The status quo is no longer an option. School leaders need to model care, courage, and open communication. Superintendent Jennifer Gallagher reflects on three important components of adaptive and effective leadership--communication, care, and courage--that she found helpful in navigating her district through the challenges of the pandemic.

Educators caring for family members with mental illness often hide hat they're going through, although support from fellow educators would make a huge difference. Johnson recounts her experience helping her son through a breakdown while still working within schools. She suggests how teachers might reach out to and support colleagues they sense are…

This article discusses the importance of teachers validating a student's feelings and helping them find a voice to express those feelings. When teachers play that role, they are offering that student the chance to cultivate deeper social-emotional skills and close the gap between the intent of their words and actions and the resulting impact on…

When students misbehave, understanding the problem behind their actions can make all the difference in the effectiveness of teacher response. Teachers and students sometimes view the same behaviors differently. When students break school rules, teachers consider the behavior a problem. But for the student, that behavior is often a solution to some…

Teaching during a pandemic, with a constant need to invent or learn new ways to instruct and reach students, has been traumatic for many educators. Teachers are feeling burnout, moral injury, and compassion fatigue. School leaders can move teachers--and school systems--toward post traumatic growth by making four shifts to create organizational…

One of the central ways to teach young children how to take care of each other is through classroom management, says University of Michigan's Carla Shalaby. Here, she invites educators to: (1) understand classroom management as a curriculum; (2) understand care as political work; and (3) understand young children as already powerful.

Nurturing the "good" in students of color requires educators to confront harmful stereotypes. Alexs Pate, author of "The Innocent Classroom," describes how teachers can create safe spaces where all young students can thrive.

A school-based behavioral therapy intervention at East High School in Rochester, New York, in partnership with a local university, builds resilience for middle-school students with high trauma.

Julie Causton, Kate MacLeod, and Kristie Pretti-Frontczak work with administrators all over the world who believe in supporting students with compassion and leading schools with love. But these administrators report incredible challenges they face in ditching traditional behavior-management practices like punitive or public discipline tactics.…

The authors discuss what data from several years of the Quaglia School Voice Student Survey reveal about whether students feel "known," accepted, and valued in school, and whether they feel there is a caring adult at school to whom they could go for help--all aspects of students having a "voice" in school. After sharing…

Disparate academic outcomes for Black boys persist. Educators should use an equity-centered lens when looking at this reality, asking not what's wrong with Black boys, but what's wrong with schools that they aren't serving these students better. Howard describes obstacles to black boys' school success and argues that educators need to listen to…

"We often say to one another that "students won't care what you know until they know that you care," and this may be true. But our students' knowledge that they are cared for depends on what we do far more than on what we say," writes Eric Toshalis. In this impassioned article, he urges educators to rethink what it means to…

How do school leaders navigate a complex change process? Simply put: They listen. This is the contention that Shane Safir puts forth in this article. She outlines five reasons for becoming a "listening leader": Listening helps leaders tune into and shift the dominant narrative; keep their finger on the pulse of complex change; stay true…

New school leaders typically start out with enthusiasm--but sometime in their first year, they often find themselves disappointed, exhausted, and full of self-doubt. In this article, Cathy A. Toll discusses five perspectives that helped her enthusiasm for the job when she was a new school leader: (1) Teachers are well-intentioned, hard-working…

In these unprecedented times, educators need to infuse equity and justice into their discipline practices. Whether operating in-person or remotely, the schools that succeed this year will be the ones that put mental health at the center of all policies and practices, says Micere Keels, director of the Trauma Responsive Educational Practices…