Your Free Ticket to Quality Teacher Summer PD
If you have been following along with me for any amount of time, you know I do not throw the word “PD” around lightly. And quality summer PD? Forget it, truly. Most of what gets...
Read MoreBoundary Setting with Tough Students
There’s a version of “relationship first” teaching advice that absolutely wears teachers down. It tells you to lead with connection, to assume positive intent, to find the story behind the behavior. All true. All useful....
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Reading Comprehension and SEL
We have all sat through a meeting where someone put up a pie chart of instructional minutes and then announced that the school was also adding an SEL block. We know well that specific feeling...
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Relationship Skills in the Classroom
When you search “social emotional learning“, you’re going to see the term “CASEL competencies” come up. There are five of them, and while all five matter, relationship skills might be the one that most directly...
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Proxemics, Culture, SEL, & the Classroom
Have you ever heard of proxemics? Wait, let me back up. Let’s talk about something that’s been happening in your classroom for years, possibly daily, and you’ve maybe even been been chalking it up to...
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Social Awareness in the Classroom
If you’re not a teacher, you would be baffled that teaching kids to read and do math is the easy part of teaching!! The harder work is helping them figure out how to actually be...
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SEL & Student Screen Time
We ALL see it: students struggling to stay with something for more than a few minutes. Less back-and-forth during group work. A kind of low-grade restlessness that wasn’t always there. You’re not imagining it!! We’re...
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What to Say in Tricky Student Handoff Conversations
This post contains affiliate links. Every year, somewhere in May or June, teachers sit down for end-of-year student handoff conversations. Sometimes it’s a formal meeting. Sometimes it’s five minutes in the hallway, and sometimes it’s...
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10 Screen Free Toys for the Classroom
This post contains affiliate links. There’s a point in the year (usually once routines are solid and the pace has picked up) when “free time” in the classroom starts to feel a little off. You...
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Great Wolf Lodge Family Staycation
This is a sponsored blog post. All opinions are my own! We just got back from a two-night stay at Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL and it ended up being one of those...
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20 Ways to Encourage SEL at Home
Most of what I write is for teachers, but if you’ve ever worked in a classroom, you already know this: what happens at home and what shows up at school are deeply connected. SEL at...
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