In this short reflective piece, we first outline how feelings and emotions (or 'affections') are understood in psychodynamic approaches, and briefly discuss how these may be controlled or 'contained' in organisational contexts. We then reflect on the recent experiences of one of us (Rachael) as a school leader seeking to contain feelings and…

Latent class analysis (LCA) is a useful statistical approach for understanding heterogeneity in a population. This article provides a pedagogical introduction to LCA modeling and provides an example of its use to understand youths' daily coping strategies. The analytic procedures are outlined for choosing the number of classes and integration of…

Returning to studios after COVID-19, student-teacher tensions seem to be higher than ever. Teenagers who spent the beginnings of their young adulthood in isolation clash with instructors who might mistake their stress and insecurity for apathy and laziness. In this article, I examine my personal experience with teaching teenagers and offer…

After years of pandemic, lockdowns, remote learning, and anxiety, it is no surprise that high school students are feeling stressed. But how does that stress affect them as they search for colleges? To answer that, RNL and ZeeMee went straight to the source and polled high school seniors about the stress, anxiety, and worry they felt. The…

What tales would students tell about their mathematical experiences? Are they stories of triumph, boredom, despair, exhilaration, or, perhaps, all of these emotions? How do teachers access these stories to understand students' experiences and build from them? In this article, the authors describe a task, The Math Metaphor, and how it was used in a…

This case asks educational leadership students to consider how immigrant students new to a quickly changing community may interpret subtle messaging of unbelonging and overt xenophobic hostility. Despite her best intentions, the principal in this case struggles to connect with the Latinx students and families who were recent arrivals to the…

This article reports on an IRB-approved study conducted in a college preparation writing workshop. Using affect theory as a framework for exploring participants' writing experiences, I theorize the phenomenon of affective rupture, a tension between the affect students experience while writing in school and their belief in the value of school-based…

Significant traumatic events affect communities and schools. Teachers need tools to help navigate challenging conversations with their students. Consequently, we utilized our children's literature course on the use of picture books that would invite dialogue supporting children responding to traumatic events. Specifically, we reconceptualized an…

This teaching case study illustrates the increasing need for school leaders to offer and foster adult social emotional learning (SEL) in schools, particularly in the context of crises. This scenario takes place in an urban high school that is representative of many other American schools. In particular, I examine the challenges educational leaders…

Ventura describes a "happiness unit" in her ELA class in which she asks students to examine what it means to be happy and how to increase one's mindfulness and confidence through self-reflection. The unit focuses on choice, engagement, and passion, as students research various positive psychology topics and create presentations, read…

If the recent turbulent times have shown educators anything, it is that we need to be prepared to address our own and our students' social and emotional needs. However, moments of tension are not the time to start. Rather, students need to be prepared to engage in meaningful ways with skills and competencies. To achieve this state of readiness,…

Failure is a common experience in the lives of musicians and educators that is frequently seen as a negative attribute for performances in music education. By shifting from a negative, destructive approach to a positive, constructive orientation to failure, music educators can help their students learn and advance forward from experiences of…

While the development of creativity, or creative thinking, in mathematics is considered important by many researchers, there are several difficulties in implementing creative tasks, especially before secondary school. Within the original context of a mathematical escape game, this paper reports two episodes exemplifying the difficulties met by…

The students at the author's alternative, academic-recovery school come from their base schools and at the author's school are able to rewrite their own school stories. Some of that rewriting naturally happens in the library. Many of the students have experiences at multiple schools, but it is not until they come to the author's school that many…

The research confirms that students across the country are--and will be--struggling in different ways. A March 2021 survey of parents of younger elementary school students found that more than 25 percent of the respondents' children were hiding mistakes, struggling to adapt, and giving up after failing once (Morin, 2021). Another survey of more…