Spirituality is impossible to define, but numerous, common themes can be discerned. I suggest a model of spirituality based upon the oeuvre of Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian/French philosopher, semiologist, and psychoanalyst. She is an atheist who has a great respect for belief. Her therapeutic work reveals compassion and a desire for the creation…

Donald Stewart Early Childhood Center is a dual-language preschool located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The school is comprised of 22 classrooms in which students are grouped by age group and includes two special education classrooms. Donald Stewart has high academic expectations for all 308 of it's students. In order to help each learner meet these…

This report offers seven suggestions for social and emotional learning (SEL) advocates and funders as they seek to deliver on SEL's promise and avoid its pitfalls. The case for SEL must not become an excuse to diminish attention to academic skills and knowledge or serve to deflect educators from the centrality of academic instruction. SEL will be…

The highest form of virtuous behavior in the Aristotelian virtue ethics approach to character education involves practical wisdom, or "phronesis," which allows an individual to act in the right way about the right things for the right reasons. Here, we use our experiences with social-emotional and character development (SECD) in…

Dr. Card's article provides useful and clear standards for determining what good measurement is, identifies important problems in the measurement of constructs important to character education, and provides clear guidance about measurement development. In this article, I raise 4 points that build on Dr. Card's work. First, advancing assessment in…

Dr. Card's article provides useful and clear standards for determining what good measurement is, identifies important problems in the measurement of constructs important to character education, and provides clear guidance about measurement development. In this article, I raise 4 points that build on Dr. Card's work. First, advancing assessment in…

Excellent schools strive to develop a comprehensive and integrative improvement process for students and their families that integrate best practices of positive school culture, climate, and social and emotional learning; character development skills, enhanced academic achievement strategies, and positive parent engagement. Character.org's…

Does the current drive to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) into the K-12 curriculum represent a positive reform that will lead schools to educate the "whole student" and ultimately boost young people's academic success? Or is it a distracting fad that comes with high opportunity costs? Common sense and considerable…

There has been increasing discussion about the importance of building students' social-emotional competencies for their academic and behavioral success (Jones, Brush, Bailey, Brion-Meisels, McIntyre, Kahn, Nelson, & Stickle, 2017). However, the majority of these discussions focus on social-emotional skills (SEL) as a universal intervention,…

This article traces the evolution of holistic student development as the centerpiece of the college experience in the 1960s to its current all-too-often overlooked function in postsecondary education, and it explains why students, employers, and the democracy all benefit from educating the whole person. Holistic student development encompasses…

Cross-sector competencies are employability knowledge, skills, and dispositions that--along with academic and career-specific skills--make up a career-ready graduate. As schools work to prepare students for success in a rapidly changing economy, they need to have clear and measurable definitions of what students should know and be able to do in…

In urban schools overwhelmed by increasing demands to raise test scores, exclusive focus on increasing academic competencies has proven ineffective. School-wide, comprehensive social-emotional and character development (SECD), focused on the cultivation of Noble Purpose, provides an alternative pathway toward life, college, and career success. We…

With a great deal of divisiveness in today's political climate (Gramlich, 2017), it is not difficult to imagine the impact that partisanship can have on youth. The Internet is filled with examples of social media rants, name-calling, and even violent incidents as adults engage in unproductive and uncivil behavior with those who are different from…

Teaching character virtues and social-emotional skills in isolation of social-political context is incomplete at best. Further, racial and ethnic inequity in social action and political influence spans from youth to adults and must be addressed (Kahne & Middaugh, 2008b). Middle school is a crucial developmental time to cultivate students'…

Evidence suggests that there is a correlation between the violent images and stories we view through media and the effects those stories have on children and young adults, namely the suppression of compassion. With so much emphasis on academic standards, sometimes social emotional skills are grossly neglected. Students are being taught how to…