When most educators think about social emotional learning, they probably think first about preschool and kindergarten. These are the years when students learn to get along with each other, share toys, solve disputes, and work cooperatively. These are critical foundational skills that students need to not only function in a classroom, but to function in society.

Are you swamped throughout the school year? Do you get resources delivered to you, but just don’t have the time to look at them? How many sites have you bookmarked during the school day, never to go back to?

As our school year winds down, summer is usually the time we can take a break and relax. It is also the perfect time to catch up with some resources we found over the school year and just didn’t have a spare moment to peruse.

Here are some tools and resources to organize these educational finds we have stumbled across:

They say “April showers bring May flowers,” but it also brings an array of new learning opportunities to share with your students! Here is our collection of engaging themed content for April:

April Calendar and Activities: Our April calendar is filled with activities to start each bright and sunny day all month long. Students can practice skills using the featured calendars, morning meeting activities, attendance chart, daily graphing activities, math activities, and more. It’s also the perfect opportunity to try the new wide format calendar with your students!

Professional development can mean a variety of things to educators and can be provided to us in numerous ways. This might include attending yearly conferences, participating in district meetings and workshops, taking online courses or webinars, or connecting with other educators through social media. Have you ever considered “do it yourself” professional development through the means of blogging? Blogging provides opportunities to connect with other educators, improve your professional practice, and personalize your professional development with relevant and specific content to meet your educational needs.

School is already back in session for many teachers, but some of us are still savoring the last weeks of warm weather, sleeping in, and grilling out. We all have our back-to-school lists close at hand, however: folders that need to be labeled, tech that must be tested, and lesson plans to get ready for the year ahead.

During this time of prep and anticipation, it’s good to find new ideas and inspiration. To give you an assist, we’ve pulled together a list of great content, training sessions for the month ahead, and other on-demand resources.

The start of a school year is a great time to consider endless possibilities. So consider this: What if we educators approached our personal well-being the same way that we approach student improvement and intervention? What if we had the same passion about our personal health that we have about students’ learning?

How to Begin 

As summer approaches and the gifts of time and relaxation come into play, consider spending some of that time on professional learning opportunities that you might have missed during the hectic school year.

Teachers—One of Our Most Powerful Tools in Education

The year is 1996. Alanis Morissette croons about how life can be ironic, young people are shaking their hips and hands to the Macarena, the Nintendo 64 has just been released, and Tom Cruise is dominating the box office with Jerry McGuire and Mission: Impossible. While we can certainly look back on these trends and trivia about the times, it’s hard to say that any of these things had any major cultural significance.

1996 also saw the publication of a key article developed by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. The report, titled What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, pointed out something that common sense would dictate to most anyone, yet still seems strangely elusive: the single most important factor in the effectiveness of a child’s education is the teacher. While this was not a new notion, this report, based on hundreds of studies, initiated a growing movement to identify, train, and retain good teachers.