This article offers interview responses from Thomas Hébert, a professor of gifted and talented education in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. Hébert was previously a faculty member at the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. He has more than a decade of K-12 classroom experiences working with gifted…

Meria Carstarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, has nearly 20 years of experience in educational leadership, primarily in urban school districts. Her previous roles included superintendent in Austin, Texas, from 2009 to 2014 and administrator in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. She serves as a commissioner and…

Does the current drive to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) into the K-12 curriculum represent a positive reform that will lead schools to educate the "whole student" and ultimately boost young people's academic success? Or is it a distracting fad that comes with high opportunity costs? Common sense and considerable…

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) believes it is essential to define giftedness in a way that both reflects best thinking in the field and moves beyond a focus on identification criteria to a deeper understanding of the complex nature of giftedness and the multi-faceted approach to services required to appropriately serve…

In this reflective conversation, Marianne Kuzujanakis, a pediatrician and homeschool educator to a profoundly gifted child, discusses her involvement with gifted kids, which began when she approached Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG), a nonprofit gifted support organization. She became fully active in supporting the gifted after her…

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…

This article addresses the social-emotional aspect of early childhood learning, specifically within the context of the transition to kindergarten. The author writes from a mother's point of view, and through focusing on her son's transition to kindergarten, she critiques the ways in which teachers too often ignore the social-emotional…

This is a conversation with Randy Asher, principal of New York City's Brooklyn Technical High School. Brooklyn Tech is a selective science high school in New York City, founded in 1922 as a school for boys with potential for careers in engineering and applied science. Today, it provides full-time education for both male and female students from…

Jaak Panksepp, known best for his work on animal emotions and coining the term "affective neuroscience," investigates the primary processes of brain and mind that enable and drive emotion. As an undergraduate, he briefly considered a career in electrical engineering but turned instead to psychology, which led to a 1969 University of…

Socio-emotional skills are highly prized on the labour market these days; many writers say that competencies of this type help to increase individuals' employability, but educational institutions consistently forget their responsibility for providing training in them. Most jobs call not only for knowledge and specific technical competencies, but…

Leaders are increasingly called on to function in ways that demand creative smarts as much as book smarts and street smarts. Consequently, more attention is being given to artistic potentialities of leadership. To help create relevant educational opportunities, the author responds in three ways. First is to identify a framework of characteristics…

In this article, the author uses a personal story to challenge the definition of success--introducing Ann, who comes in last in a swimming competition, but wins after all. He has drawn on his years as a swim coach to generate a series of stories exploring the emotional side of learning and the role of compassion in teaching that too often lie…

The article critiques the current research base concerning the influence of mainstreaming on the social emotional competence of mildly handicapped children and describes a proposed study emphasizing longitudinal analysis, assessment in multiple environments, and the use of multitrait-multimethod methodologies. (Author/DB)

The popularity of horror fiction among adolescents is discussed in terms of the use of grammar for social interaction, personal development, and emotional therapy during a developmental stage characterized by fear and emotional upheaval. (MSE)

Despite economic and social challenges facing California, Children Now advocates that the foundation of state vitality and well-being is a healthy, educated and skilled population, and urges efficient investments in children. State leadership is called upon to: (1) Ensure every child has affordable health insurance coverage; (2) Invest earlier in…