While children receive most emotional messages from their caregivers, schools provide a unique opportunity to promote social-emotional competence. Early childhood educators and administrators should consider the long-term outcomes of incorporating SEL for young learners and school staff. One strategy to promote young students' social-emotional…

Background/purpose. It has been established that students with special educational needs should have equal opportunities for learning with the rest of the formal developmental students in a common school, regardless of their characteristics or difficulties. In an environment that promotes normal physical and emotional well-being, mental…

Using the guiding principles from Peter Johnston's best-selling professional resources, "Choice Words" and "Opening Minds," Peter and six colleagues began a journey to create just such classrooms-environments in which children meaningfully engage with each other through reading, writing, making, and discussing books. In…

Children's relationships with their teachers are a potential resource for enhancing developmental and academic outcomes. The effects of positive or negative teacher--child relationships can be either beneficial or detrimental to students' academic progress, behaviors, and emotions. In the current study, we utilized a qualitative research design to…

Multilingual identity is an area ripe for further exploration within the existing extensive body of identity research. In this paper we make a case for a conceptual framework that defines multilingual identity formation in terms of learners' active involvement, and proposes the classroom as the hitherto underused site for participative identity…

Research Findings: This study focused on kindergartens serving low SES families and examined the associations between teachers' perceptions of their teaching experiences in their classroom and observed global classroom quality. Forty teachers and their classrooms participated. Teachers' perceptions of their teaching experiences in the classroom…

This article examines the concept of gifted and talented and its implications for music education. The authors explore what it means for students to be labeled "gifted and talented" both generally and in music. Next, we look at some of the strengths of gifted and talented education as well as some negative consequences and common…

The concept of project-based learning (PBL) has garnered wide support among a number of K-12 education policy advocates and funders. PBL is viewed as an approach that enables students to develop the "21st century competencies"--cognitive and socioemotional skills--needed for success in college and careers. This issue focus, pulling from…

Students in the middle grades experience tremendous development in various domains. However, childhood trauma can significantly impede this development, further exacerbating the functioning of our most vulnerable student populations. This article aims to describe the use of trauma-informed teaching as a form of middle-level, social justice…

The reading and writing challenges that students with learning disabilities (LD) face in academic classroom settings, such as social studies classrooms, are ever present because students are expected to read, understand, and use text-based language that they cannot access due to text-reading difficulties. Visual, performing or drama, music, and…

Statistics on K-12 students with mental health challenges almost guarantee that teachers will encounter these students in their classrooms. Educators will be more prepared and successful if they have feasible strategies to promote student well-being and avoid exacerbating existing problems. This article presents research-based classroom practices…

"Nurturing Students' Character" is an easy-to-use guide to incorporating social-emotional and character development (SECD) into your teaching practice. The links are clear--elementary and middle school students have better odds of academic success if you nurture their social and emotional skills. Drawing on broad field experience and the…

This book is a road map for teachers and school leaders who need to meet the needs of increasing numbers of Newcomers and other English Learners (ELs). Authors Margarita Espino Calderón and Shawn Slakk draw from years of experience in working with, listening to, and coaching administrators, teachers, and coaches nationwide to help you develop and…

Charts that keep (public) track of whether a student's behavior is in some equivalent of a red (problem), yellow, or green ("well-behaved") zone are ubiquitous in elementary schools. This strategy based on shaming students is due to be retired because (1) it promotes only compliance, not social-emotional learning; (2) charts don't teach…

This study sheds light on the interrelations of universal, school-based social-emotional learning strategies and ethnic-racial identity over time. We assessed exposure to social-emotional learning practices and ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution among 367 middle school students (70% African American, 30% Latinx; 51% girls) across 3…