To welcome and inspire the LPS and TCA faculty and staff upon their return to campus, Lubavitch on the Palisades Preschool and Tenafly Chabad Academy elementary school provided inspiring professional development programs designed to fully embrace social emotional learning and integrate it daily into every classroom across the curriculum.

This year, to further develop children’s emotional intelligence from a preschool age, LPS added a new and improved Social Emotional Learning Center to their already rich and diverse array of centers around the classroom. To learn more about the SEL center, Randi Goldfarb presented the preschool teachers with a workshop on supporting students’ emotional needs. The teachers collaborated together on ways to fully integrate the Core 5 (self awareness, body awareness, responsibility, choices and communication) into their SEL. The teachers left the workshop energized and inspired to integrate these guiding principles of Social Emotional Learning approach into their progressive and academic curriculum.

Prizmah’s Rachel Dratch presented to the entire TCA elementary faculty and staff a captivating and enlightening workshop called “Future Me will Thank Me.” In this fascinating and interactive session, teachers expanded their emotional intelligence tool box in attempts to remove as many emotional roadblocks as possible from the learning environment. Mrs. Dratch focused on several emotional intelligence topics, such as emotional awareness of both the staffs’ and students’ emotional triggers, modeling self-regulation and empathy, improving interpersonal skills and building a community of closeness and respect. The workshop was filled with excitement, inspiration, helpful tips and enthusiasm. The teachers cannot wait to use, develop and share all these incredibly meaningful tools in the classroom and to continue building relationships with students, thereby instilling in them the love for learning, curiosity, motivation and most importantly, sense of belonging and confidence.