Every once in a while, a research finding comes along that has paradigm-shifting significance. The University of Chicago recently produced one: principals’ greatest influence on student achievement is through changes in school climate.

While most teachers are enjoying the final days of their well-deserved break, many principals are already back at school planning their professional learning days before the academic year begins.

Why school communities must integrate social, emotional, and academic considerations into instructional planning

While coverage of the topic of social and emotional learning is more widespread than ever, the absence of easy-to-understand, actionable, and evidence-based methods for enacting a whole child agenda into schools presents a crucial gap in the research literature.

Increasingly, educators, administrators and community members alike recognize that teaching must extend well beyond academic content.

This week the pod takes on Social Emotional Learning in schools. Danielle Gonzalez of the Aspen Institute begins the podcast with her perspective on SEL and why we must teach it. She also delves into the danger of "systematic whitening" of students of color and where the national policy conversation on SEL is headed.

In order for social-emotional learning to advance educational equity, we must be prepared to talk about race

Our inability as a nation to engage in difficult conversations about race has left us with a lack of agreement on how to define equity.