By Tamara Fyke   Although we are surrounded by the beauty of lights, wreaths and snow, the holiday season can be an incredibly painful time for many of us.  Perhaps, it’s because we have been estranged from loved ones for years.  Maybe it’s because we are afraid of being under the family microscope.  Or ...

By Jenny Angelo Beaumont, Texas, is in my DNA. My family has been here since the 1800s, when the area was mainly devoted to cattle ranching and rice milling, through the great Spindletop oil discovery, which was the first major oil field and the largest in American history. We have so many great opportunities in ...

  By Tamara Fyke   In order to further our conversation about SEL and EdTech, I am building on the three strategies featured in “How Can SEL & EdTech Work Together“: Three strategies for using technology to support social-emotional skill development: Have the conversations – Use and define a common language for social-emotional learning and make explicit connections ...

  By Lori Jackson and Steve Peck   Schools have a core mission to develop students who have the all-around skills and knowledge to succeed in life. Regardless of the name we give these skills―grit, growth mindset, or social-emotional skills―these are the abilities that form the foundation for learning to take place.  The question for ...

  By Tamara Fyke   Over the past year, I have had countless conversations with educators, from administrators to classroom teachers, about their perspectives on social-emotional learning (SEL).  My team and I have asked questions about current practices and needs.  The most common response we have received, without question, is the need to build the ...

  By Thom Markham   The great fiction that a teacher today has become a “guide on the side” is now hardwired into nearly every conversation about the future of teaching and learning. Teachers don’t deliver information any longer; they act as co-constructivists and facilitators, sitting shoulder to shoulder with students. Why raise objections to ...

  By LeiLani Cauthen   New pre-released data from the Learning Counsel’s 2019 Survey indicates that 58 percent of schools now rate their highest pressure is their student’s social and emotional needs.  Alongside this information is the Learning Counsel’s new research that a whopping 27 percent of students nationally have left traditional public education for ...

  By Tamara Fyke   As an educator and parent, I feel I have been waging the war against screens for more than a decade.  In the classroom, even with adults, it’s a challenge to get learners to focus on what is happening in our space in the present moment; at home, it can be ...