Teaching Tenacity Through Social-Emotional Learning

• The psychosocial skills students need in order to develop tenacity
• Strategies to help your students learn through a social-emotional framework
• The challenges students face while developing tenacity, including perfectionism and mindset

Dr. Emily Mofield  is the lead consulting teacher for gifted education for Sumner County Schools in Tennessee. Prior to this position, she taught as a gifted education language arts middle school teacher for 10 years. Emily regularly presents professional development on effective differentiation for advanced learners and ways to practically address gifted students’ unique social-emotional needs. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Language Arts and has been recognized as the Tennessee Association for Gifted Children Teacher of the Year. She has co-authored the Vanderbilt PTY Advanced ELA curriculum series (with Tamra Stambaugh through Prufrock Press) which have won numerous NAGC curriculum awards (2012, 2015, 2016). She is actively involved in the Curriculum Studies Network with NAGC and also has authored several published manuscripts about perfectionism, overexcitabilities, social-emotional needs of gifted students, and curriculum design.  Most recently, her research (with Dr. Megan Parker Peters) on mindsets, perfectionism, and underachievement was recognized with the prestigious international Hollingworth Award (NAGC, 2016).

Dr. Megan Parker Peters, is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Teacher Assessment at Lipscomb University. She is co-editor of the National Association for Gifted Children’s (NAGC) Teaching for High Potential publication and is on the board of the Tennessee Association for the Gifted. She serves as the Early Childhood Network Chair for the National Association for Gifted Children. Her current research interests include examining the impact of perfectionism on coping and underachievement, the relationships among socioemotional factors and giftedness, and the academic and external factors that predict student success. Most recently, her research (with Dr. Emily Mofield) on mindsets, perfectionism, and underachievement was recognized with the prestigious international Hollingworth Award (NAGC, 2016).