This post initially appeared on the Kids Deserve It blog. To find out more about Kids Deserve It, take a look at #KidsDeserveIt on Twitter or check out their newly released book here. When we meet students under the most ideal circumstances, we know a lot about them. We know about their interests, their family life, […]
Social Emotional Learning
5 Positive Hallway Conversations
I spend a lot of time in our hallways. At the very least, I’m there before school, during every passing period, in the cafeteria at lunch, and at parent pickup after school. (Ok, I’m expanding to include some of our common areas, but work with me here.) Part of my job in each of those locations […]
The Invisible People In Your School
Right now, there are invisible people in your school. No, not some sort of ghosts like those who haunt people in books and movies; in your school are students who are “invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see” them for who they are (not unlike the unnamed narrator in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man whose self-description […]
Speak Into the Lives of Others
When I was in the classroom, much of my favorite student writing came in response to an assignment I often ended the school year with in my English classes that dealt with two weighty ideas. Students first encountered this claim—“The thing about humans is that they are constantly comparing themselves to one another”—before moving on to […]
How (not) to Think of Social Emotional Learning
A Lesson From 5th Grade PE I can’t remember much from 5th grade P.E., but one day is as clear as can be in my memory. On the day that I remember well, our P.E. teachers had us run and run and run for the first half of class (and I ran more than most […]
Did he really know better?
A few years ago I was asked a simple question that has impacted nearly every academic or behavior conversation I’ve had since. Sitting in a training (with admittedly low expectations), this question surprised me: If a student in your class made a mistake on an academic assignment, would it make sense to say, “You knew […]