Giving Compass' Take:

• This Getting Smart post emphasizes a more holistic approach to education, where academic learning is supplemented by conversations grounded in real-life experiences.

• Those in engaged with K-12 initiatives shouldn't be automatons. How can we better engage with students on their level and bring their rich perspectives into the classroom?

• Here's why student relationships are an undervalued asset in education.

If you want to teach the whole child, then you have to speak with the whole child, not just the academic child. We are all made up of different things. We are made up of our family relationships, our past experiences, our talents and passions, our failures and disappointments, and our choices about every little aspect of life. No new instructional strategy will reach the whole child any better if we don’t know the whole child. And by showing our students how we get to know them, they can, in turn, learn how to have meaningful conversations with others and grow the ability to manage their social and emotional lives. Having genuine, non-schooly conversations are sometimes hard to have in school. We have to focus so much on the content and the standards because of time constraints that many of us just plow into our school day with the first lesson, unfortunately not realizing that the whole child may not be with us as we go.

Find small structures, protocols, or experiences your students can have each day that will lead to consistent, genuine, non-schooly conversations. Find inspiration from any place you go. We found our ideas from a vacation. Additionally, we found ideas and inspiration from a timely training, Capturing Kids Hearts. See how real conversations happen in your own life that helps you to get to know others and then bring those experiences into your classroom. I can promise you that with each conversation, ideas for better instruction aimed at the whole child will flood your mind.

Read the full article about teaching the whole child by Anna Durfee at Getting Smart.