Culturally responsive teaching is an important approach that can guide all educators in responding to their students' various cultures, needs, interests, religions, languages, abilities, and learning preferences. Doing so helps to create an inclusive environment for all students that views diversity as a strength. PE teachers, like teachers in any…

Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating attention to foster greater self-awareness and self-knowledge about thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and how they can affect one's actions. It is complementary to other Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) approaches related to positive learning outcomes for pre-K-12 students and educators. This Center…

Across existing research literature and among arts educators there is widespread belief that artistic disciplines including music, dance, theatre, visual arts, literary arts, and media arts have a positive effect on children's and adolescents' social-emotional development. This project investigates the relationship between arts education and…

Despite rising rates and prevalence of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and growing awareness in schools of NSSI social contagion, little discussion has taken place regarding ways to prevent and react to this prevalent issue occurring among youth in a school. The authors address how to prevent social contagion using a tiered response to intervention…

Though there is extensive research on the health outcomes of individuals who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), society at large has not embraced this ground-breaking research and many still believe that the use of harsh punishment for students provides the same intended result as a discipline approach that teaches coping…

Not all schools are obsessed with ensuring high test scores for students. Some schools have designed themselves around a priority of creating safe, empathetic learning environments. The Chrysalis Charter School in Palo Cedro, California, has a mission of developing a culture of kindness. The Minnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minnesota,…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is having a moment. After years of being neglected for an agenda heavily focused on test scores, the pendulum is swinging back toward the whole child. The 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act asks states to develop at least one metric, outside reading and math scores, to measure…

It seems obvious that learning should not stop when independent work begins. In too many cases, however, the tasks and the thinking required to complete independent assignments are limited to regurgitating knowledge. The work itself does not move students' learning forward. Students must master the procedural knowledge (the how) of applying…

This paper focuses on the notion of educational reform and discusses Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the context of the modernist-postmodernist debate. It is argued that through the application of EI into contemporary societies a new wave of reform emerges that provides science with normative power over the emotional world of individuals. This…

Children in foster care have experienced significant trauma due to the loss of primary attachment figures and the circumstances associated with that loss. Children who have suffered trauma generally present with cognitive, social, physical, and emotional vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are often expressed in the P-12 academic setting…

Self-regulation refers to the ability to inhibit the automatic response and to do something else; more generally, it refers to the ability to control one's emotions, to control attention and other cognitive processes, and to plan and control behavior. This capacity turns out to have enormous consequences for academic and social success. And, as…

Routine life stressors can trigger anger and violence with children who have poor emotional regulation. This article describes "Response Ability Pathways" (RAP) strategies that equip youth in managing these daily challenges. The strategies require establishing steps to gain the young persons trust and providing alternative methods to…

Teachers' social and emotional competencies are very important to their overall effectiveness, but such skills are frequently overlooked. Social and emotional competencies like managing emotions and stress are needed more today than ever before. More practices and policies to support and foster educators' social and emotional…

With the well-publicized escalation of teen suicide attributed to school bullying, today's educators are ramping up their efforts to create safe, bully-free campuses. School leaders are considering the importance of teaching students to respect others. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that getting back to the Golden Rule through…

This book provides accessible educational practices that teachers can use to infuse skillful thinking into standards-based content instruction in any subject area or grade level. With rich examples from practice, readers will learn to teach students how, for example, to find and use evidence to support conclusions, to develop and articulate…