Blogs on Professional Development

This blog was co-authored by David Schonfeld, MD, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement.

As our previous post highlighted, most teachers interact daily with grieving students. A recent poll we conducted in conjunction with the American Federation of Teachers found that the vast majority of teachers would like to help the grieving children in their midst but feel that they lack the proper training. The good news is that teachers don't require extensive training to prepare them for making a positive difference in the lives of their grieving students. This post is intended to introduce some of the basic information.

I love May. The weather is as close to perfect as it will be all year in most parts of the country. The songbirds have returned to sing to us. My favorite sport, baseball, is in full swing. And best of all, May is both my birthday month and my sister's. And for educators, the arrival of May means that the end of the school year is closing in.

I've interviewed hundreds of people over the last decade about how schools in the United States often choose to structure time. Most often, I pose the question to people in the places I visit, "Can you explain how the school day is structured, and why?"

The community of implementers of SEL and related programs is growing. And the capacity of individuals to leave their workplaces to congregate for extensive training and sharing opportunities seems to be diminishing. These and other realities are creating an imperative to use the Internet as a vehicle for providing support for instruction and other aspects of implementation necessary to sustain and reinforce instruction.