BIG PICTURE Social Emotional Learning Podcast

This episode will expand your perspective on the topic of APOLOGIES, and very likely confirm your own deepest insights about meaningful and truly effective APOLOGIES that genuinely benefit young children’s formative interactions. I am so grateful to long-time teachers Deborah Stewart and Bill Hotter for their contributions … different, each from the other, yet entirely and completely complementary...

Kids love, even crave, our attention. One valid reason is that gaining a teacher’s or a parent’s attention means being ‘seen’ by the people who matter most to them, and being ‘seen’ equates to a feeling of being valued. Feeling valued is one of THE most important markers for kids’ healthy social-emotional learning and development. We all know - and have experienced - that some kids will sometimes...

Here's a practical question for you: how much time, effort and rewards are required to motivate kids so they'll engage with learning? So they'll cooperate more and more of the time? What does the research tell us about rewards for positive behaviors? Students' social emotional learning is woven into every moment of every day ... and that's especially true for our youngest students. The more we can...

It’s SO important to understand how praise effects young kids, and to distinguish between the kinds of praise that deepen and nurture kids' healthy self-awareness and self-esteem vs. the kind of praise that kids, even young kids, interpret as undeserved, therefore insincere, thereby making the person who gives the praise untrustworthy.

Building belonging in the classroom is one of the most important formative influences we can bring into young children's lives. For young ones, just starting out in the new adventures of preschool, kindergarten and first grade, discovering shared values, feelings and instincts with classmates and peers is a powerful approach to building the healthiest kind of belonging. The kind of belonging that...

Elisabeth shares with us from her heart, which is grounded in 25+ years classroom experience, along with parenting 3 children. Learn more about Elisabeth Stitt at: http://www.elisabethstitt.com/ http://www.elisabethstitt.com/harmony-at-home-online-parenting-class/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/joyfulparentingcoaching/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/StittCoaching

Kids DO understand consequences, and they are capable of making choices that result in happier consequences more and more of the time… without constant reminders from us. They just need consistent opportunities to consider their own answers to the right kinds of questions, under the right kinds of circumstances, to activate and exercise their own critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving...

SELF-RESPECT is a healthy, ground-zero, foundational sense (which goes beyond ‘words and thinking’) to a core of spontaneously responding to the fact that each of us is worthy of being acknowledged, and worthy of being treated well, in spite of our imperfections.  Healthy self-respect, cannot be forced, but it can be activated, engaged and it must be exercised for students' enduring social emotion...

Empathy is a wide-ranging topic. We began by clarifying the differences between emotional empathy, perspective taking, and authentically caring behaviors. Then we briefly discussed the different ways that people’s empathy is expressed - whether in ways that we expect and can relate to or not, and we looked at reasons for some of the those differences. We concluded with some very practical starting...

Children pick up on our attitudes and feelings towards them - no doubt about it. This episode’s topic is deeply personal for me… Our attitudes and feelings toward our students are central to what we do, who we are with our students, and how much gets accomplished every day in our classrooms. I hope you agree, but if you don’t, or if you’re on the fence, I hope you’ll listen and share your thoughts...

Granted, sometimes it can look like children only care about what’s ‘FAIR’ for themselves, and not about what’s fair for others, but what’s really going on when we see those kinds of automatic reactions and behaviors from our young students? And what are the positive, long-term implications of enabling students to expand their personal definitions of FAIR?

Deborah gives us a fresh and important perspective on young children's challenging behaviors. Let us know what you gained from this interview, and if you think it would be a good idea to bring Deborah back - often. Include questions, if you'd like to.

Busting this myth requires us to recognize that there are many different ways to teach, because within every class there are many different ways that our students learn.

With a reasonable mindset adjustment, the fact that kids pay so much attention to each other can turn into a powerful teaching aid that works to everyone’s benefit - for both you and your students.

MYTH #1: Empathy needs to be taught to children. (There are at least 2 reasons why it is just plain WRONG to think that children need to be taught to empathize. )

Are your students engaging with and growing their social emotional skills with your current approach, whether or not it’s a structured approach? Are your students able to adapt social emotional lessons when they need to apply them in the context of new challenges? Ready for more Not-Your-Normal Social Emotional Learning ideas?

Social emotional learning, (which has a huge effect on class management, because it has a huge effect on all the interactions within your class) is the natural starting point for our youngest students to develop their critical thinking skills ... for everyone's benefit ... yours and theirs ... short and long term.

This podcast introduces the possibility of discovering how much more we can accomplish with students' Social Emotional Learning (SEL) than behavior corrections, awareness about feelings, and character development. Even though all that is good, we can do so much better. Students don't need to be "fixed." Instead, students need their innate empathy, critical thinking and collaborative problem-solvin...