My Students Haven’t Lost Learning. They’ve Lost Social and Emotional Development

“To heal our kids, we have to heal our society.”
This is so very true. Our society has gone down the rabbit hole right now, into an near-dystopian “anti-Wonderland.”

gadflyonthewallblog

 

  
  

There is a student screaming across the hall.  
  
He is holding his gut and rocking back and forth in cries of wordless emotional pain as the rest of the class looks on in bewilderment.  
  
Students from other rooms start to cluster around the door until a security guard makes them go away.  
  
I close the door to my own classroom and try to settle my students down – but we can still hear him through the walls.   
  
And then:  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
“You’re stupid!”  
  
“Why don’t you make me!?”  
  
Believe it or not, this is not what teaching middle school used to be like.   
  
Eighth grade students were never perfect angels, but at least by then they used to know how to talk to one another. They could usually interact without constant sniping. They knew what…

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