Today’s parents have never had it harder. Between endless stretches of COVID isolation, increased concerns about making ends meet, and dealing with school openings and closings, it’s hard to keep it all together. Tempers and tensions can intensify at home, which only makes the problems that young people may be facing with friends, relatives, and authority figures at school and in the community harder to address. Too often, too many parents think there’s nothing they can do about it. But there is, and it’s called socio-emotional learning, or SEL.

*Kaleena Berryman is the former Director of Abbot Leadership Institute

Click here to view NTE & ALI's Adult SEL Training Overview

At a time of continued ambiguity surrounding back to school success factors, Newark Trust for Education shares insights into challenges facing students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Our Executive Director, Ronald Chaluisan, spoke with local reporters on lessons learned from the pandemic and how to apply them now.

In a conversation with TAPinto Newark, Chaluisan said there must be a clear plan in place for parents if schools are forced to return to remote learning. He also discussed the importance of effective parent-school partnerships, and how parents can get involved in the decision-making process and outlines what successful planning looks like.

Read article here.

As America, and New Jersey, takes a giant step back into the classroom after an awfully long (and mostly awful) break, it’s time to prioritize factors for success. At the top of everyone’s list is safety, but what comes after that? Certainly learning, but if we’ve learned anything in the past two years, it’s that academic learning isn’t enough. Effective learning comes hand-in-hand with socio-emotional learning, or SEL, which embraces the socio-emotional well-being of students (and others) at home, in school, and in the community at large.