Education Post: Expert Q&A: Focusing on Teacher Well-Being Benefits Students
Recently Dr. Housman sat down with Education Post’s Maureen Kelleher to discuss how attending to teachers’ emotional well-being not only benefits teachers but is also critical for their students. They also spoke about the many big emotions this back to school year will bring and how to help both teachers and students deal with those […]
$611 Million Plan Doesn’t Do Enough For Our Youngest Children, Or Their Teachers
Time is not a renewable source, and we can’t recover the last 16 months. But going forward, we should invest in child care and early childhood education, not exclude it.”
Responding to Children’s Anger
Take a moment and reflect: what is our first response when our child has an angry emotional outburst? Is it to stop the behavior? Or is it to understand what’s behind the anger, help them understand what’s behind the anger, and how to manage it? In a recent article in the Boston Globe Magazine, educator and parent Deborah […]
The Hechinger Report Early Childhood: Five Ways You Can Help Mitigate Kids’ Stress From the Last Year
Help children share their feelings:Children tend to express their emotions through actions and behavior, which may not always be safe or constructive, said Donna Housman, founder and CEO of the Housman Learning, which focuses on emotional intelligence. “What we want to do is re-channel that into words,” she said. Helping children name their emotions, including […]
EdWeek: The Tough Task Ahead for 1st Grade Teachers
“Author Robert Fulghum famously wrote
A Q&A with Dr. Housman
In a recent webinar, Dr. Housman spoke to a group of over 3,000 early childhood professionals on “The Power of Emotional Intelligence from Birth to Age 8.” The webinar was framed around the impact the pandemic has on children, as well as educators and caregivers. As we move toward our “new normal”, and a new school […]
Boston Business Journal Op-Ed: Biden’s Education Plan Closes in On the Starting Line
Dr. Donna Housman’s Op-Ed in the Boston Business Journal puts the spotlight on the critical importance of universal preschool — and including the core skills of emotional intelligence in any plan. “Universal-free preschool is part of President Biden’s sweeping plan to invest in education as part of securing America’s place as a leader in the 21st […]
For Our New Normal Make Emotional Well-Being a Priority
As this tumultuous school year winds down we are all owed a deep breath! And yet we also need to reflect on what this unprecedented time has taught us and think forward to what lies ahead in our “new normal.” As we slowly emerge from one pandemic, we are in fact facing another — one […]
On Mental Health and Well-being (on Getting Smart.com)
In these challenging times, Dr. Housman has been providing insights to parents who are having to not only adjust to the stress of having to self-quarantine and social distance but also become full-time teachers and caregivers to their children. Listen to podcast.
On Sibling Rivalry (in Good Housekeeping Magazine)
Emotional Intelligence from Birth: 5 Foundational Mental Health Benefits
There is a growing appreciation that emotional intelligence is more than a wish list of optimal social skills. Emotional intelligence is a set of competencies that enable you to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others—a critical prerequisite to lifelong learning, relating and relationships, and personal and professional growth. But perhaps the […]
Acknowledging Your Uncertainty Shows Your Kids the Way to Resilience
We’re hitting a strange anniversary this month. It’s been a year since the pandemic’s first reported deaths in the U.S., and this week, we crossed the dark threshold of a half-million deaths due to COVID-19. With the vaccinations available to more and more people, there’s a sense of light at the end of the tunnel. […]
Lessons from a Year of Teaching in a COVID-19 World: What Teachers Need Now
Hopeless. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Depressed. Exhausted. Those are just some of the emotions that educators report feeling in the past year since COVID-19 infiltrated our lives and schools. Teachers were tossed into the virtual world without tools or blueprints, using trial and error to figure out remote teaching for themselves, and remote learning for their kids, who […]
The Power of Choice
Sometimes it seems like a young child’s favorite words are “why” and “no.” Why do we have to go to the store, why do we have to leave the park, no I don’t want carrots for lunch, no I don’t want to wear pants. We can give them any variation of answers…because we need food […]
Helping Children Develop Healthy Habits with Technology Use
We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” — Steve Jobs My feeling about technology in general is very Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Having too little exposure isn’t good, but too much – a few hours turns into six — is detrimental to their brain development and mental health. The temptation for […]
Helping Children Understand & Celebrate Differences from the Beginning
Children are born ready to learn and it is not only traditional skills that we need to teach from a young age, we also need to foster children’s understanding of their emotions and those of others from the very beginning.1 By reaching children in their earliest years we have the extraordinary opportunity to shape children’s […]