Blogs on Social and Emotional Learning

In the introduction to her new book, Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy, author Emily Bazelon shares the story of when her friends "fired" her in middle school. She was devastated and went home from school disconsolate and in despair. But, she explains, at least she could go home to find solace and separation from the incident at school. It was a different time and place. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat or texting could not trail her home and make the pain inescapable.

With all of the high-stakes testing in our schools, and the resulting judgments and consequences for students and teachers, it is no wonder that schools are taking time away from activities like recess, breaks, art, music... to spend more time on academics. Yet I believe, based on what I have seen in schools, that we should move in the opposite direction, and take time out of academics in the early elementary years to focus on making students feel safe, secure, and confident in the classroom, in other words making them ripe for learning.

The most recent video releases in the A Year at Mission Hill series have generated lots of attention; in part because of the controversial topics of full-inclusion classrooms and how to get students engaged in the curriculum. If you're new to the series, start with Mark Phillips' blog post about the ongoing documentary project, and you can see chapters two and three in this post. New videos are released every two weeks, and the series website offers theme-based resources of all kinds to sync up with the topic in each. I'm pleased to share chapters four and five here.

"I didn’t get invited to Craig's party . . . I'm such a loser."

"I missed the bus . . . nothing ever goes my way."

"My math teacher wants to see me . . . I must be in trouble."

These are the thoughts of a high school student named Jeremy. You wouldn't know it from his thoughts, but Jeremy is actually pretty popular and gets decent grades. Unfortunately, in the face of adversity, Jeremy makes a common error; he falls into "thought holes." Thought holes, or cognitive distortions, are skewed perceptions of reality. They are negative interpretations of a situation based on poor assumptions. For Jeremy, thought holes cause intense emotional distress.