Emotionally Responsive Practice: A Path for Schools That Heal, Infancy-Grade 6

It is essential for all schools to integrate trauma-informed care into practice as children, parents, and teachers live with the threat of COVID-19. In her new book, Lesley Koplow explores the Emotionally Responsive Practice (ERP) approach designed to support children and teachers' emotional well-being in the public-school setting. ERP encourages school staff to look at children through the lens of child development, as well as through the lens of their life experiences, in order to help them resolve foundational social and emotional milestones. Unlike many SEL programs, ERP asks adults to consider the ways that educational philosophy and school climate impact emotional, social, and cognitive outcomes for young children. This timely resource offers teachers, school leaders, and school-based clinicians a vision and blueprint for engaging in relationship-based, trauma-informed practice in early childhood and elementary school grades.

Book Features:

• A timely sequel to the author's groundbreaking text, Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools Can Heal, Second Edition.
• Explores the need for meaningful curriculum as a component of a healing school environment.
• Provides a unifying language to help teachers, school leaders, and school social workers to work across disciplines.
• Includes specific examples of classroom processes and practices that support the emotional well-being of young children.

Lesley Koplow, LCSW, is the director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street College in New York City. Her books include Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools Can Heal, Second Edition, Creating Schools That Heal: Real-Life Solutions, and Bears, Bears Everywhere! Supporting Children's Emotional Health in the Classroom.