The Blog

Social emotional intelligence is a crucial aspect of modern education that has gained increasing attention in recent years. Social emotional intelligence (SEI) refers to the ability to identify, understand, and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It involves developing empathy, building meaningful relationships, and effectively communicating with others.

Daily or weekly social emotional check-ins with students provide a quick way to include student voice, encourage self-awareness, and teach social awareness. Social emotional check-ins are an important part of the classroom environment, as they provide students with a safe and secure space to express their feelings and emotions while also helping teachers understand their students on a deeper level, allowing them to better meet their needs. Additionally, social emotional check

Let’s face it. Recruiting, hiring, on-boarding, and training new teachers is time consuming, expensive, and exhausting. Schools with a high turnover rate struggle to maintain a healthy culture. Additionally, the inconsistency in staff leads to gaps in programming, curriculum, and common language and understanding across the building. Teacher retention should be at the top of our to-do list as educational leaders. To help you achieve this goal, we’ve put together some top tips

As I have visited classrooms and observed teachers teaching their classes, I am noticing a very common trend. The learning their students are doing is very passive and somewhat compliant. In a quote attributed to many different sources from Confucius to Benjamin Franklin says, “Tell Me and I Forget; Teach Me and I May Remember; Involve Me and I Learn” and it has been proven many times and, in many ways, to be true.   It used to be the standard norm in a classroom in rows all

I’ve listed four books below that I believe address some of the biggest struggles I’ve seen in the areas of social emotional learning this year. From student apathy to educator burnout, these are great resources for creating positive change!  

Whether you are a classroom teacher, physical education teacher, or school principal, chances are you are looking to add something fun and engaging to your playground or gym equipment for recess. Look no further than the amazing Pindaloo. 

With a growth mindset, students are encouraged to take on challenges and persist in the face of difficult tasks. It fosters a positive learning environment that supports risk-taking and self-improvement. By embracing a growth mindset, students can become more resilient, develop self-confidence, and learn to value effort over results. Research has also shown that students with a growth mindset are more likely to succeed academically and professionally.  

Motivation in education is the driving force behind a student’s desire to learn and grow. It is the intrinsic desire to do well and achieve success in the classroom. Motivation in education can come from a student’s own internal desire to learn and grow or it can come from external factors such as rewards, recognition, and encouragement from teachers and peers. It is important to foster motivation in the classroom in order to create a positive learning environment. Motivation

MTSS, or multi-tiered systems and supports, encompasses a tiered approach to academics, behavior, and social emotional learning giving us a better picture of the way these components all work together for our students. Tier 1 includes services that ALL students receive. To learn more about building a strong tier 1, check this out! By setting up a solid foundation and clear process, we are able to shift to a preventative lens, intervene earlier, and benefit ALL students. Today

Conflict resolution is an important skill to teach students. It’s important to teach children how to communicate effectively, how to problem solve, and how to manage their emotions when they have a disagreement. There are many strategies that can help with this. One strategy is to have students brainstorm a list of conflict resolution steps. This can help them become aware of the options they have when they are dealing with a disagreement.

Employability skills are a set of skills outside of technical or academic competencies that are considered imperative to being a successful employee and team member. In an effort to ensure these skills are integrated into academic settings, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) has arranged these competencies into four categories: mindsets, work ethic, learning strategies, and social emotional learning.

Employability skills are a set of skills outside of technical or academic competencies that are desired by potential employers and considered imperative to being a successful employee and team member. This set of skills might include things like: communication, teamwork, initiative, problem solving, planning and organizing, self-management, and more. You may have heard them referred to as “soft-skills.”

As the world around us gets busier and busier, there is an increased need for understanding how to manage our time and tasks. Below we will discuss why it is important, give some quick tips, learn how to prepare the mind and environment, and discuss how to make the lessons stick! 

An invaluable lesson that helps students perform their best is teaching students appropriate self-advocacy.  Students who have 504 plans and I.E.P.s need to learn how to appropriately advocate for the accommodation(s) afforded to them in their plan. Regular education students also need to be taught and shown how to appropriately ask for help and assistance as needed. When students learn how to appropriately ask for assistance, they are not only set up for success in the class

The ability to read, write, understand, and use language properly to edit and correct passages are the important aspects of the Writing and Language Test in the Evidenced-Based Reading and Writing section of the SAT Assessment. The Writing and Language Test is one of two parts of the SAT Assessment’s Evidenced-Based Reading and Writing section. The other part is the Reading Test. 

Another year of collective and personal loss, another year of quick changes, and increasingly stressed brain states of many of the adults and children we serve have left us all exhausted. While I still believe deeply and strongly that your wellness must remain a top priority, today I want to talk about the kids. They, too, have been on this wild ride of unpredictability, change, and loss.   Emotions are contagious and while our stress levels undoubtedly impact our students,

Stress is a part of life and it can even be helpful! We perform better under some level of stress, it can motivate us to reach our goals and even plays a part in our development into happy, healthy adults. In fact, some of the most joyful events in our lives come with some level of stress – new jobs, new relationships, planning weddings, having babies, buying a new home, and even vacations!

We are living through an incredible time of physical and emotional disconnection. Despite technological advances created to keep us connected, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. We’ve seen it happening for years as smartphones become the focus at dinners, video games trump family game nights, texting takes the place of phone calls, and emojis replace the use of words.

As most of us learned in the past year, we can’t predict what will happen next and when we feel out of control or faced with a lot of new, potentially frightening, things all at once it is easy to get overwhelmed, burnt out, and disconnected. Perhaps, if we spend time looking inward rather than out for answers, we might find ourselves better equipped to grow through the tough times without losing ourselves. I believe this might be true for individuals, organizations, and ev

School turnaround is an intervention directed toward a low-performing school that delivers considerable gains in achievement, and readies that school for the process of transformation into a high-performing institution. It refers to the efforts being made by districts and states to improve student outcomes, build capacity, and sustain reforms. Professional development for teachers can help in this regard.