Blogs on Social and Emotional Learning

"Guns don’t kill people, fast moving bullets do."

Like most youngsters at 14 years old, I sometimes came home from school and said to myself, "I could kill that kid." Of course I never meant it and never once did I think it was even within the realm of possibility. Things have changed. After the Columbine Massacre, I tried to find out why.

From natural disasters to economic meltdowns, from wars abroad to tragic shootings close to home, this year brought to light the increasing complexity of the world in which we raise kids. Our natural instinct as teachers, parents and caretakers is to protect children from hardship, yet we know walking between the raindrops of adversity is not possible. Instead of sidestepping challenge, we can teach kids to cope positively, to learn and grow from adversity. We can arm our youth with skills of resilience, and these lessons can begin in the classroom.

In this nine-part series, we will look at important factors that influence the happiness and social and emotional learning of elementary school age children. These are very useful in helping students learn, manage emotions better and increase empathy. Each blog features one letter of the acronym HAPPINESS:

1. H = Happiness
2. A = Appreciation
3. P = Passions and Strengths
4. P = Perspective
5. I = Inner Meanie/Inner Friend
6. N = Ninja Mastery
7. E = Empathy
8. S = So Similar
9. S = Share Your Gifts

In this post, we’ll explore perspective.

Dr. Ari Brown is a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, and was the lead author of a recent American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) study on the effects of media on children. She says that if we want kids to be emotionally intelligent, we have to put them on a screen-time diet.