Posts belonging to Category Building Community

Principal Hopes and Dreams

At the beginning of the school year, in classrooms and schools across the country, students and teachers are asked to set goals for the year ahead. Students set learning goals with their teachers and teachers set teaching goals with their principals. Principals also set goals with their superintendents. All this goal setting is designed to [...]

21st Century Learning Communities

Commenting on my last post on 21st Century Skills, Tracy wrote:
“Every time I read, hear, or think about 21st Century Skills I automatically connect to the Responsive Classroom® approach. The core skills of the approach are at the very heart of 21st Century Skills. Those of us already using RC do not think of 21st [...]

Standing Up with Self-Control

Standing up with self-control is the final of the five key CARES skills underlying Responsive Classroom practice that help build positive proactive attributes in children both socially and academically. The other four are cooperation, assertion, responsibility and empathy.
The ability to control and regulate feelings, thoughts, and actions are at the core of cognitive growth and [...]

Standing Up with Empathy

As reported by the Boston Globe, on May 4, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick signed into law one of the most comprehensive antibullying measures ever passed. The family of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who killed himself in April 2009 after extensive bullying, attended the signing, as did a group of teenagers who advocated for a statewide [...]

Standing Up with Responsibility

Responsibility is one of the five key CARES skills underlying Responsive Classroom practice that help build positive proactive attributes in children both socially and academically. The other four are cooperation, assertion, empathy, and self-control.
Standing up to the bullying and other mean and hurtful behavior that children see happening in their classrooms, in the cafeteria, on [...]

Standing Up with Assertion

Assertion is one of the five key CARES skills underlying Responsive Classroom practice that help build positive proactive attributes in children both socially and academically. The other four are cooperation, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
Teaching assertion is the business of raising every voice in the classroom every day with conscious purposefulness.
If we don’t teach children how [...]

Standing Up with the Skills of C.A.R.E.S.

In reflecting on some of the responses to my last blog about bullying (and what we can do to be more proactive in our classrooms and schools to address this serious issue at all grade levels), I spent some time thinking more deeply about the social skills at the core of the Responsive Classroom® approach [...]

Standing Up Instead of Standing By: The Heart of the Classroom

Six high school students have been charged following a long investigation into the tragic suicide of fifteen year-old Phoebe Prince who killed herself on January 14 after being bullied in school, on Facebook, and through text messages in South Hadley, Massachusetts.  As reported by WWLP News:
District Attorney Scheibel said that Phoebe was bullied regularly for [...]

Circles of Power and Respect

Being a parent or teacher of pre-teens and young adolescents is an amazing experience. There is no question that “tweeners” between the ages of 11 and 14 need extra-strong support, nurturing, and guidance during a time they are demanding increased independence, exhibiting mercurial emotions, and sending mixed messages about how they feel about thenselves [...]

The Soul of Education

A short time ago, we lost one of the clearest and most courageous voices in the field of education. Rachael Kessler, author of  The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School and a leader in the field of social and emotional learning, passed away at the end of January.
Rachael knew [...]