipated housing summit on April 26. The Virginia-based consultant and his business partner, Thomas Eddington, had just spent the previous hour explaining to the audience that Coos County’s housing crisis hinged, in part, on the...

Update: We have found the teacher who originate the mental health check-in board! Kudos to Erin Castillo for the brilliant idea and for sharing how she's using it to help kids. She is offering a free download of the board as a poster along with instructions for utilizing it on Teachers Pay Teachers. Thanks, Erin! Excellent teachers do so much more than teach. They can be mentors, role models, guides, and even confidants. Sometimes a teacher is one of the only trusted adults in a child's...

Simulation allows educators to experience what many of their students face every day Imagine you’re a single mother trying to support two school-aged children on low wages earned working two jobs. You’ve just paid your car insurance and utility bills, when the transmission on your 1997 sedan gives out, and with it goes your only means of transportation to your graveyard shift cleaning offices. Public transportation in your neighborhood doesn’t run at night. With no money for repairs, you...

Preschool is already too late, if you ask Ian Rowe. The head of Public Prep charter schools in New York City believes that, when it comes to setting students up for academic success, the key is starting earlier. Much, much earlier. That’s why the network has teamed up with a pair of nonprofits to start getting children ready for school when they’re just toddlers — a full two years before even enrolling in pre-K. The unique partnership sends trained mentors to meet with families in their own...

April 23, 2019 9:00 AM 10:00 AM PDT Webinar School Nurses + Pediatricians = Powerful Partners presented by: Dany Levy, MD, FAAP & Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN April 23, 2019 / 9:00-10:00 AM (PT) / 12:00-1:00 PM (ET) Objectives: Discuss the roles of the school nurse & pediatrician in the Pediatric Medical Home Discuss how communication between pediatricians in school nurses can be improved Discuss gaps in coordinating efforts on behalf of children and family Discuss and dispel myths...

A few years ago, Amy Lopes, a veteran fifth-grade teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, learned that teachers at her school could try a mindfulness and yoga training along with their students. Her immediate reaction: “What a bunch of baloney!” “I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it, but it’s not going to work,’ ” recalled Lopes, who teaches at the William D’Abate Elementary School. “But, within a couple weeks, I just let go and became a learner along with my students, and my whole world has changed.” That...

Haile Thomas—activist, health coach, vegan chef, public speaker, and CEO of HAPPY—is on a mission to help young people eat healthier. Haile Thomas is not your typical Gen Z teenager. The 18-year-old activist, health coach, vegan chef, and public speaker became the CEO of her nonprofit organization, Healthy Active Positive Purposeful Youth (HAPPY), when she was just 12 years old, inspired by witnessing her father fight off Type 2 diabetes with healthy eating and exercise. Since then, HAPPY...