Executive Functioning and Cognitive Growth: The Intersection of Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning

A number of studies in early childhood classrooms have documented that “self-regulation predicts academic performance in first grade, over and above cognitive skills and family background.” (Examples of these studies: Blair, 2002; Farran, 2010; McClelland, M. M.; Piccinin, A., & Stallings, M. C., 2010; Raver & Knitzer, 2002).
Educators are increasingly becoming aware that social and [...]

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 [...]

Spring Transitions

Pretty much no matter where you live or teach or where your children go to school, this time of year, and in some cases, this particular week, marks the beginning of many annual rituals and transitions full of difficult dilemmas and wonderful paradoxes.
In some school districts, children are just returning from a week of April [...]

Imagination–The most significant “critical thinking skill” of all?

“The very attributes we most want to nurture in our children—creativity, initiative, collaboration, problem-solving, courage—are best developed through imaginative play.”
The quote above—from the Alliance for Childhood’s report “Crisis in the Kindergarten” noted in my last post—is a succinct summary of one of the key expert findings explored in the nine significant research studies and numerous [...]

More Solid Evidence on the Value of Recess

A wonderful blog to link to from this one is Rae Pica’s “Pica Perspective.” Just click on the blog’s name to the right, under “Blogs I Like,” and find her February 27 entry. In it, she notes the flurry of research and press about the positive influence of recess on school behavior and performance. Of [...]

A Teacher Gift for the Holidays

Teach Our Children Well: Essential Strategies for the Urban Classroom, by Helen Maniates and Betty Doerr with Margaret Goldman (Heinemann 2001) is a wonderful rediscovered treasure sent my way recently–one that’s well worth spending a few hours with over the holidays. I guarantee you’ll come away with at least half a dozen sparkling new ideas [...]