Ed Week: "Growing number of kindergartners having challenges with self-regulation"

July 8, 2025, Education Week: Kindergartners Are Struggling With Self-Regulation. How Principals Can Respond 

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-kindergartners-are-struggling-with-self-regulation-how-principals-can-respond/2025/07 

Ian Knox is the principal of Hamagrael Elementary School in upstate New York. He also serves on the board for The Principal Center at The Capital Area School Development

Association, where he supports leadership development, mentorship, and collaborative initiatives for school leaders in the Albany region.

Kindergarten marks a critical stage in a child’s growth, setting the foundation for their journey into becoming an engaged and compassionate member of society. During this formative phase, children develop a passion for learning, build meaningful bonds, and, most significantly, start to explore and manage their feelings in constructive ways.

Recently, those of us who work in elementary schools have observed a growing number of kindergartners having challenges with self-regulation, which can impact an entire school community. Dysregulated students can create stress, burnout, and unsafe learning environments for their teachers and peers.

As we begin to plan for a new group of kindergarten students to start, how can we, as school leaders, better address these difficulties and equip students, staff, and faculty with the tools they need to thrive?

About This Series

In this biweekly column, principals and other authorities on school leadership—including researchers, education professors, district administrators, and assistant principals—offer timely and timeless advice for their peers.

The solution begins with trust. Before implementing meaningful strategies like social-emotional-learning programs, teachers, staff, students, and families must have trust in their school leader to foster collaboration, provide guidance, and create unity.

In the Harvard Business Review article “Managing People: Begins with Trust,” authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss emphasize that trust is “one of the most essential forms of capital a leader has” and the first step in becoming a genuinely empowering one.

This trust, Frei and Morriss explain, is built on three core drivers: empathy (“I believe you care about me and my success”), authenticity (“I experience the real you”), and logic (“I know you can do it; your reasoning and judgment are sound”). For school leaders, combining these three drivers can help us build the trust we need to address the complex social and emotional needs of students effectively.

Below are three actionable steps that I have found to apply these trust-building drivers in service of a thriving, supportive school community:

1. Demonstrate empathy by taking every challenge seriously. . . .

2. Lead with authenticity by acknowledging your own limitations. . . .

3. Model your logic with consistent and sound judgment. . . .

Ensure your actions and decisions reflect the values and goals of your school team. Stay grounded and steady, so that your staff has confidence in your judgment and reasoning and sees you as reliable.