I challenge each educator to remind students that they have the autonomy to voice whatever is on their mind because their perspective is valued and needed.
The Responsive Classroom approach reaches far beyond the old perception of social and emotional curriculums producing “nice” kids in a warm and fuzzy environment. It allows us to build intelligent guidelines for school and to develop classroom practices that are informed by current neuroscience and are relevant to the children of the 21st Century.
Changing a schedule is a large scale effort. What was I doing on a smaller scale in my physics class to combine rigor and well-being, strategies that could be done by any teacher without asking permission?
We begin each year by trying to get to know each child and helping them believe that our classroom is a place where they belong and can thrive. But once you have got that going, then what? Here is our Back to School Top Ten.
I've been reminding myself that we just built our planes while flying them, and getting the whole fleet airborne is an incredible achievement; on some days, that alone is good enough. And the rest of the time, I’m wondering how I might steer my seventh-grade Life Science plane somewhere even more interesting, now that we’re up here.
Here are five ways educators can tend to social and emotional wellbeing from a distance - for ourselves, our colleagues, and our students.