“Is Gentle Parenting just a Fad?”
ParentMap interviews professional parent educator and Sound Discipline Facilitator Jen Giomi, and Jen explains that brain science supports the importance of focusing on relationships with children.
“We are fortunate in this generation to have a much better understanding of how the brain grows and works than generations before us had. Human brains develop most successfully when they perceive they are safe, they are in relationships with other caring brains, and they feel like they matter in some way. Children, with their young growing brains, learn how to do everything through imitation first. Brains do what they see. To the extent that we, as adults, can regulate our own emotions and responses to the environment in a healthy, helpful way, we help the young, growing brains within our influence to do the same.”
Collaboration is Key: Sound Discipline on Student Engagement
Sound Discipline Facilitator Alan Wong wrote about the Designing Our Own Learning (DOOL) program for the College Spark Foundation Blog. College Spark has been funder for the DOOL program for three years.
“While there are many SEL curricula aimed at elementary students, none adequately address the needs of adolescents in traditional school settings, which generally treat adults as the experts, students as the recipients of knowledge and fail to adequately meet the needs of BIPOC students. This dynamic naturally leads to disengagement. This project uses the combined experience and wisdom of both teens and educators, primarily from BIPOC backgrounds, to design materials that can be led by students, by educators, or by both. By centering the wisdom and experience of those most marginalized with our school systems, DOOL challenges existing power-structures and points the way towards more inclusive, equitable and liberatory learning environments.”
Misbehaving kids: Problems to be solved, or problem-solvers?
Chelsea Waite (now at the Center for Reinventing Public Education) interviewed Sound Discipline Co-Founder, Dr. Jody McVittie, and Director of Program, Stacy Lappin for The Clayton Christensen Institute Blog.
“…we spoke about Sound Discipline’s “whole school” partnerships, in which program staff work with teachers, administrators, and staff to foster solution-focused discipline, trauma-informed practices, social-emotional learning, and data-driven systemic change over a three-year commitment.
As you’ll see in our conversation, Jody and Stacy are quick to illustrate how new processes—including adult practices—are the keys to activating students as problem-solvers instead of problems to be solved.”