The Responsive Classroom Approach

Abstract

Most classrooms have students with behavioral problems, but such students tend to be more prevalent in low-income urban neighborhoods, and teachers in these schools often do not have adequate training or resources to address the children’s social-emotional needs. During the Schools Project—a partnership between the Erikson Institute and nine public schools in low-income Chicago neighborhoods—some of the partner schools addressed this dilemma by implementing the Responsive Classroom approach, created by the Northeast Foundation for Children to support students’ social-emotional development. No other intervention during the project ended up looking so different from school to school. At one extreme, an entire school community was transformed. At the other extreme, a school came to see the approach as an ivory-tower program unsuited for inner-city children. This article briefly describes the Responsive Classroom approach and conveys the range of implementation experiences in the Schools Project through four case histories.