​Before we jump straight to focusing on the academics, we must prepare the learning environment.  This includes the physical environment - from facilities, to how we arrange classrooms, to schoolyards. Next, we must intentionally design the social/emotional environment.  Then, we are ready to prepare the academic environment - and that starts with high expectations.

This post will provide you with many tips on how to create the optimum social/emotional environment - starting with what to do on the first day of school!  Enjoy, and please add your ideas below!
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Another excellent resource for the new year is this post, How daily meditation improves behavior - and increases creativity.

Click here to find your tips on creating the optimal social/emotional environment!

[1] John Dewey, Wikipedia

This TED Talk by Shawn Achor and his book, The Happiness Advantage, has excellent tips for how be happier, which is turn increases productivity, energy, creativity, innovation and learning.  The book is packed with research-based data.  I recommend this video for students, educators, parents, and business and community leaders!  

An excerpt from this TED Talk, including some specific actions I would incorporate into my class.  You don't NOT have the time!

If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, we've found that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% m ore productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. .   .   .   .   .

*   Write down three new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.

*   Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. 

*   We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. 

*   And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness.  We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but a real revolution.

Please see a related post in this blog on Meditation in School - completely amazing!

I recently posted my response here to a blog on Edutopia in which teachers discussed "techniques" for keeping students quiet.  No one seemed to consider whether or not keeping students quiet was the best thing to do. All these teachers want is to maintain control, and for them, this control means keeping students in their seats and quiet.  I posted another comment there two days ago.  Obviously, I am in the minority when it comes to opinions regarding classroom management, how children learn and how children should be treated - and in regard to intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.  

The image above is from the first article below.  It is exactly what I witnessed, and experienced, when observing a full class period in a middle school in Houston.  It was horribly boring.  The classroom was a mess (teacher's mess).  Some of the students had just pulled their hoods up over their heads and put their heads down on their desk.  Teacher just kept right on droning.  This makes me sick, and if one of my children was in such a classroom I would be in the principal's office and getting my child out of that school, or at least out of that classroom.

Today I came across an excellent article related to this topic.  

A therapist goes to middle school and tries to sit still and focus. She can't. Neither can...
washingtonpost.com

You may also be interested in the articles below:

Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today

The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class

Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

Please watch Sir Ken Robinson's talk/video/art below.  Notice the map of the United States in Ken Robinson's video and compare it to the one in the article above, Why so many kids can't sit still in school today.

Even if you have seen this before, it is an excellent reminder.