The Whole Child Initiative

Find whole child resources by clicking on the tenets below. Members may access the full text of all articles by logging in to myASCD.

The 21st century demands a highly skilled, educated work force and citizenry unlike any we have seen before. The global marketplace and economy are a reality. Change and innovation have become the new status quo. A strong foundation in reading, writing, math, and other core subjects is as important as ever, yet insufficient for lifelong success. These demands require a new and better way of approaching education policy and practice—a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement.

The Whole Child Initiative proposes a definition of achievement and accountability that promotes the development of children who are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. We seek to redefine what a successful learner is and how we measure success. ASCD is helping educators, families, community members, and policymakers move from rhetoric about educating the whole child to reality.

Whole Child Tenets

• Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
• Each student learns in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
• Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
• Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
• Each graduate is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment in a global environment.

Healthy

• Nurturing Good Nutritional Habits (Education Update article)
  Educators can help youth make healthy choices by integrating creative nutrition lessons into school activities. This article looks at some innovative programs and provides tips for encouraging students to eat and live well.
  
• A Supersize Problem (Education Update article)
  U.S. schools are increasingly adopting wellness policies to tackle the problem of overweight students.
  
• Build Stronger Schools with ASCD's Healthy School Report Card (Education Update article)
  This article describes the ASCD Action Tool, Creating a Healthy School Using the Healthy School Report Card, which helps schools assess their health practices, identify needs, and incorporate appropriate changes into a school-improvement plan.
  
• Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher (ASCD book)
  The first book written by someone who is both a neurologist and a classroom teacher identifies and translates the brain research most relevant to classroom teaching.
  
• Healthy and Ready to Learn (Educational Leadership article)
  Former Surgeon General David Satcher describes the link between health and academic achievement, and urges schools to play a role in better health.
  
• Who Cares for the Caregivers? (Education Update article)
  This article discusses the importance of providing aid to administrators and faculty in times of crisis in schools.
  
• Healthy School Communities: An ASCD Whole Child Initiative
  This Web site contains a variety of resources designed to help schools achieve their vision of a healthy school community.

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Safe

• The Educator's Guide to Assessing and Improving School Discipline Programs, Chapter 1: Identifying and Clarifying Core Beliefs (ASCD book excerpt)
  This first chapter describes the process of identifying core beliefs about your school discipline program in order to improve school climate and safety.
  
• How We Treat One Another in School (Educational Leadership article)
  A survey of middle school students' experiences with bullying shows that kids want the adults in school to pay attention and keep them safe.
  
• The Violence You Don't See (Educational Leadership article)
  A former elementary school teacher reflects on the importance of cultural understanding in making students feel comfortable and engaged.
  
• Broadening the World of Early Adolescents (Educational Leadership article)
  Middle schools need to balance social development and academic achievement for early adolescents, and be mindful of structures that heighten social segregation.
  
• ASCD Character Education Network
  Join this ASCD group dedicated to effective practices and useful theory in character education.

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Engaged

• Making Content Connections Through Arts Integration (Education Update article)
  This article looks at how educators engage students by integrating arts instruction in different subject areas.
  
• Creating Global Classrooms (Education Update article)
  This article looks at ways to bring a global perspective to the classroom by having students form collaborations with young people around the world using resources such as online forums, blogs, Webcams, and other 21st century technology.
  
• A Conversation with Author Lawrence Baines (Education Update article)
  In this interview, Lawrence Baines talks about his ASCD book, A Teacher's Guide to Multisensory Learning: Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses, and offers tips for engaging students using hands-on, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli.
  
• How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students (Education Update article)
  This Q and A interview with author Susan M. Brookhart talks about ways to provide feedback that will help students move towards their learning goals.
  
• Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student (ASCD book)
  In research over the last decade, educators have learned to identify six areas in which high schools begin to fail their students. The authors examine these six problem areas, allowing readers to look at personalized learning in several different ways and offering six ways to engage students and prevent any from believing they are stupid.
  
• At Your Service (Eductional Leadership article)
  A middle school literacy coach in a high poverty school describes her efforts to engage her reluctant learners through service-learning. The article includes resources for implementing service-learning.
  
• Reaching the Reluctant Learner (Eductional Leadership issue)
  Educational Leadership magazine shares numerous articles on how students can be more effectively motivated and engaged in learning.
  
• Activating the Desire to Learn (ASCD book)
  This book shows teachers where the desire to learn comes from and how they can activate it in students.
  
• Why Tests Aren't Enough (Is It Good For the Kids? column)
  Multiple measures of assessment are important to supplement traditional tests and provide a clearer picture of learning.
  
• Help Us Care Enough to Learn (Educational Leadership article)
  Interviews with 65 students across the country reveal what high school students need to become engaged in their schools.
  
• Schooling for a Democratic Society (Education Update article)
  This article describes the First Amendment Schools project, in which schools cultivate "scholar activists."
  
• A Case for School Connectedness (Educational Leadership article)
  This article cites research showing that students are more likely to succeed when they feel connected to school, and offers advice for schools to increase connectedness.
  
• Community Schools: Educators and Community Sharing Responsibility for Student Learning
  (ASCD Infobrief) This article offers strategies for policymakers and educators looking to establish and grow community schools, which offer a range of academic, health, recreational, and social services.
  
• The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD book)
  This book is a resource for educators on the First Amendment, with answers to 90 of the most critical questions.
  
• ASCD Brain-Compatible Learning Network
  Connect with other educators interested in how brain research translates into learning, teaching, and leadership practices.
  
• First Amendment Schools
  Learn about this national reform initiative designed to transform how schools teach and practice the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that frame civic life in our democracy.
  
• ASCD Problem-Based Learning Network
  Hosted by the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, this network provides resources for and connects educators using problem-based learning strategies.

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Supported

• Keeping Kenya's Kids in School (Education Update article)
  This article looks at a student incentive program in Kenya, which provided support and motivation for female students who may not otherwise have been able to attend school.
  
• Opening Doors for More Students (Education Update article)
  This article looks at college bound programs that provide support and information to low-income and minority students and their families.
  
• Collaborating Over Coffee (Education Update article)
  Creating a successful school-business partnership requires open communication and careful planning. This article offers advice for building mutually-beneficial relationships with local businesses.
  
• Nine Powerful Practices (Educational Leadership article)
  In this article, Ruby Payne identifies nine strategies that help raise the achievement of students living in poverty including building relationships of respect, teaching the hidden rules of school, and building relationships with parents.
  
• Tapping Parent and Community Support to Improve Student Learning
  (Education Update article) This article looks at programs that tap into the energy and expertise of parents and community-based organizations to help with school-improvement efforts.
  
• Activating the Desire to Learn (ASCD book)
  This book shows teachers where the desire to learn comes from and how they can activate it in students.
  
• Assessment Through The Student's Eyes (Educational Leadership article)
  Rather than sorting students into winners and losers, Rick Stiggins argues that assessment for learning can put all students on a winning streak.
  
• The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice
  (ASCD book) This book looks at schools that educate the whole child, meeting their social, emotional, and cognitive needs.
  
• Highly Qualified Teachers for All (Educational Leadership article)
  The authors of this article propose a national initiative to improve teacher quality.
  
• Relationships Matter (Educational Leadership article)
  Research shows that strong teacher-student relationships improve academic achievement.
  
• Celebrate Strengths, Nurture Affinities: A Conversation with Mel Levine
  (Educational Leadership article) Dr. Levine discusses how to celebrate strengths and assist students with specialized minds.
  
• My Teacher Doesn't Like Me! Understanding and Resolving Student-Teacher Conflicts
  (Education Update article) Teachers who understand why certain students get under their skin can better control their reactions and teach more effectively.
  
• All Together Now: Sharing Responsibility for the Whole Child
  (PDF, Coalition for Community Schools for ASCD) This paper discusses strategies policymakers and educators can use to provide a more balanced education for students.
  
• Personal Learning Plans Link Present to Future (Education Update article)
  Personal learning plans developed by high school students based on their goals allow for more focused curricular choices and stronger feedback.
  
• Conditions for Learning: Teacher Working Conditions as Catalysts for Student Learning
  (ASCD Infobrief) This article suggests how to improve teacher working conditions as a means to help improve retention of quality teachers and increase student achievement.

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Challenged

• Financial Literacy: An Imperative in Economic Hard Times (Education Update article)
  To prepare young for life outside the school walls, some states and school districts have made financial literacy a graduation requirement. Teaching this 21st century skill will help students understand budgeting and personal finance and allow them to apply challenging, real world lessons in the classroom.
  
• Creating Critical Thinkers: A Conversation with Carla Williamson, Executive Director of West Virginia's Office of Instruction (Education Update article)
  In this interview, Carla Williamson discusses West Virginia's Teach 21 program, an initiative focused on planning and delivering effective 21st century instruction throughout state.
  
• Developing Students' Creative Skills for 21st Century Success (Education Update article)
  To prepare students for success in work and life, educators should help young people learn how to tap into their creativity. This article offers tips for stimulating student creativity.
  
• Partnership in Action (Education Update article)
  ASCD joined the Partnership for 21st Century (P21) skills to add its voice to the discussion about preparing youth for future success in work and adult life. This article discusses the many ways that the P21 initiative overlaps with ASCD's Whole Child Initiative.
  
• Reshaping High Schools (Educational Leadership issue)
  Find information on the reshaping of high schools, including a number of calls for policy changes, descriptions of reform models that work, and ways to improve high schools both systemically and incrementally. The authors make clear that a wealth of new choices needs to be developed because the typical high school culture is not working for so many.
  
• Teaching Students to Think (Educational Leadership issue)
  This issue is a great resource for educators who know how important it is to challenge students. You'll find articles that touch on the teaching, curriculum, and research aspects of thinking skills.
  
• Making the Grade in a Global Economy (Is It Good For the Kids? column)
  It is crunch time for scaling up school reform in the United States. At stake is whether an entire generation of learners will fail to make the grade in a global economy. This editorial calls for systems, schools and communities to prepare whole children for the whole world.
  
• The Case for Multiple Measures: Teaching Students, Not Tests (ASCD Infobrief)
  Examine the shortcomings of the current testing system required by NCLB and the practical implication of the law for assessment in schools and states through current practices, the alternatives, and some solutions that have been developed or are under consideration.
  
• Social Studies Jockeys for Position in a Narrowing Curriculum: NCLB a "Thief of Time"
  (Education Update article) Social studies faces competition from other subjects, but educators can ensure its inclusion by teaching across the curriculum.
  
• Foreign Language Learning Gap Concerns U.S. Leaders (Education Update article)
  The U.S. lags behind other nations in foreign language learning, and various educators and policymakers have ideas on how to close the gap.
  
• The Arts Make a Difference (Educational Leadership article)
  Evidence shows that the arts can have a powerful impact on student achievement, particularly among at-risk students.
  
• ASCD Early Childhood Education Network
  Join this ASCD group dedicated to excellence in early childhood education.
  
• ASCD Global Education Network
  Working with the National Peace Corps Association's Global TeachNet, this network provides global education resources and support.

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