Teaching Kids to Thrive: Essential Skills for Success

For years research has pointed to an overwhelmingly positive correlation between social and emotional learning (SEL) and successful student performance.  However, the recent push for the Common Core Curriculum, higher standards, Race to the Top, STEM, and other cognitively-based initiatives have crowded out the time, money, and resources for the implementation of SEL either school wide or even in individual classrooms.  Common cries from teachers include, “I just don’t have a single minute to devote to anything other than what is going to be on the test,” or “If my administrator comes in here and sees us doing that ‘touchy-feely’ stuff, I will be in real trouble!”

However, new research shows strong evidence that America’s teachers embrace the ideas of SEL for promoting academic success, student engagement, cooperation, and other positive attributes as well as for acting to deter truancy, drug use, bullying, and violence. Teachers from all over the country have been asking us exactly how they should go about integrating SEL into their classrooms. This book is our response to that request.      

There’s more to student success than standards and test scores…

The modern view of student achievement focuses on high test scores, higher standards, and racing to the top. Thrive skills fit with new ESSA requirements to go beyond basic academic measurements in order to equip students for lifelong success.

Debbie Silver and Dedra Stafford present a practical handbook that guides teachers and parents in fostering learners who are socially and emotionally healthy and prepared to undertake future challenges.  Through practical examples, precise strategies, and specific tools this book demonstrates how to empower learners in areas that include:

• Using mindfulness strategies to help students tap their inner strengths
  
• Learning to self-regulate and control other executive brain functions
  
• Developing growth mindsets along with perseverance and resilience
  
• Cultivating a sense of responsibility, honesty, and integrity
  
• Encouraging a capacity for empathy and gratitude

Grounded in decades of psychological research, Teaching Kids to Thrive merges academic, social, and self-skills to stimulate personal and school achievement.