Discusses the amount of violence that children are exposed to and proposes that this can be counteracted in the schools by teaching more about the history of nonviolence in social change movements in this country. Includes five references. (MD)

Explains the "Standing Tall" project, which was a multi-faceted project focused on embracing the future through creative drama, movement, storytelling, and improvisation activities. Notes that students' original stories of their experiences on September 11 were developed into a one-act play. Describes how students worked under the…

Proposes a theoretical framework for analyzing the effect of MUD (Multi-User Dungeons) playing on users' self-efficacy by applying Bandura's social learning theory, and introduces three types of self-efficacy: computer self-efficacy; social self-efficacy; and generalized self-efficacy. Considers successful performance, vicarious experience,…

Discussion of performance improvement focuses on the effect of emotions on performance. Topics include the emotional intelligence of the performers; how people deal with emotional demands and the stress of their performance; and emotional states that affect attention, focus, perception, and time on task. (LRW)

Mounted by the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York, in 1993, and traveling nationally thereafter, the exhibit Memory and Mourning provided historical and contemporary perspectives to help museum guests explore their own reactions to loss and grief. In the process the exhibit's development team encountered a range of philosophical, historical,…

The emotional system is defined as a dynamical system that has neurological and biochemical structures that force the system to change in a regular and consistent way. This dynamic view allows for an alternative definition of emotion regulation, which describes when emotion regulation is needed, identifies its goal, and illustrates how regulation…

This article reports on a recent study by the Rand Corporation that concluded that there is cause for middle schools to worry. Commissioned by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, one of four major philanthropies supporting the middle school movement, the Rand investigation is clear in its assessment: The American middle school leaves adolescents…

This article relates the story of a young girl's difficulties in accepting her parents' separation, and offers suggestions for both teachers and parents on how to help a child cope with his or her feelings and anxiety in this situation. Resources for further study are also offered.

It is hard for many people to accept anger as part of a young child's range of feelings. Teachers work so hard to make children happy, and feel frustrated, even resentful, when they do not respond with 100 percent happiness all the time. Teachers know in their minds that anger is a normal emotion and that they, too, sometimes feel angry. However,…

This article describes the manner in which empathy develops during different stages of childhood, from birth to age 6. The first section, "Why Is She Crying?" (Carla Poole), deals with empathy development in children from birth to age two. This is followed by a section entitled "It'll Be OK" (Susan A. Miller) on ages three to four. The article…

One sunny afternoon, six-year-old Zachary and his friend John Michael, four and a half, discovered a dead frog in a bag of clay in the garage. Zachary proposed, "Let's have a funeral for the frog." This is how the funeral drama of Froggy the Frog began. This article describes the play experiences of Zachary and John Michael as designers,…

There are many ways to help children with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) succeed in school. Behavior intervention plans provide support to help students adjust their actions to fit school norms. Inclusive philosophy and practices continue to break the cycle of restricted and segregated placements, whereas schoolwide intervention models…

The brain, a pattern-finding organ, seeks to create meaning through establishing or refining existing neural networks; this is learning. Emotion affects what is learned and what is retained.

The emotional trauma of recent events may never go away. A million people were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina, including an estimated 372,000 children of school age. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas-Louisiana coastline, forcing thousands more to evacuate. Acute symptoms of trauma range from confusion, nightmares, and…

For years, educators had complained that college students were apathetic, that their turnout at the polls was pitifully low, that they didn't seem to care about national politics. Despite MTV's Rock the Vote campaign in the 2000 election, students didn't show up to vote in any numbers that gave everybody the reason to be hopeful about the nation's…