Creating Schools that Heal

In a world where children are beset by violence and stress, Lesley Koplow provides educators with clear, level-headed advice on how to construct therapeutic learning environments for all children. This is a book about integrating preventive mental health practice into public schools (preschool through grade 5). Koplow, a psychotherapist, discusses the mandate for violence prevention and offers an intervention framework for teachers, administrators, and school-based clinicians who want to improve the emotional climate in their school.

This important and timely volume:

• Helps educators read the signs of distress or problematic social/emotional development as they are likely to manifest themselves in the school setting.
• Introduces a practice model that calls for strengthened teacher-child connections.
• Addresses, in separate chapters, the roles of the teacher, principal, and school-based clinician, providing guidance and effective strategies for each.
• Demonstrates that interventions can be done effectively by existing school personnel.
• Describes a project to facilitate teacher gathering of psycho-social history that can be used to inform constructive curricular practice.
• Poses compelling questions for policymakers, including concerns about the effect that the current focus on standards and test scores is having on the emotional tone of schools.
• Includes a chapter addressing what we’ve learned from the recent tragic events of September 11th in New York City.

Lesley Koplow, M. S., C. S. W. is a psychotherapist, the Director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice at Bank Street College of Education, and the author of numerous books on child mental health.

“Lesley Koplow’s well-examined truths uncover an image of intimacy between teacher and child sorely needed in our schools. Her “emotionally responsive” teacher is the pivot for a classroom community that visibly supports and honors its members in the great variety of their lives. “What stands in the way?” is the question Ms. Koplow courageously answers.”
—Vivian Gussin Paley, author of In Mrs. Tulley’s Room: A Childcare Portrait