Teachers

  • Lunch time! How Bryn Mawr Elementary Creates Community in the Lunchroom

    We all have distant memories of a loud, chaotic lunchroom, where students often had their heads down for being too loud and left lunch a bit dysregulated and less ready to learn. At Bryn Mawr Elementary, the staff has creatively addressed one of the key sources of stress for all schools this year – how…

  • How Teachers can move from “What is Wrong with You?!” to “What Happened to You?”

    We now know that childhood trauma, including ongoing toxic stress, has a profound impact on brain development and behavior. In fact, behaviors teachers see in the classroom that seem to make no sense may actually be a student’s adaptive responses that show a brain’s capacity for prioritizing survival. When we blame the student or take…

  • Teachers & Students Need to Rebuild Stamina for this School Year

    We may be back to in-person learning, but it’s anything but normal. Masks, social distancing, altered scheduling, and new safety protocols make the days almost unrecognizable from where we were in March 2020. One of the biggest differences? The amount of stamina you may have for this new normal. And it won’t just be you.…

  • Gathering Student Input and Learning About Feelings

    Redwood Elementary in Grants Pass, Oregon is one of the schools in our District Partnerships program. Last school year, the school’s data team collected data about student behaviors that were most challenging to the staff. One of the challenging behaviors was defiance. Initially, the data team started thinking about it from the teachers’ perspective, wondering…

  • A Strong Start for Teachers

    Teachers: we sincerely hope you were able to take some well-deserved time off this summer. The past two school years have asked too much of you. And right around the corner is the beginning of something new…a new classroom of kids, new challenges, new successes.  Although we continue to face many unknowns this school year,…

  • The Problem with ‘Learning Loss’ Part II: My Conversation with Jessica Calabrese-Granger, Chief of School Improvement in Renton, Washington

    “Discipline is an outcome; engagement is an opportunity.” -Jessica Calabrese-Granger In my last post at the close of the 2020/21 school year, I shared my conversation about ‘learning loss’ with Regina Elmi of the organization Supporting Partnerships in Education and Beyond (SPEB). We discussed that while much of the collective conversation in education was on…

  • 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.”…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Teacher Panel Shares Experience Transitioning to Hybrid and In-Person Learning

    “Nothing is going to be perfect, and that’s o.k.” When Sound Discipline convened a group of educators to discuss the transition to in-person learning, this is how Christine Mooney, the Principal of Redwood Elementary School, opened our discussion. Redwood Elementary is in Grants Pass, Oregon. They started the 20-21 school year with grades K-3 in…