Bridget Laird Of Wings For Kids On The 5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Thrive and Excel In School

An Interview With Jake Frankel

Relationship skills are about how kids best support peers while developing friendships that can be helpful to them. An important part of these is also about children learning to find people different from themselves but also people who can bring them positive energy.

School is really not easy these days. Many students have been out of school for a long time because of the pandemic, and the continued disruptions and anxieties are still breaking the flow of normal learning. What can parents do to help their children thrive and excel in school, particularly during these challenging and anxiety-provoking times?

To address this, we started a new series called ‘5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Thrive and Excel In School.” In this interview series, we are talking to teachers, principals, education experts, and successful parents to learn from their insights and experience.

As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure to interview Bridget Laird.

Bridget has been with Wing For Kids since 1998 working alongside the organization’s spirited founder, Ginny Deerin. Through the years, Bridget has helped to develop all aspects of the organization, from program/curriculum development to spearheading grant and research applications to growth strategies, replication, and scaling.

During this time, she and our founder were leading the charge in bringing social and emotional skill development to kids in elementary schools and working toward efforts to bring social emotional learning (SEL) to the forefront of education today. Bridget took over as CEO in January 2011. Since her tenure, WINGS expanded to Atlanta, GA, Charlotte, NC, and Columbia, SC — increasing the number of kids served by more than 300%. Most recently, Bridget developed a nationwide partnership with the global leader in standards-based digital learning content for K-12 classrooms worldwide, Discovery Education. This…