Linda Darling-Hammond believes social and emotional learning is a crucial part of teaching the whole child. “Schools need to be places where strong relationships can form,” she explains. According to Darling-Hammond we are still struggling to get past the factory-model schools, where “teachers stamp out kids as they pass by on a conveyor belt,” that were developed during the last century in response to the needs of our industrialized society. One hundred years later, schools remain punitive and coercive, and are designed to “control a large numbers of people being asked to do things that are not natural,” according to Darling-Hammond. She recommends redesigning schools to create more personalized environments where adults and students stay together for longer periods of time, where teams of teachers can work together with each other around the needs of the students as well as with the students directly. Block scheduling not only allows teachers more time with fewer students, it provides opportunities for interdisciplinary, in-depth studies. According to Darling-Hammond, today’s schools must prepare seventy percent of students for ‘thinking work.’ Despite this need, our public schools currently prepare only 20 to 25 percent of students for a college education.
