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Ask Dr. Judy Webinar: What Neuro-Logical Emotional Interventions Promote Growth Mindset, Academic, Social, and Emotional Success?

February 3rd, 2012

Join renowned author, neurologist, and teacher Judy Willis for an exciting free webinar to learn which “neuro logical” strategies encourage information to pass through the brain’s emotional filters to reach the most powerful cognitive control centers in the prefrontal cortex.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012, 3:00 p.m. eastern time
Register now!

Discover the the interventions that reverse negativity, promote positive attitudes, increase participation, and build student confidence to persevere through challenges.

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Are You Meeting the Love and Belongingness Needs of Students?

February 1st, 2012

Muriel Rand

Post written by Muriel Rand, a professor of early childhood education at New Jersey City University. She began her career as a preschool teacher in central New Jersey and now teaches graduate- and undergraduate-level courses in classroom management, working with families, action research, and early literacy education. Connect with Rand on the ASCD EDge® social network and on her blog, The Positive Classroom.

“Ignore him—he just wants attention!” How many times have you heard a teacher say something like this? Attention-seeking behavior has a bad reputation in our schools, and it can often lead to difficult classroom management challenges. Yet Maslow, the often-forgotten humanistic psychologist, has helped us understand that seeking attention is a way of getting our love and belongingness needs met. The need for human interaction and affection is so strong that it is a kind of hunger—the more children lack these interactions, the harder they will try to get them. And any interactions, even negative ones, are better than none.

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Free Teleseminar: Improving School Climate Through a Whole Child Approach

January 31st, 2012

Join ASCD Managing Director of the Whole Child Initiative Molly McCloskey in conversation with ASCD author and Rutgers University professor Maurice J. Elias. McCloskey will share information about specific initiatives and examples of how a whole child approach ensures that each child, in each community, is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Monday, February 27, 2012, 12:00 p.m. eastern time
Call in to 1-800-868-1123 and use code 70187505

The teleseminar is part of a series of monthly meetings of the Improving School Climate for Academic and Life Success project at Rutgers, designed to support social-emotional character development (SECD) and antibullying initiatives in schools. The format allows you to call in and listen (only), though you can e-mail questions during the teleseminar to mjeru@aol.com. On the other hand, it’s very convenient and you can listen in the car, in the office, at home, or while shopping. We will also post the audio of the teleseminar here on the Whole Child Blog within a few days of completion.

In the Rutgers University Center for Applied Psychology, Elias serves as director of Social-Emotional Learning Lab and is the academic director of the Civic Engagement and Service Education Partnerships program. He is also the coordinator of the Expert Advisory Group to the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention and writes an Edutopia blog on SECD for the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

Our Country Deserves a Great Education System

January 25th, 2012

In this TEDx presentation, Brian M. Stecher, associate director and senior social scientist at RAND Education, suggests three steps we need to take to cultivate schools where students can thrive.

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A Call to Action!

January 19th, 2012

Sign for Whole Child

The We the People initiative is the Obama administration’s effort to provide citizens with a new way to petition the administration to take action on a range of important issues facing the United States. If a petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, White House staff reviews it, sends it to the appropriate policy experts, and issues an official response.

Today ASCD is taking advantage of this initiative and petitioning the administration to make whole child education a national priority. We petition the Obama administration to establish a President’s Council on the Whole Child to help students be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, and we urge you to add your voice in support of this holistic and child-centered push for education at the executive office level.

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Supporting Development of Healthy Schools Across Canada

January 18th, 2012

Healthy School Report Card - Canadian Second Edition

Hot off the presses! We have released a second Canadian edition of the Healthy School Report Card action tool. Developed by ASCD’s Healthy School Communities (HSC), the publication was coauthored by prominent experts in the fields of health and education: David K. Lohrmann, Sandra Vamos, and Paul Yeung. But you may be asking yourself: Why did we develop a Canadian edition and why did we move to a second edition?

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Our Top 10 Blog Posts in 2011

December 30th, 2011

In the past year, experts and practitioners in the field, whole child partners, and ASCD staff have shared their stories, ideas, and resources to help you ensure that each child, in each community, is healthy, engaged, supported, and challenged and is college-, career-, and citizenship-ready. These are the top 10 posts you read in 2011.

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A Whole Child Approach to Education and the Common Core State Standards Initiative

December 5th, 2011

A whole child approach to education is defined by policies, practices, and relationships that ensure each child, in each school, in each community, is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. It engages all stakeholders—educators, families, policymakers, and community members—in defying the “percentage proficient” culture of too many school reform efforts, to focus on each child. And it further raises the bar of accountability beyond narrow, single-issue “improvement” strategies to efforts that reflect the broad array of factors influencing long-term success rather than short-term achievement.

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Tips on Inviting Students to Learn

November 1st, 2011

Post submitted by Whole Child Blogger Carole Hayward

At last weekend’s ASCD Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning session “Inviting Students to Learn: 100 Tips for Talking Effectively with Your Students,” Jenny Edwards presented many strategies from her ASCD book by the same title. Edwards’s strategies are based on the premise that the language teachers use powerfully affects students’ ability to learn.

Studies show that teacher language has a great influence on student learning. “The way you speak to your students is key to creating an inviting learning environment,” Edwards explained. “What might you like for your students to be saying 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the future about how what you said to them influenced their lives and their futures?”

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Does Your School Have Integrity?

October 28th, 2011

Paula Mirk

Post submitted by Paula Mirk, M.Ed. Mirk has worked at whole child partner the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE) since 1996 and currently oversees the IGE education department’s many initiatives, including the Ethical Literacy expanding community of schools. She collaborates with national and international organizations and with school districts from large to small to integrate ethical literacy into classroom practice, school culture, and systemic reform. Mirk has worked with schools and audiences around the world, particularly across Latin America, as she is also fluent in Spanish. Her articles have appeared in education journals in the United States and Canada.

A few years ago, the Institute for Global Ethics collaborated with the National Association of Independent Schools to examine what exemplary schools were doing to balance attention to academic rigor with attention to the ethical behavior of high school students. A common thread among these selected schools was a collegial collaboration aimed at making adults feel safe, engaged, and inspired at work. (No surprise to learn that this “rubbed off” on students who were also invited to “take an active part in the school improvement process.”)

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