Category Archives: Blog

Student well-being is critical–here’s how to support it

Student well-being has a direct impact on student motivation, engagement, and learning. In short, their social and emotional well-being has a long-term impact. It is absolutely critical that educators learn to support student well-being. Skills such as self-awareness and self-management are also critical for effective collaboration and learning. And when school leaders support overall student…

Using Federal Grants to Hire Personnel

Using federal funding sources like Title I, IDEA, and ESSER to hire more reading and math coaches, counselors, school psychologists, tutors, and other support staff is a key strategy for meeting students’ academic and social-emotional learning needs. However, when school systems use federal funding for personnel expenses, they must have a plan for when the…

4 steps to a successful SEL implementation

After several years of using a homegrown social emotional learning (SEL) approach, our district decided it was time for a more official curriculum that would support our middle and high school students’ mental health, academic achievement, and overall well-being. With about 840 students in grades 8-12, we’d already developed a homeroom/advisory period meant to create…

3 key actions for trauma-informed student supports

Most every K–12 teacher or administrator can anecdotally describe the mental health and wellness challenges their students now face. Statistically, it’s overwhelming—more than one-third (37 percent) of high school students report that they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and 44 percent of them reported they felt persistently sad or hopeless during the…

Transforming K-12 Business Processes with Intelligent Automation

Digitizing workflows is essential for maintaining business continuity in the event of another pandemic or emergency. And with more than $190 billion in pandemic relief aid available to K-12 schools, now is the perfect opportunity for K-12 districts to digitize their back-office systems if they haven’t done so already. In the process, school systems will…

How to talk to your students about trauma and school violence

It is an unacceptable reality that educators, parents, and caregivers must talk to children about gun violence in schools, repeatedly, in the wake of school shootings. At the same time as stakeholders once again demand that lawmakers take action and protect the nation’s children while they are in classrooms–classrooms that are supposed to be safe–educators…