• Show Gratitude for Teachers All Year!

    If this past year has taught us anything, it gave parents and caregivers insight to how difficult teaching is! We tried our best to step into teachers’ shoes…but we are not teachers. Teachers showed up for their students this year, despite what some described as “trying to build the airplane as we were flying it.” […]

  • ACEs Awareness and Knowing Your Own Number

      ACE Resource Network recently announced the first ever public awareness campaign about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). At Sound Discipline, we’ve been talking and teaching about ACEs for a long time, and we’re thrilled to see a movement putting resources into spreading the word about ACEs and trauma-informed practices.   The term ACEs was invented […]

  • An Open Letter to Teachers and Educators

    It has been a rough year. The pandemic threw students, even those who had lived stable lives pre-COVID, into lives of uncertainty, including financial and housing insecurity.  Those who were already living challenging circumstances faced even more hardships. The constant drum beat of racial injustice added another layer of stress for both teachers and students. […]

  • A Creative SEL Screener Tool for Remote and In-person Learning

    Remote learning has many challenges, one of the biggest being a lack of connection. Without the ability to read body language, see faces, and spot someone in a hallway, how can educators connect with their students to see how their doing?   After the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) mandated the adoption […]

  • Use Real Life to Develop Problem-Solving Skills in Kids

    As your children begin to transition back into the classroom, life will yet again change for your family. Routines, either altered or dropped as we moved into the COVID online learning world, will need to be re-established and tailored to fit the new reality of our kids going back to school. It can seem overwhelming […]

  • The Journey to Understanding Trauma and Resilience

    “The question we should be asking is not what’s wrong with that child, but what happened to that child?” – Oprah Winfrey “The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely they will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.” […]

  • How Teachers Engage Students and Stakeholders in Problem Solving

    Many schools are transitioning back to hybrid and in-person education, inviting students back into the halls and classrooms that have stood empty for over a year. The logistics are daunting. Despite all of the safety precautions required to accomplish this move, the transition also offers us a chance to reimagine how our education system operates. […]

  • Lowell Elementary’s Educational Enhancement Site

    When the pandemic hit last year and school buildings were shut down, the staff at Lowell Elementary in Seattle quickly saw the disproportionate impact remote learning was having on many of their students of color and those without stable housing. While some students in their school had the technology and support from their caregivers to […]

  • Listen to Build Connection with Your Kids

    Even at the best of times, when we are balancing work, our households, and activities, it is difficult to make the time to connect in a meaningful way with our kids. Now, of course, we add remote school, working from home, and staying safe, and the difficulty is even greater. Yet, connection is key to […]

  • The COVID One-Year Mark: Let’s not go back

      We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits […]