Social & Emotional Learning

Dr. Danielle Moss Lee (@HEAFNYC on Twitter) is President and CEO at Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF). With a background in administration and non-profits, she's passionate about educational equity, college access, curriculum and youth development. Read her blog at http://www.heaf.org/blog/.

Let me start out by assuring readers that I'm not suggesting it takes a magical coat of arms to survive life on a predominantly white campus if you're a student of color. Over the decades, tens of thousands of students of color have been effectively and happily educated on predominantly white college campuses across this wonderful country of ours, and most of those students look back fondly on their college experiences.

Todd Blake Finley, PhD (@finleyt on Twitter) is an Associate Professor of English Education at East Carolina University in C&I. He has taught elementary and 8-12th grade English and co-developed the Tar River Writing Project. Dr. Finley teaches, researches, works with schools and publishes in the field of composition, curriculum, instruction, technology, and collaboration. His home page is www.EEprof.com.

Start with Courage

In 1969, RAND political analyst Daniel Ellsberg risked espionage charges by photocopying secret Pentagon Papers that documented how U.S. presidents lied to the American public about military escalation plans in Vietnam and lied about its chances of success.

Mark Phillips is a columnist for the Marin Independent Journal and the The Answer Sheet. He volunteers with the California Film Institute's Educational Outreach Program and serves on the Board of the Buck Institute for Education. You can connect with him on Facebook.

A very important controversy related to children is flying under the radar of most educators. It's a controversy in which educator voices could play a highly constructive role.

Some background first. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. It's used by mental health professionals, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers. There have been a number of revisions since it was first published in 1952, and each revision has included more mental disorders.

Randy Taran (@RandyTaran on Twitter) is the founder of Project Happiness, a non-profit that empowers youth to create greater happiness in their lives and in the world. She is the co-author, with Maria Lineger, of the Project Happiness Handbook, which makes the best of positive psychology, emotional intelligence and global literacy accessible to students in six countries.

This is part three of the seven-part series, from the Project Happiness curriculum. It explores the many facets of happiness and provides practical techniques to generate greater happiness and a more meaningful life -- from the inside. By reclaiming the happiness you were born with, you influence those around you to tap into the best within themselves, too.

Dr. Danielle Moss Lee (@HEAFNYC on Twitter) is President and CEO at Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF). With a background in administration and non-profits, she's passionate about educational equity, college access, curriculum and youth development. Read her blog at http://www.heaf.org/blog/.

Middle-class families don't always realize it, but we feed our kids a steady diet of college-bound messages from the time of their infancy. At least that's been the case for my husband and me. Our daughter had her first college t-shirts before she reached six months old. The word shirt is plural because my husband and I went to different colleges, and each of us hoped to pass on some subliminal message about the superiority of our respective institutions.

Lisa M. Dabbs M.Ed. (@teachingwthsoul on Twitter) is the facilitator of Edutopia's New Teacher Connections group. She is also the founder of the weekly #ntchat for new teachers on Twitter, and blogs about supporting new teachers at Teaching With Soul.

Welcome to the first week of Edutopia's New Teacher Academy! I'm so happy to be here sharing my passion to support and mentor new teachers. I hope that you will come back each week and join us as we look at five key topics that will offer resources to new teachers in five key areas.