Dr. Donna Housman, Ed.D., is a clinical psychologist who has spent more than 35 years studying the emotional foundations children need to grow, learn, and thrive. In 1985, she founded Beginnings School and Child Development Center in Weston, Massachusetts, the lab school where she built ECSEL, the Emotional, Cognitive, Social Early Learning model now known as begin to ECSEL. She later launched Housman Learning, which trains teachers and leaders serving children from birth through second grade and beyond to manage their own emotions first. Her research reports that children in the program showed significant gains in emotional intelligence, self-regulation, and executive functioning. Housman argues these skills must be in place before AI enters a child’s world, or the technology risks becoming a substitute for a child’s own thinking.