social and emotional development

In today's schools, students and teachers feel unprecedented--even alarming--levels of stress.  How can we create calmer classrooms in which students concentrate better and feel more positive about themselves and others?  Author Thomas Armstrong offers a compelling answer in the form of mindfulness, a secular practice he defines as the intentional focus of one's attention on the present moment in a nonjudgmental way.

During the last three decades, education reformers have pushed standardized testing and policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core to improve test scores and proficiency in basic skills. However, during this period that author Thomas Armstrong calls the "miseducation of America," a number of troubling trends have surfaced, including a decrease in creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade.

Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child? If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.

Being smart is more than getting good grades or passing tests in school.  It's more than reading well, solving math problems, memorizing facts, and having a high IQ.  Psychologist Dr. Howard Gardner studied how kids and adults learn.  He discovered many different ways people can be smart.  You can be Music Smart, People Smart, Body Smart, Logic Smart, Word Smart, Self Smart, Picture Smart, Nature Smart, and Life Smart.  Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has changed how teachers teach in schools around the world.  Now, kids can use the same approach to develop their own smarts!