Breakfast Club Blog
The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is a curated space where bloggers from around the world contribute content on a continual basis about a variety of topics relevant to in and out-of-school time. The BOOST Breakfast Club blog is at the heart of an ongoing dialogue where expanded learning and education professionals share their personal thoughts and stories from the in and out-of-school time field. They also tell us what they ate for breakfast!
The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is Brain Food for In and Out-of-School Time Leaders!
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Gamifying SEL with the Mood Meter
Social and emotional learning is a set of teachable competencies or skills considered fundamental to school and life success. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines SEL as the process of how children “acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring...Read More
An Open Letter to Pandemic Educators
For educators in a pandemic, our greatest priority is not academic progress, but social and emotional well-being. You have likely spent the last year under intense pressure trying to do anything you can to make a difference. Have your efforts closed the achievement gap? Should they be expected to? No, of course not. In everything you do, you have shown kids that they belong, that someone cares for them, that they are worth all your effort, and that you want them to be safe. That is the primary m...Read More
ExScaredEd: Fear & Excitement of the Unknown
This post originally appeared on the Breakfast Club Blog on September 5, 2017. My son Dylan just started first grade a few weeks ago. In the weeks leading up to it, he coined a new word to describe how he was feeling: ExScaredEd. A combination of excited and scared, he said that was the best way to express how he was approaching this new year. I love it. I love, love, love it. Since then, he added “ExNerveEd” to describe being excited and nervous, and “ExSKYted” to express being extra-excited. W...Read More
A Call to Action – Let’s not forget our Older Youth
This morning I had coffee and a celery-green apple-turmeric smoothie (my wife is trying to keep us healthy) for breakfast. Perhaps it did not provide the proper amount of sweetness to boost my mood, but perhaps it was just the kind of medicine I needed to say the following. We need to think about our priorities. We need to focus on older youth. The field of education, after school, and beyond is currently focused on getting young students, TK through 2nd graders, back to in-person learning ASAP....Read More
Putting the “Happy” in “Happy New Year”
Happy New Year! It’s what most of us say this time of the year, isn’t it? If you asked, “What do I mean when I say that?” what might your answer be? It’s easy to fall in step with using these common phrases without the deliberate thought behind the words. What really got me thinking about this were the reactions to a recent post of mine on Facebook: I choose to see 2020 not as the year of canceled plans, but as the year where the world stood still long enough for us to see the things we need to ...Read More
Need an Attitude Shift? Try Gratitude in 2021!
“What a year!” That’s all we keep saying – “What a year it’s been!” And it’s true, it has been quite a year. This blog is about gratitude. I’d like to begin with some of the things that happened for me in 2020 so that I can lay out how powerful gratitude is and how gratitude has really has supported and shifted my mindset. There’s no other way to begin than with the real story. I lost my father to COVID-19 on May 8, 2020, in New York City. He was swept up in what I call the COVID Cyclone. The v...Read More
Bringing at-home STEM success into focus
STEM has left the building For a long time, advocates of STEM education have worked to bring STEM learning closer to students’ lives outside of school. This year, though, COVID has made STEM learning a part of students’ lives outside of school in ways nobody ever imagined or wanted. The pandemic has forcibly ejected STEM from the traditional in-building school environment and strewn it about in a great blurry mess spread out variably and amorphously among the home, Zoom sessions, mask-, distance...Read More
Intentional Self-Awareness In Leadership
“If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.” Benjamin Hooks I’ve always loved this quote, because for me it cuts straight to the core of true leadership—which has absolutely nothing to do with the title on your business card. True leadership, to me, is about impact. How much of an impact do you have on those around you? And how willing are they to follow you, wherever you may lead? This kind of leadership is not measured by daily tasks ...Read More
Social Emotional Leadership: A Game Changer
You may have heard of social and emotional learning, or SEL. Defined and predominately shaped by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, more than two decades ago, social and emotional competencies have become an essential avenue for developing key skills in our young people. SEL is defined specifically by CASEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage e...Read More
Focusing on the Three Rs this Summer
In a recent principal training, a participant raised his hand and asked a question I have heard too often: “How can I afford to invest in SEL (social-emotional learning) when my students have fallen so far behind?” I struggled to maintain my composure. This principal had been in at least three brain development workshops that unpacked the connections across the social, emotional, and cognitive functions of our limbic system. According to our biology, learning is a social and emotional process – ...Read More
SEL and Leadership? Let’s Get Loud!
SEL, SEL, SEL… social-emotional learning! Kids need it! All kids, not only marginalized youth– for some reason people think that (duh)! But all kids need it… rich, poor, students of color, white kids, urban, rural, and suburban kids, indigenous, affluent, English Learners, deprived traumatized kids, special needs, and seemingly normal kids (whatever that is). There’s this HUGE push for educators to implement social-emotional learning into classrooms and in expanding learning organiza...Read More
Poetry As A Tool For Teaching Social Emotional Development
Our students wrote original poetry for “Real Talk,” a social-emotional learning (SEL) class. Each month our students engage in and learn about different concepts relating to social-emotional development. We have created a book with all of our student’s poems, which I enjoyed reading. After reading several of our student’s work, the verse that stuck out for me was “Depressed.” The first line caught my attention because of its wit and honesty. Depressed When a tomato ...Read More