Why 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...
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A Medically Complex Student Is on Your Class List. Now What?
There are certain pieces of information on a class list that immediately make a teacher sit up a little straighter – A medically complex student is one of them. Maybe you see a note about...
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Why Teach Responsible Decision Making?
I’ve noticed with the CASEL framework that responsible decision making tends to get treated like the competency you will circle back to eventually. Self-awareness and self-management usually get the front-of-the-line treatment because they show up...
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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...
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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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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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