Creative Leadership Blog
Dr. Douglas Reeves and colleagues regularly publish on relevant topics for busy educators. Whether it is a book, article, or blog, each contain facts and practical next steps for practitioners. As with all our resources, please share with colleagues and communities.
The Trust Imperative: The Foundation of Fearlessness
When is the first time that you can recall being in a high-trust environment? Perhaps it was early in your career when colleagues and supervisors encouraged you, forgave your mistakes, and gave you a sense of confidence that allowed you to forge ahead to launch your career as an educational professional and make a difference for your students. Perhaps it was even earlier, when a teacher helped you break the bonds of perfectionism, encouraged you to try something new, and then encouraged you through the inevitable mistakes that accompany the risk-taking endeavor we call learning. But I would like to suggest that your first experience in a high-trust environment was much earlier.
Social Emotional Learning and Self-Care: The Connecting Fiber for Addressing Learning Loss
Picture this: School starts and everyone is focused on assessing learning loss. Interventions are put in place but students continue to struggle. Schools struggle with lack of engagement, failing grades, and, increased behavioral issues. School teams are confounded and ask why? Why isn’t the learning loss being mitigated by reading and math interventions? The straight truth is because schools siloed social and emotional learning from the total equation. Instead of being the foundation for the reopening plan, many schools across the country attended to the academic side of the house without realizing the actual foundation relies on social emotional learning or SEL.
Five Ways to Support Emotional Connections Between Students and Teachers
In my live and virtual travels around the country, one consistent concern I am hearing is the difficulty of establishing and maintaining emotional connections between teachers and students. We can’t wait for schools to resume live instruction for this vital part of learning. Here are five ideas you can apply right now.
Don’t Forget the “L” in SEL
In the fall of 2020, schools are opening in a season of continuing trauma for students, families, and staff members. The deaths and illnesses of family, friends, and colleagues are perpetual reminders of how fragile life is and how the emotional needs of children and adults are a central responsibility of educational leadership.
You Can’t Do Everything
This is truly an unprecedented time in American educational history. I have been honored to continue relationships with schools across the country, albeit remotely, and am humbled by their leaders’ and faculties’ dedication to making this time as normal and productive as possible for their students
Get Your Inbox to Zero in Three Steps
Everyone I know complains that there is too much to do and not enough time to get everything done. One of the biggest thieves of time is our email inbox. But to be fair, the inbox is not the problem; it’s the inefficient way in which we interact with emails.
The Dangers of Screen Time . . . in 1440
We've all heard about the dangers of excessive screen time. Students with more than five hours a day of screen time show decreased levels of concentration and empathy. This is especially true of those screen functions that require no engagement or interaction by the student with the media, but simply allow their bodies and minds to become sedentary wastelands.
The Power of Psychological Safety
Edmondson begins with a puzzle: Which team has a greater number of errors the one with high psychological safety or low psychological safety?
The Key to Resilience: Pencil, Not Pen
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a hot topic in education these days. In particular, we want to build resilience, perseverance, and grit among our students and also among our teachers and administrators.
Five Ways to Improve Creativity in Schools
Since the 1990’s, educators have been implored to pay attention to “21st Century Skills,” with creativity at the top of the list. A survey of Global 1500 CEO’s put creativity as the most desired skill in hiring new employees. A growing number of vision and mission statements for schools and districts include an elegy to creativity. But for all the hype about how important creativity is, the reality is that many schools not only fail to encourage creativity, but undermine it.
Social-Emotional Learning Through an Equity Lens
We all want children to have a positive self-image, be resilient when faced with adversity, and create healthy relationships. But what do these aspirations have to do with social-emotional learning (SEL)? States across the country have legislatively mandated SEL as a way of combating society’s ills rather than through the lens of equity.
