Everyone is So Nice Here

In the article, "Why Is Everyone So Nice Here?," in Edutopia, Joan Murphy describes the impact of the Responsive Curriculum. This curriculum has seven guiding principles:

• The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
• How children learn is as important as what they learn.
• The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
• There is a specific set of social skills that children need to learn and practice in order to be successful academically and socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
• Knowing the children we teach individually, culturally, and developmentally is as important as knowing the content we teach.
• Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children we teach.
• How we, the adults at school, work together is as important as our individual competence.

Contributed by Kirsten Haugen

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