School leaders' resilience is best built as a collective effort, write Soraya Sablo Sutton and Nate Gong. The "Change Makers" program at UC Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute gave school leaders across California the opportunity to work together to solve problems of practice and build their collective resilience--a key to…

When students misbehave, understanding the problem behind their actions can make all the difference in the effectiveness of teacher response. Teachers and students sometimes view the same behaviors differently. When students break school rules, teachers consider the behavior a problem. But for the student, that behavior is often a solution to some…

Exposure to trauma--which many experts view as include ongoing life stressors like poverty, parents divorcing, death of a family member, or drug abuse in the home--is prevalent among school-aged children. Teachers know that facing trauma impedes students' ability to focus and learn, but it can be challenging to keep responding caringly to a…

Approximately 14 to 17 percent of adolescents today self-harm, deliberately cutting, burning, or bruising themselves. Most self-harming adolescents use the behavior as a coping strategy to get immediate relief from emotional distress or other stressors in their lives. Stressors include fitting in with peers, activity and homework overload, fears…

Despite recent claims that schools should educate children and leave the rest to others, this overview argues that teachers and principals cannot ignore students' concerns or their troubled, confused, or depressed condition. Although schools' primary goal is intellectual activity, they must also help students cope with life. (MLH)

A four-year study of urban high school renewal found that the leadership and management of change meant dealing with uncertainty, complexity, turbulence, and the cussedness of many different people. This article discusses four study topics (context, vision building, resources, and problem coping), explores will and skill issues, and provides…