| By: Committee for Children Four Tips for Creating a Safe and Supportive Classroom It's Monday morning, and your student Charlie storms in, pushing people and throwing things. With Charlie, there are lots of days like this, especially after the weekend. But what you do next can make a big difference to Charlie's day, to your day, and to his overall experience in school. Senior Program Developer Bridgid Normand gives four practical tips for creating an environment in which Charlie and all your other students can learn. Read More
| By: Tonje Molyneux Welcome Wave of Change: Positive Discipline and SEL in Schools I bet you can easily conjure up an image of a school teacher rapping the knuckles of a naughty girl with a ruler. Or a principal paddling the bottom of a boisterous boy. For a long time, this was how students were disciplined in school. They were physically punished with rulers, straps, paddles, or hands. Or shamed by being made to stand in the corner, wear a dunce cap, or write lines on the board. Perhaps you think these harsh, punitive discipline practices are a relic of a past, something we now only see in old movies or on episodes of The Simpsons. But in 19 states it’s still legal to use corporal punishment in schools.1 And since the late 1980s, zero-tolerance policies have resulted in thousands of students being excluded from schools, their right to an education stripped away for infractions sometimes as minor as chewing gum. Read More
| By: Committee for Children Second Step Bullying Prevention Unit: A Schoolwide Approach Learn about three components of the Bullying Prevention Unit a school needs to handle bullying effectively: policies and procedures, staff response training, and student lessons.Read More
| By: Committee for Children Talking About Tough Topics with Tweens: Part 2 of 2 We’ve also been talking about the difference between unsafe and unwanted touch. When I asked nine-year-old Etta to give me an example of unsafe touch, my witty child walked over to Amos and slugged him. “Correct!” I crowed. Amos remarked drily, “It was unwanted, too.” Read More
| By: Committee for Children Talking About Tough Topics with Tweens: Part 1 of 2 Talking about tough topics, in addition to being an excellent tongue-twister, is a skill every parent needs to master, or at least muddle through. As someone who once found the perfect moment to talk about sex with her five and eight year old children after hearing an NPR story about drive-up windows for boar semen (“What are they even talking about, Mom?”), I am a big fan of seizing natural opportunities. Of course, sometimes those opportunities don’t come soon enough, and we need to nudge them along.Read More
| By: Committee for Children Look How Far We Have Come! In honor of National Bullying Prevention Month, I thought it would be nice to highlight all the progress that has been made in bullying prevention over the past 15 years.Read More
| By: Committee for Children Book review: Talk About Touch by Sandra Kleven. Illustrated by Patrick Minock Reading Level: Preschool–Grade 2 Set in a traditional Alaska Native village, Talk About Touch is an exceptionally gentle, caring story about children and parents talking about personal safety and, in particular, sexual abuse. Eric is a young boy whose father, while working with him on their snowmobile, broaches… Read More
| By: Committee for Children Train Your Staff, Protect Your Students By Tonje Molyneux & Matt Pearsall Awareness about the issue of child abuse and neglect is on the rise, both among educators and the general public. This increase in awareness is good news for children who may be suffering from abuse or neglect. State and local governments across the United States are drafting new laws to help protect children. Many of these initiatives—such as Read More
| By: Committee for Children Get a Two-fer This October with Bullying Prevention October is National Bullying Prevention Month. It’s the perfect time to shine a light on the bullying prevention efforts in your setting and find ways to beef them up. And while doing so, you’ll also be doing important work to create a safe and supportive learning environment. Now that’s a two-fer—two benefits for the price of one—everyone…Read More
| By: Tonje Molyneux Create a Safe and Supportive School with SEL By Tonje Molyneux It’s that time of year again. Kids are heading back to school after a summer off. It’s time to buckle down and get back to the business of learning, but are they ready? What kind of learning environment do students need to be ready to learn? Safety and support are important for learning… In answer to that question, research points to a safe and…Read More