January 2024: Social-Emotional Learning

Rabbi Shalom Horowitz It is conventional wisdom that mental health struggles in schools have become more acute since the start of the COVID-19 era. What exactly are the new exacerbated mental health issues that are being […]

Dr. Paul S. Oberman Most parents can picture this scene: It’s 9:00pm and your 3rd grade child is in tears at the kitchen table. His bedtime is usually 8:30, but he hasn’t finished his math homework […]

Dr. David Rosmarin This past July and August, I was training for a fall road race and I went for several runs outside in the heat of the summer days. I struggled through each run, with […]

Zoya Popivker, DO | Scott Falkowitz, DO | Vera Feuer, MD | Victor Fornari, MD 1. Why is youth mental health important for school principals? Dr. Brock Chisolm, the first Director-General of the World Health Organization, […]

Rabbi Yitzchak Menda We are living in an unprecedented time. This is the first generation in history that will grow up with their parents staring more at their phones than their children’s faces. This generation can […]

Miriam Mammon When we talk about education, there are so many conflicting opinions that many of us get lost in a sea of confusion. There are a few foundational principles that I think we can all […]

Rabbi Sheftel Skaist In religious circles, the importance of social-emotional learning seems to have been well-established. A mechanech who knows child development once said, “First comes self-awareness, the bein adam l’atzmo; then comes healthy relationships, the […]

Mrs. Brittney Friedman and Rabbi Oren Levy Chazal famously said, “כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה“, that all the Jewish people are guarantors (responsible) for one another. We encourage our students to have that recognition and sense […]

Mrs. Miriam Gettinger When imagining a Social-Emotional Learning program designed for the Jewish day school, one typically thinks of a middos or character development program based on lessons and statements from texts such as Mesilas Yesharim, […]

Sora Devora Chrysler Several significant statements jolted me into heightened awareness in my early twenties, impacting profoundly on my view of human growth and development within Jewish education as well as on my own life and […]

Dr. Ayelet Gottesman The practice of school psychology has shifted heavily in the direction of behaviorism, with a focus on reducing target behaviors through the use of behavior modification plans. There is a heavy reliance on […]

Rabbi Chaim Trainer As teachers or principals, we may be concerned about a child’s social skills because we see that he’s suffering — perhaps he’s often punished in school for misbehavior or he’s socially isolated or […]

Rebecca Eliason, Psy.D., MS More and more within schools, we observe a shift from the traditional focus solely on academic education towards an approach that prioritizes the well-being of the whole student. There has been a […]

Rav Reuven Leuchter The Rebbi’s EmunaEmuna is best transmitted to the talmidim through osmosis, from the rebbi’s own emuna. This is preferable to quoting seforim about emuna because emuna is belief, and backing up belief with […]