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Showing posts from September, 2018

Take a S.E.L.F.ie

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Are you meeting the social and emotional needs of your school community? Discover ways to hone your practices following the 4 steps of SELF: S tart With You E mpower Others L isten Empathetically F orm Connections Our society is experiencing a dramatic increase in bullying, teenage suicides, and school shootings. Lawmakers and school officials have been urged to rethink the importance of addressing what some call the “soft skills”.  Title IV of the Every Student Succeeds Act focuses on cultivating safe and healthy school conditions for student learning.  The Marjory Douglas Stoneman Act, SB 7026, emphasizes mental health access for all students.  Furthermore, recent revisions of Florida’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Support stresses mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) as a Universal or Tier One prevention and intervention.     According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL.org), social-emotional learning “is the process thro
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Assume Nothing! Teach to Every Behavior Expectation! Olivia Williams Today, school administrators are faced with a revolving door of misbehaving students on their campuses. They often spend more time administering discipline versus being the educational leaders in their buildings. This coupled with a shortage of qualified and effective teachers makes their roles even more challenging. In the U.S., 14% of new teachers resign by the end of their first year, 33% leave within their first 3 years, and almost 50% leave by their 5th year.  Why? Many teachers leave the educational field largely due to the behavior challenges in the classroom, and the lack of corrective consequences for student misbehavior. These challenges are real, but one of the best ways to meet this challenge is through facilitating effective classroom management professional development and providing in classroom support to remediate incidents of similar misbehavior. As research shows that punishment alone