Professional Learning for Busy Educators

When you walk down a hall in my school, you may encounter our therapy dog, Boomer. There were originally reservations in our district about having a therapy dog, but now Boomer is one of the most sought after staff members for his ability to enhance many components of social and emotional learning (SEL).

I’m in my 25th year in education, and I believe in the necessity of teaching social and emotional skills—they really do help students thrive academically.

I’ve seen Boomer stop a child’s tears in record time, help a school-phobic kindergartner walk into school with enthusiasm, reset an anxious student’s day, ease test-taking tension, and bring smiles and laughter to everyone he encounters.

When the bell rang for early dismissal on a recent afternoon at Cold Springs Middle School in Nevada, students sprinted toward the buses while teachers filed into the library, where posters filled with the names of every child in the 980-student school covered the walls.

Taking seats where they could, the teachers turned their attention to Principal Roberta Duvall, who asked her staff to go through the rosters with colored markers and make check marks under columns labeled “Name/Face,” “Something Personal,” “Personal/Family Story,” and “Academic Standing,” to note whether they knew the child just by name or something more—their grades, their family’s story, their hobbies.

Lots of factors affect whether and what students learn in school, but most often that conversation gets boiled down into a single letter grade, a symbol of everything a student knows or doesn’t know. Because grades are often required, and easy to understand, they have become the focus for many parents, teachers and students. The problem is that grades are often subjective, arbitrary and can be demotivating to students. They are also gatekeepers for advanced classes and college admissions, so grades can’t be ignored. This complicated dynamic means that grading policies are at the center of discussions around how to change teaching and learning.

Outranking other countries on assessment tests ISN’T our ultimate goal.  Instead, our ultimate goal should be to leave kids better prepared to tackle the kinds of borderless challenges that our towns, our communities, our states and our nations are forced to wrestle with.  Whether we like it or not, issues like poverty, drought, access to healthy foods, and pollution in all of its forms are in need of solutions.

What if, instead of spending every bit of our professional energy preparing students to pass assessments of all shapes and sizes, we invested that same professional energy into helping our kids to master the skills necessary to solve complex problems with no clear answers?

How can you create a culture of wellness in your school or classroom?

General wellness is an important concept for leading a healthy life wrapped up in a generic term. What does wellness look like and how can you encourage it in a class setting? Sketch-noter Sylvia Duckworth created the graphic above to share tips for supporting a culture of wellness in schools. 


Children spend a significant amount of each week day in a classroom, making it not only a place to learn academics but also an opportunity to teach life skills that will serve them beyond the schoolyard, like self-care, community involvement, and fostering a sense of connection and belonging.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but many people don’t realize just how important a morning meal is to a child’s ability to learn.

According to a recent survey by Kellogg Canada, the vast majority of teachers report large differences in a child’s behaviour depending on whether or not they’ve had breakfast. According to the report, 93 per cent of teachers agree that hungry children are more disruptive in class.

While the start of the school year differs by country, the first day back is normally a big day no matter where you're from. It's usually marked by excitement — or perhaps some dread if you don't want to give up your vacation — and a bit of fanfare.

Take a look below to see the first day of school in 12 countries around the world.

British author and speaker Sir Ken Robinson is known for several accomplishments, from his books to his professorships to his TED talks. But in 2006, he gained recognition for something that no other TED speaker in history has done. It was back then that he delivered a TED talk on the topic of whether schools kill students’ creativity—and today, that video has been viewed over 43 million times, currently holding the title of “most popular TED talk of all time.”

Well, it’s been ten years, and with the recent proliferation of terms like “personalized,” “mastery-based,” and “blended” in the education world, some of Robinson’s viewers may wonder if or how his take on schools has changed.