A Year of SEL in 10 Minutes a Day
Every August I hear the same worry from teachers. Want this to be their year of SEL. They want their kids to have the language for big feelings and the tools to manage them. But...
Read MoreWhy Behavior and SEL IEP Goals Take 700 Years to Write
There are some IEP goals I can write pretty quickly. If I have good baseline data and a clear area of need, I can usually figure out where I want a student to go with...
Read More
How to Build Connection With Students Who Refuse to Talk
I want to be clear about who this post is for. This isn’t about selective mutism or any clinical presentation that needs an evaluation and a plan built with a specialist. This is about the...
Read More
Boundary 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....
Read More
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 More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More
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...
Read More