caveat I have never taught in k-12 though my first bob at univeesity of leeds involved tutoring and I have occasinally been appointed senior visiting fellow at a business school etc
I have compplied thisd from being a parent of an early millennial if thats the optimal way to calsify a duaghter born in 1997; in every step of the education system which was rife with nullying etc I only found the answer(or at least a clue) retrospectively
Ironically my daufger had passed the age of 10 when I first started 16 journeys to bangaldesh- a countrty most of whose kids have been taught round a variant of montessori k-5 though they dont call it that; I dont think the prolems of lost primary emotional intel are expereinced in montessori systems; if you think about the western sustem of sitting kids in compoetitive desks from 7 up is a shock from everything that learning was about before your first classroom - and while I am not an expert in brain science I very much doubt if a child's brain suddenly shits gear just becasue an education system isnt designed aroun lifelong continuity
Let me be clear - places where kids do not get expereince in being emotionally intelligent are broken time wasting systems fir their teachers and their kids and their parents and communities; and sadly in usa this is a crisis at every level of resouricing poor and rich countues though the consequences may well appear earlier in teen disfunctionaluity
if you ,like some of the resources I quote but dont like my interpretation - yes all errors ae mine
I would make the first classroom book dont be that kid - this asumes that when a place assembples a firest classroom it has first audited whether any kids are behind on literacy- it only takes 90 days to remedy that- and it is beyoind cruel to put a kid in a class system by age without an equal start on literacy
the ffisrt book i would advise every school to use is dont be that kid- its a pictuire book on one facing page and a reasonable amount of text on another
in each picture you can hunt out at least one kid behaving in the way nobody wants - primarily one of 3 ways - bullying; distracting the classroom ; fixing friend groups that deliberately omit particular kids
surely this is a simple way to enjoy emotional intel without even calling it that - we can defintely study group behavuouys and value conclkusions such as there is seldom an in between - either a group has bun and almost all the energies/releationships in that group flow positives such as happiness, care, pilteness, resepct or the room looks very disenergised and to the extent that there are group behaviors they are passive agressive or worst
once you know that book's authir is former superintendent of a couty in new hjersey schools systems you wint be surprised that there is more to the author of dont be that kind there these basics- for example she told me that at home if a kid from 7 up goes around saying he is bored it is likely the home has not been structired so that the kid can always see a book to read or other productiveway to spend his time without compalining to parent I am bodred
there is also a teachers version of dont be that kid indicating about 30 lessons that engage the class or a kid at ost every oart of the book
if you decide that dont be is a good start then I find the book early emotional intel useful - this is much more a theretical frame but its one written for parents not juts professional experts
-here are some parallel experinces
becasue my family g=had written a booh=k in 1984 arguing edication transformation would be necessary if we want millennials to be the first sustainability generation , various practitioners have contacted me- none has been more of a prrilege at k-7 elevel that new zeamand's godrdon dryden ; every yera to 199 he deepened flipping the c;assroodm - as kids became online searchers they could lead the class with questions with tecahers plating a mentiring role- you can downlaod the book here- while only a cluster of nz schools adopted this approach, 10 million chiense apremts bought the book
another idea that works in the usa as well as elsewhere is dual langiuage schools- a community really has to come together to demand a dual language school - the result is every dynamic is differnt in the school but also the community of aprents; one of teh adavatnges of being fluent early in 2 languages is you can play out being 2 different people; langage has a dminant ompacton the e,otionlly intel child that is very different for dual schooling than being confeined to one language
another way is to require that every child at every grade including teachers does one service project in the community- the barceleona american international school has been doing this for over 20 yeras now
another facilitaion method is open space tech invented by harrison owen in 1984 ; the hole users were the international professional network of system transformation; so while the first system design verified caters for hundres or thousands of peoploe to suggets porojects that help everyon go beyong a broken system , harrison has assured me kid age 9 can practice open space at lunch hour tables aquiring huge competence
