Multi-Tiered System of Support Toolkit
RethinkEd’s MTSS professional development suite empowers educators to identify, track, and put strategies in place across academic, behavior, and social and emotional learning enabling them to optimize effective interventions and monitor progress for all students.
Special Education Toolkit
RethinkEd’s Special Education Success solution combines technology and research to power a comprehensive suite of tools that deliver innovative, scalable, individualized, defensible and evidence-based supports for students with special needs.
Social & Emotional Wellness Toolkit
Support the health & wellness of your students, families, staff, and educators. Help students develop important social emotional wellness skills like stress management, resilience, and empathy while learning to build a safe and affirming culture within your school community.
The Research Behind MTSS
MTSS is an important framework used in schools in every state to support all students withacademics, behavior, social and emotional learning, and mental health.
The Research Behind RethinkEd: Social Emotional Learning Platform
Social and emotional learning, or SEL, refers to evidence-based practices informedby rigorous, systematic social science that underscore the way we understand, use, andmanage emotions to learn. Emotions drive how we think, pay attention, make decisions,manage our time, and countless other processes that impact how students and teachersshow up in the classroom.
RethinkEd Webinar Summary: Empowering Educators to Support Students with Autism and Related Disabilities (April 28, 2022)
Panelists Houston ISD Dr. Charlotte Fontenot (Senior Manager for the AU, Behavior, and Intensive Intervention Team at Houston ISD) (Contributing Faculty for Walden University) Anthony Jones (Manager for Intensive Intervention Services Team in the Office of Special Education Services) East Baton Rouge Parish School System Adam Smith (Associate Superintendent) Tracy Smith (Autism Program Facilitator) Moderated […]
Changing SEL Priorities Before and During COVID-19: Results of an Educator Survey
One Size Does Not Fit All: Autism Spectrum Disorders
April is Autism Awareness Month. This is a great time to build our understanding and to celebrate these individuals, their loved ones, and their educational and behavioral support teams. Not one person with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is the same. With an estimated prevalence of 1-2% of the U.S. and worldwide population, ASD is not […]
How Social Emotional Learning Can Help Facilitate Safe and Productive Conversations About Difficult Topics: The Ukraine/Russia Conflict
The pandemic, terrorist attacks, social injustice, and war can evoke complicated emotions, particularly for children and teens. The Ukraine and Russia conflict has caused a lot of uncertainty and fear, and students are likely hearing a lot of information, some of which may be misleading or false, through the internet and social media. Rather than […]
Supporting Mental Health Needs of Teens
World Teen Mental Wellness Day is March 2. It is a day to raise awareness about mental health for teens and to work toward destigmatizing one of the most important issues for teens. Mental health issues are common in teenagers and often are not diagnosed or treated. Raising awareness can help teens realize that they […]
Improving Educator Well-Being and Reducing Burnout and Stress Using SEL Professional Development
RethinkEd believes in nurturing educators and students, and advocates for empowering and supporting teachers and building an SEL culture to create a school climate that keeps the teachers as well as the students engaged, learning, and making progress. Christina Whalen, Ph.D., BCBA-D Tweet The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased stress and burnout for many educators. […]
The SEL Effect: How, Why, & When
A Review of Supports for Social and Emotional Learning in American Schools and Classrooms: Findings From the American Teacher Panel A strong, evidence-based curriculum paired with strategies for implementation is essential for an effective and consistent SEL adoption, the known benefits of which grow with every study and survey conducted. Christina Whalen , Ph.D., BCBA-D […]
Fostering SEL Skills Through Intervention in Problem Behaviors
Know your POWER so that your INFLUENCE can live up to it. Kristen Hopkins I came up with this quote in 2016 after seeing some of my most troubled students lives transformed through Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). But it wasn’t just SEL that transformed their lives; it was me knowing my power and understanding that that […]
Harnessing Universal Design for Learning and SEL in Special Education
By implementing a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that supports all learners, we can create a place where all learners actively engage in their learning experiences. Whether you’re exploring how to foster engagement so all learners can be invested, or you’re seeking ways to present information that support learner independence, developing opportunities for action and […]
SEL & Mental Health: An Integrated Power of Prevention
At the very least I can distinguish fear from worry and anxiety, often confusing people and preventing important remedies. Fear and worry are both instinctive, not requiring any active thinking while anxiety, both ruminative (past-oriented) and anticipatory (future-oriented) involve a composition of brain/body imbalance, trapped energy, avoidance, pessimistic world view schema, and much more. I […]
Year-round Thankfulness Strategies to Help All Students Thrive
“Remember when you wanted what you currently have. Remember to be thankful for what you’ve worked hard to have right now.” I have the above quote posted on my mirror at home as a daily reminder to give thanks for every day. I was 17 when I found out I was pregnant and left home […]
Writing for Resilience: The Impact of the Positive Purpose Essay on Students
The Power of Purpose When students enter the schoolhouse door without a sense of positive purpose, it is difficult for them to connect their varied learning experiences and other opportunities into a coherent whole that shapes their lives. They lack a strong reason to learn, take on challenges, or behave well. An enduring sense of […]
5 SEL Strategies: Strengthen School-to-Home Collaborations
Educators and parents/guardians alike have a sense that school-family partnerships are important. In fact, parent and guardian engagement is a top predictor of a child’s school success.1 Yet I hear from numerous schools who are deeply engaged in implementing research-based Social and Emotional Learning that they are struggling to create authentic relationships with families. They […]
Strategies for Social and Emotional Learning that Begins with Adults
School-wide Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Because students model what they see, the most important social emotional learning begins with the adults in a school. Given this, it’s important to ask— do the adults in your school model self-awareness, self-management, growing social awareness, build healthy relationships, and exhibit responsible decision-making throughout the school day? For example, if an […]
Using Student Strengths to Create Belonging
In my role as Director of Student Services, I recently observed in a classroom where a student, we’ll call him Lewis, demonstrated minimal eye contact, response (verbal or physical), or social interaction. Upon Lewis’s arrival to the classroom, I observed the educator working with him provide a number of visual, physical, and verbal prompts to […]
5 Ways to Ensure Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Success
There is a mismatch between what educators say and what they do around Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in America. According to the 2017 CASEL report, Ready to Lead, 98% of principals believe that students should be taught social emotional skills, but only 35% had a plan to do so. Of those who were implementing a […]
Creating a Morning Routine: What Do Values Have To Do With It?
Let’s talk about morning routines. If you’ve ever researched self-development or productivity, you’ve undoubtedly come across tons of resources about morning routines and the different activities that people engage in to help jump start their day. While there is no one size fits all method to morning routines, the clear message that spans these websites, […]
Stressed Out? SEL Tips to Manage Stress before it Manages You
Teacher attrition costs the United States roughly $2.2 billion dollars annually; an estimated half a million teachers either move or leave the profession each year. Why? Because they are stressed out. In fact, in a report by the American Federation of Teachers put out last month, educators in the US aren’t just more stressed out […]
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Mental Health and School Psychologists
What Do School Psychologists Do? According to the National Association of School Psychology (NASP), “school psychologists provide direct support and interventions to students, consult with teachers, families, and other school-employed mental health professionals (i.e., school counselors, school social workers) to improve support strategies; work with school administrators to improve school wide practices and policies; and […]