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States limit ‘active shooter’ drills
“Active shooter drills” terrify students, but do they make them any safer? Photo: Education Week When schools do fire drills, they don’t...

Joanne Jacobs
Jun 10, 20221 min read


Is social-emotional learning a Trojan horse?
While social-emotional learning sounds “positive and uncontroversial” in theory, “in practice, SEL serves as a delivery mechanism for...

Joanne Jacobs
May 5, 20222 min read


How to teach empathy — by screaming insults?
Thousands of Bay Area teenagers have attended four-day camps that claim to teach empathy and leadership by screaming insults and enacting...

Joanne Jacobs
Jun 23, 20182 min read


Glitter jars, bean bags and progress
At a Columbus, Ohio school in a high-poverty neighborhood, teachers use different strategies to help children learn to calm themselves,...

Joanne Jacobs
May 14, 20181 min read


Safe at school — but nowhere else
School is a safe haven from the streets, students at Baltimore’s Excel Academy tell Kevin Rector, a Baltimore Sun reporter. Seven...

Joanne Jacobs
Mar 12, 20183 min read


Reaching out to every child
Teachers chart their relationships with students at a high-poverty North Carolina school, reports Lisa Philip on WUNC. Pattillo Middle...

Joanne Jacobs
Mar 7, 20181 min read


How campus rape policy went wrong
Pressured by the federal government and beliefs about “rape culture,” colleges have tried to police their students’ sex lives. Emily...

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 13, 20173 min read


Stick and stones may break my bones …
Speech is violence, if it causes chronic stress, argues Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeastern psychology professor, in The New York Times....

Joanne Jacobs
Jul 24, 20173 min read


Stress can make kids smarter (in some ways)
Unstable parenting, poverty, a violent environment and other “adverse childhood experiences” contribute to “toxic stress” that impairs...

Joanne Jacobs
Apr 22, 20172 min read
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