Articles

Every member of your learning community—from students to educators to families—deserves recognition for the effort they put into this school year. Celebrating them (and yourself!) is a powerful way to end the year on a positive note, strengthen community bonds, and help students appreciate their progress while reinforcing their identities…

Elevating student voice in a school library may seem unusual to anyone who imagines a library only as a quiet sanctuary. Today’s school libraries bustle with activity and are the hub and heart of the school community. A professionally staffed and funded school library has a direct impact on student…

As the end of the school year approaches, I hope you find yourself admiring the growth your students and classroom community have made since the fall. I hope, too, that you look at yourself with pride as you reflect on all you have learned, adjusted to, and created this school…

As an SEL coach, Amy Isenhart is constantly inspired by all the ways educators positively impact the lives of students each day. In her reflective piece below, Amy writes from the perspective of a student to capture how meaningful this work is to students. When you welcome me with your…

Self-assessment helps students monitor and evaluate their own work and identify ways to improve their learning. Teaching self-assessment helps give our students the true gifts of education: both the recognition that they can grow and change and an innate desire to do so.  Self-Assessment Begins With Goal-Setting Self-assessment is closely…

Interactive Modeling is a straightforward and effective technique for showing students exactly how to meet expectations for any routine or skill that needs to be done in one specific way. You can use Interactive Modeling for school and classroom routines such as responding to a signal and walking in line,…

In addition to identifying a set of academic competencies, the core belief of Responsive Classroom lays out a set of social and emotional competencies that students need in order to be successful in and out of school. Those competencies—cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control—are captured in the acronym C.A.R.E.S.  Incorporating…

The Responsive Classroom approach is based on building a positive community of engaged learners. In order to do so, it is essential to uphold the dignity of all students. It is hardest, but most necessary, to do this when a student misbehaves. There are five Responsive Classroom practices you can…

For students, spring is an energizing time of the school year. The days are getting longer and the weather is warming up, conjuring the possibilities of summer break. Students who are graduating are starting to prepare for their transition to a new school. It is a time of excitement and…

Take a moment to pause and reflect on your students and their success in keeping on track academically, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally. What factors influence their success? The subject matter? The time of day? Is there consistency across the week? Are there a few students who need more support, or…

Our class is about to start a collaborative project. Everyone is excited and the room is buzzing with diverse ideas for how to tackle the project. However, this excitement can cause issues: when working in small groups, students can sometimes be too eager and drown out the thoughts and opinions…

As educators, we are accustomed to dealing with limit testing, challenging behaviors, and even, at times, outward defiance. While it is never easy to manage these moments of upheaval, we know it is a part of the normal childhood experience. All children will test limits in their natural process of…

Everyone makes mistakes; it is part of being human. Your students are inevitably going to make mistakes in the process of learning socially responsible ways to navigate challenges and express frustrations, disappointments, thoughts, and opinions. However, while mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, sometimes they can turn…

It’s the time of the year when middle school students are more comfortable with their learning community. They know what the expectations are. They know where their classes are. They are familiar with the flow of the school day. It’s also the time of year when I begin noticing challenging…

February is a good time to take stock of the strategies you use to address behavior issues in your classroom. The months you have already spent with your students have provided you with valuable knowledge about what behavior strategies will be most effective for them, while the months ahead give…

Long breaks away from school offer students opportunities to relax and spend time with family and friends, but they can also make returning to school challenging. After winter break is an ideal time to help students reconnect with their focus and motivation by having them revisit their goals and set…

February is the shortest month of the year, but for educators it can feel like the longest. There is a lot to get done in the second half of the year, and often students returning from winter break need to be retaught classroom rules, routines, and expectations. But there is…

It’s midway through the school year and you notice one of your students has fallen into a pattern of missing work and struggling on tests and quizzes. You know it’s time to reach out to the student’s parents. It’s natural to feel anxious when calling home, especially to discuss an…

It’s January, and you notice that over the break your students seem to have forgotten all the routines they had been practicing since the start of the school year. Students are acting disrespectfully toward each other. During discussions, classmates are calling out when others are talking. They are showing they…

How often have you either needed a break from a stressful moment or noticed your mind wandering and needed an opportunity to purposefully refocus yourself? What do you do in those moments? Now consider your students. What can they do in your classroom when they experience stress or need an…

At the start of the school year, as new classroom communities are forming, teachers begin planning ways to connect and form relationships with new students. By the middle of the year, a lot has changed: students have established routines, friendships have formed, school assignments and projects are underway, and students…

As winter break approaches, students tend to get distracted by the excitement of the holidays and the anticipation of vacation. As a result, they are often more restless, irritable, and exhausted than usual, and it can be difficult to keep them engaged and focused on learning. Returning from winter break…

A student doodles during class instead of completing their assignment. Classmates shove each other as they get in line for recess. Between periods, a group of students runs down the hall to get to class. A student talks over a teacher’s instructions. Do any, or perhaps all, of these situations…

It’s a few months into the school year, and you may be noticing an increase in challenging student behaviors. Suddenly students are struggling to follow classroom rules that they learned at the beginning of the year. Some students are testing limits, both in their relationships with teachers as well as…

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (often referred to as The Nation’s Report Card) was recently released. The results made clear that today’s students are struggling with both reading and math, as there were noticeable declines in both subjects compared to previous report cards.  How Social and Emotional…

In recent years, many middle school classrooms have shifted from using physical resources like textbooks and workbooks to digital learning platforms that students access with laptops or tablets. A digital curriculum provides a fantastic opportunity for rich explorations of content with embedded scaffolds and additional resources for extending learning; however,…