Our Framework

Our guiding framework, the Anchor Competencies Framework serves as a roadmap for helping teacher educators, education leaders, and teachers to develop a holistic approach to teaching and learning – an approach that focuses on developing whole educators to ensure they are equipped to reach and teach the whole student. The Framework emphasizes the need for supporting educators’ own social and emotional competencies with an attention to their context. In so doing, educators are prepared to create safe, supportive, and engaging classroom environments where all students can grow, thrive, and learn.

The Framework also provides a common language and set of approaches for educators, schools, and institutions to integrate a focus on students’ social and emotional competency development with an attention to the context that they bring to the learning environment. It defines seven social and emotional competencies, together with suggested teacher moves and specific teaching strategies – all underscored by the notion that is critical to attend to the context within which the person lives, in order to teach the whole person (both child and adult) (Markowitz & Bouffard, 2020).

With over 15 years of experience working at the state, district, county office, and university teacher preparation level, the Center for Reaching & Teaching the Whole Child (CRTWC) has been transforming the way we prepare and support educators across the United States – providing a more holistic model of teaching and learning that centers the educator’s own social and emotional development and well-being. For instance, CRTWC has provided year-long professional learning institutes for faculty from teacher education programs across the country designed to deepen their understanding of the Framework and support their integration of it into their programs. CRTWC’s Framework has also been used to inform the creation of new state standards for Educator Preparation Programs in Oregon and novel Grow-Your-Own teacher licensure pathways. Additionally, CRTWC works closely with districts, county offices, and teacher education programs across the Bay Area and California to integrate a focus on whole child development into their teacher preparation and development efforts.