Earth Day 2022 is April 22

 Earth Day is on Friday, April 22. Consider the U.N. SDGs again - are there little things you can do this week, and then perhaps every week, to help? Reducing time in the shower. Recycling. Turning lights and other electrical devices/appliances off. Composting food waste. Buying food you need, and reducing food waste and excess. Put some plants in the ground. Pick up litter in the neighborhood. Donate to and/or volunteer at a favorite organization doing good work. Post these types of actions on your social media platforms, encourage others to do the same (remember the multiplier effect on impact!). Be kind, compassionate and empathetic to others, while being grateful and respectful for what we have in our lives compared to most on the planet. 

Thanks for considering!! This is the only home we have, let's respect it and take care of it, always. 

Study Shows Cell Phone use by Teens Is Detrimental to Mental Health

Parents, teachers and other adults have long suspected cell phone use can be both addicting to teens, as well as affect the mental health of teens. A 2017 study published in the journal Child Development shows how changes in sleep patterns due to cell phone use can cause adverse psychosocial problems. With 50% of teens admitting they are addicted to their cell phones, over-usage can cause anxiety, depression, and lower self-esteem. The rise in cell phone use fits into the same timeframe of teen depression and anxiety increasing by 70% over the past twenty years. A 2018 study published in Preventive Medicine Reports of over 40,000 children, ages 2-17, also shows a 50% increase in the number of teens being diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental illness.

Needless to say, many of our kids are on stimulus and information overload, and are unable to handle the rate at which information is entering their developing brains. They are exposed to new types of bullying through technology, such as cyberbullying, and many feel left out if they do not get enough 'likes' on social media. From an education perspective, our children are not able to learn as they should when suffering mental health issues, and our schools are not as safe when more children are angry or on-edge, and unable to deal with their emotions.

SECD can and does help diminish these widespread, complicated issues too many of our students are dealing with.

SECD in Scandinavian Countries

New York Times columnist David Brooks had some interesting observations in his February 13, 2020 opinion column. The title is "This is how Scandinavia Got Great - The Power of Educating the Whole Person." It is this education of the whole person we are most interested in.

The article describes some of the reasons why countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland are consistently rated among the very best educated countries, as well as near the top of lists for citizen happiness, health, and life expectancy (all four of these countries have life expectancies over 80 years old). What Mr. Brooks points out is that within their education system, students are thought of as individual human beings from a young age, and there is real value of working on the whole child.

Children are raised and taught in a progression of value to think of not only themselves, but the role each and every person plays in their classroom, their town, and their country. Students think about their own progress and futures, but also learn about how they can help and respect others, and that this contributes to the larger society's progress and future.

This approach the schools have taken for decades is called "bildung," and it refers to an understanding that students need to learn and understand complexity, and relationships between self and society. There is a pride citizens have for looking out for each other, while pursuing their own interests. This is what has allowed these nations to have every citizen go to college and have health care, live in a society with very little violence and fear, while having some of the world's highest ratings for free market openness.

To get to this type of education, many SECD skills and competencies are part of these school systems. Teachers are trained to help all students "see the forces always roiling inside the self - the emotions, cravings, wounds and desires." As a child ages, and begin learning and adopting societal norms, they are encouraged to identify their own values while working with each other to solve problems facing others; they become empathetic people.

This is the power of SECD approaches, and when done on a wide scale we have models in some other countries of what the results can be. Less violence, healthier and happier people who feel a sense of belonging in their communities, and high academic achievement.

Being called 'The Essential Skillset for the Age of AI" - Emotional Intelligence

Our society, economy, and workforce are in a transition period. Technologies have, for the past couple decades in particular, been improving and advancing at rates at which an average human being has had difficulty adapting. In schools and in the workplace, the ability to include and work with so many new technologies has not kept up with the technologies themselves. And in the workplace, technologies have continuously been forcing human job descriptions to change and modify while requiring new training of workers, and often certain types of jobs have been eliminated all together as robotic technologies have taken over (particularly the more repetitive jobs found in manufacturing and mass production). This change and upheaval in education and the workforce has created new challenges to the mental, social, and emotional health of many workers in all fields. And now there is great concern about the effects to human health the next mass inclusion of a new technology will be: widespread use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. How will human beings adapt to working with smart, 'thinking' machines? And what happens in about a decade when the machines will be smarter and better problem solvers and thinkers than human beings?

It has gotten to a point where employers have said the most important skillset their employees must have is strong Emotional Intelligence. This result is described in a Capgemini study that interviewed 750 employers and 1500 employees. Three-quarters of the employers said emotional intelligence is a skillset they need their employees to have now, and not five or ten years from now. Anxiety, depression, increased stress, declines in morale, and other mental health concerns of employees have been on the rise in recent years, as jobs change or become automated, and artificial intelligence will only accelerate changes in the workplace.

But how can an entire workforce be transformed to develop such a skillset? This would be accomplished with the inclusion and teaching of SECD in all grade levels of our education system. SECD training should be happening in our teacher certification programs in colleges across the country. And we should remember that including SECD into our classrooms and teaching practice is not just one more thing on a teacher's plate...SECD IS the plate!

Our students need SECD and skills to become healthier, happier and safer in school, which improves their academic achievement, and these life-skills will prepare them as much for college and the workplace as the content we teach them. 

What is SECD?

What is Social-Emotional and Character Development (SECD), and why does it HAVE to be included in our schools and classrooms?

Note that there are online certification courses for both Instruction and Leadership.

Let's hear from some of the top experts in this field:

EVIDENCE that including SECD programs, skills, and competencies in all classrooms WORKS for students and society

The evidence is clear and overwhelming that including SECD in classrooms of all grade levels leads to benefits for students, teachers, and society over the long-term.

It is IMPERATIVE to understand, though, that to do SECD correctly requires beginning at the earliest grade levels in your school or district, include SECD teaching and learning consistently and year to year, and having an "All Hands On Deck"/"It Takes a Village" approach - teachers and all staff, administrators, parents, and all institutions within the larger community - in order to maximize the benefits listed below! There is no quick fix to making human beings healthier and safer, it does take time and effort. 

SECD in classrooms, starting in the earliest grades and progressing from year to year, and done consistently with an "all hands on deck" approach, will have great impact for students and society:

• Improve academic growth and achievement; on average, 11% improvement for students who went through these types of programs;
• Significantly improves a variety of student outcomes: societal skills, academics, social behavior, ability to handle emotional stresses, attitudes towards school and everyday life, fewer behavioral and conduct problems in school;
• Improvements in a variety of student outcomes last long-term (some measured to 18 years after the SECD exposure in school);
• SECD programming and exposure beginning in Kindergarten and lasting through the schooling years of development last a lifetime - those individuals are more likely to stay out of poverty, stay away from drug and alcohol addiction, have better mental and social health, stay out of prison, and get and hold higher paying jobs;
• SECD expenses in school are paid for, and then some, after students leave the school system: there is a 11:1 payoff to the economy for those who came through successful SECD programming and exposure in the school systems - for every $1 invested in SECD, society gains $11 in returns;
• SECD in schools is a key component to reducing poverty and improving economic mobility; 
• Perception among education system stakeholders overwhelmingly feel there is a need for SECD in schools: students, parents, teachers, administrators, scientists, and employers;
• SECD skills and competencies are not all intuitive, but need to be taught and learned; many of the skills are based on societal norms, and need to be taught to our youngest students and continued to be presented year after year for reinforcement as societal stresses increase with age; 
• Most employers (70%) see Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an immediate, essential skillset for their employees: in an age where jobs are significantly and routinely changing or being eliminated due to technology and artificial intelligence, workers are under more and new stresses that have never been experienced in human history, and many are not able to cope and adapt mentally, emotionally or socially. If we do NOT teach and develop SECD skills in our schools, we are doing our children an absolute disservice since we are not preparing them for the modern workplace! 

And after all these benefits and evidence for including SECD skills and teaching in the classroom, the improvements and gains students receive translate into better working conditions for teachers! 

Why would teachers NOT want to put in some work at the start of a school year in order to gain significant improvements in their own job stresses and working environment in their classrooms as the year progresses?! 

Health Problems of our Children

The Problem
It is the year 2020, and the headlines regarding the overall health of American children are not encouraging. Suicide rates have risen significantly over the past two decades. School shooting incidents have generally increased over the past fifty years, with record years in 2018 and 2019. Dramatic rises in teen depression, anxiety, and mental and behavioral disorders have been reached over the past few years. Teens reported last year they are stressed out at record levels, with 70% reporting anxiety and depression are their 'major' concern, ranking over other pressing issues such as bullying, drug and alcohol use, gangs, and poverty.

The Questions
Why is this? What are we missing as teachers in the classroom? And are these issues so daunting and widespread that there is nothing we can do to help change the trends, and help our children become healthier and happier human beings?

The Answers
It turns out that we know how to begin chipping away at these problems, and if done correctly and over time, we can make our students healthier, happier, less misbehaving and less violent, which means our classroom environments become healthier and happier places in which to work and learn, with student academic achievement improving. Over thirty years of work and research in Social-Emotional Learning and Character Development (SECD) have produced clear, consistent results and evidence that a focus on the whole health of each child produces results that decrease negative behaviors while improving learning.

This site is dedicated to informing and guiding teachers in how SECD can help us transform any grade level classroom into a safer and more inviting environment for teachers to do and enjoy their job, and for students to learn more by becoming healthier and more caring human beings. 

It is time to focus on more than the physical and intellectual health of students while they are in school - we MUST also focus on the mental, social and emotional health of students! 

We must focus on the WHOLE health of our children.