Helping Kids Learn to Ask For Help

 This week's article summary is How Kids Can Overcome the Awkwardness of Asking for Help.

Try to think back to when you were in middle and high school: How often did you seek out a teach for extra help? 

 

In my teens there were a few times I had to meet with a teacher for a private one-on-one session, mostly if a teacher had written ‘See Me’ on a test or paper or if my parents and the teacher had decided I needed some extra help due to a low grade. In these cases I was basically forced into extra help. I can’t recall ever in middle or high school initiating extra help with a teacher. 

 

It wasn’t until I was a college junior that I took advantage of professors’ office hours.

 

The difference between me in my teens and me as a college junior was being more aware of what I knew and didn’t know and consciously accepting responsibility for my learning. In middle and high school, I left it to the teacher to assess my work and assign me a grade. I was in essence a passive participant in my learning.

 

At Trinity, one of our outcomes is for our students is to develop a strong sense of self, including self-assurance, and to me this extends to being confident enough to seek extra help when needed.

 

So much of what we do at Trinity helps shape our students’ agency. For example, we when we ask our students to self-reflect/evaluate they are beginning to see their role in their learning.  Through student-led conferences, they learn to articulate how they learn, the steps they need to take to learn, and where they need help and support. 

 

Our work as early childhood/elementary teachers is so vital and impactful because it helps develop in our students the assertiveness and metacognition to seek extra help during the challenging middle school years, not to wait like me until college years.

 

Joe

 

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Office hours, as many middle and high school teachers can attest, are often a frustratingly underutilized block of time during the school day—an unstructured period earmarked for student check-ins and lesson support that very few kids take advantage of, even when they understand the benefits.

 

Students’ tendency to avoid seeking help is an area Vanessa Bohns, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, focuses her research on, perhaps partly inspired by her own experience with students at the college level. “The quietest part of my day used to be my office hours, when students could meet with me without an appointment. Why? Because no one would show up for them.”

 

Bohn’s office hours experience largely mirrors what happens in middle and high school, compounded for teenagers by a potent mix of peer pressure—the urgent need to appear competent in front of friends and classmates is a driving force at this age—and a lack of metacognitive skills when it comes to assessing their own learning and knowledge gaps. 

 

Middle schoolers have a harder time asking for help because they’re transitioning from the cut-and-dry thinking of elementary school. Add to that the self-consciousness and insecurity that puberty brings, and no one dares to ask for help for fear of being ‘found out’ or ‘exposed’.

 

We also tend to underestimate just how much discomfort kids feel about asking for help. That can cause parents or educators to “sit back waiting for those in need to ask for help, engage in misguided attempts to encourage help-seeking without directly addressing help-seekers’ discomfort, or mistakenly attribute underutilization of available help to a lack of need rather than a lack of confidence,” writes Bohns.

 

Yet the answer, Bohns notes, isn’t about getting students to grasp the benefits of asking for help, convincing them, for example, of the upside of office hours. Instead, it’s much more productive, she says, to lower the temperature on the process generally so that identifying where they need help, and then asking for it, becomes a low-stakes, normal part of being a good learner, something students feel comfortable and empowered to do regularly.

 

Here are a number of educator-sourced strategies designed to normalize seeking help in middle and high school, making it a natural, easy choice for students.

 

Teach Metacognitive Skills: It’s not uncommon for students to sit in silence or confusion, instead of raising their hand to ask for help. Students must first recognize that they’re struggling. This requires honesty and self-awareness—some students don’t think they need help even when formal or informal assessments indicate otherwise. So encourage self-reflection in students, help them develop the metacognitive skills to take on at least some of the responsibility for monitoring their learning, rather than keeping that task the sole purview of teachers, or parents. As they learn, students should regularly check in with themselves, asking themselves basic questions like: “Do I need to ask for help?” and “Are there areas that are unclear to me?” As they prepare for a test, they can ask themselves open-ended questions like:

• Can I teach this concept to a friend or family member?

• Can I identify one strategy I’ve been using during this lesson that’s helped me be successful?

• Can I identify one strategy I want to try using more often?

• How do I think I’m doing in this class, in this unit, on this project? How do I know?

 

Normalize It: Part of lowering the stakes for students involves demonstrating how commonplace needing and asking for help can be. So talk about it in class and provide examples, read aloud about it, and share your own stories about seeking support or assistance from others. Share with your students what you were good at and what you struggled with when you were their age. It’s important to remember what it was like to be the age of your students. What were your strengths and weaknesses in the subject matter that you teach, or in other subjects? How did you overcome those obstacles? What embarrassed you? Sharing your own very human learning experiences with students serves not just to illustrate how you sought help, it can also provide a valuable glimpse of the teacher not as an untouchable authority, but as a relatable human who has grown and changed throughout the years.

 

Model Assertiveness: Assertive communication is a hard but valuable skill for students to learn. In the classroom, students who lack assertiveness skills may hesitate to share their thinking openly or ask clarifying questions when they’re confused. But when people behave assertively, they stand up for themselves without diminishing or hurting others. In other words, they’re strong, not mean. After clarifying the definition of assertive communication—you might explain that it “represents the middle ground between the extremes of aggression and passivity. Students can role-play solving various conflicts or problems. Try a “Stating Your Needs” exercise where students practice responding assertively to a misunderstanding—a student can’t keep up with her notes, asks the teacher to slow down, but the teacher doesn’t see her quietly raising her hand and keeps going.

 

Offer Conversation Starters and Role-Play: For students who are introverted or shy, or who—for any number of reasons—struggle to speak up in class or initiate a conversation with a teacher, practice and role-play can help build confidence and skills. Ask students to brainstorm ways to initiate a conversation asking a teacher, or peer, for help, and then have them role-play in small groups or one-on-one with an adult how the conversation might unfold. To help get things moving, provide a few sentence starters such as:

• I’m struggling with... . Can we talk about it later?

• I’m working hard, but I’m still not understanding… . Can you help me?

• I’m not sure what I need. Can you please talk to me?

• Can you give me advice about … ?

 

Provide Non-Public Options: When sign-ups for an SAT prep class at three high schools were public—allowing students to see who would be taking the class—53 percent of students expressed interest in the class. But when sign-ups were offered in private settings, participation in the prep class rose to 80 percent, according to a recent study, underscoring the powerful pressure kids feel about how they’re perceived by peers. It’s important that students know they can also reach out privately to seek help and support—by email, for example. While most teachers share their email address with students, go one step further and make a point of clarifying with students that it’s another way for them to reach out to you for help or support. Consider establishing ground rules around your response time and other details that protect your non-school hours--and then be sure to check your inbox daily.

 

Busting the Learning Style Myth

 This week's article summary is Busting the Learning Style Myth.

Most of us are familiar with the idea that we all have a preferred learning style, the four most common being visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic.

The belief is that once we identify our preferred learning style, we can  optimize our learning through that style.

The problem with this belief is there is no evidence it works and in fact often hampers the learning process. 

So why does the belief in learning styles remain so popular?  

Because it seems so logical.

But unfortunately some things that make sense aren’t actually true.

I prefer reading and writing more than kinesthetic, hands-on activities. But that doesn’t mean I learn best only by reading and writing. There are many things I learned that I couldn’t have by simply reading about them: throwing a curveball, riding a bike, making bread from scratch.

Learning styles are different from Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences: kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, naturalist, logical mathematical, spatial. We typically have some talents we’re naturally better at than others. I have always been good with logical, mathematical thinking yet I have zero musical talent.

Still, as you’ll see in the article while we all have different and unique talents, we all ultimately learn the same way not through a particular learning style!

Joe

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A prevalent neuromyth is that of “learning styles.” 

According to this belief, people can be classified by how they learn best and should concentrate their educational efforts in that mode. If someone is an auditory learner, she’ll master a subject or skill faster and more effectively by listening to lectures than reading books or through first-hand experiences.

The idea of learning styles has sadly infected our education systems and people’s understanding of themselves. And psychologists worry this can have long-term consequences. 

There is a grain of truth to the myth of learning styles. Namely, people do differ in their abilities and preferences. The VARK learning model, for example, classifies people as either visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic (hands-on) learners. Each method is part of the learning process, and people will have their favorites.

Many proponents believe learning styles are inheritable, emerge early in childhood, have a physiological basis, predict learning outcomes, and are immutable. For such people, saying “I’m a visual learner” isn’t merely stating preference; it’s stating something fundamental about themselves.

According to a recent study, half of the people who subscribe to the myth hold this view. More worryingly, the study noted, educators who work with younger children are more likely to believe that learning styles are hardwired. And that belief can lead educators to support learning style-based curricula.

Another study found that 71 percent of educators believed the learning styles myth and that 88 percent of the general public accepted the concept, too.

Giving students the message that ‘It’s OK if you’re not good at--insert ‘intelligence’ or ‘learning style’ here--you can still be good at--insert whatever here--can lead students to give up on cultivating key learning skills that can be developed, to an extent, in everyone. By promoting a dominant learning styles mentality, we are actually limiting students with self-fulfilling prophecies despite the best intentions.

A short thought experiment reveals the fundamental problem with the learning styles myth. Imagine a young surgeon being told he’s a reading/writing learner. Taking the idea to heart, she skips lectures, shuns anatomy charts, and doesn’t bother practicing on cadavers. But don’t worry, she says as the anesthesiologist puts you under, they were excellent books.

A seminal analysis reviewed the literature on learning styles and found a wide array of papers discussing the theory but few studies testing the idea through experimentation. Those that did found no supporting evidence that learning was enhanced by a slavish dedication to a student’s learning style.

Why then does the learning styles myth survive despite the evidence? Like all neuromyths, it tells us something we want to believe. The learning styles myth serves a function similar to personality tests, horoscopes, and Cosmo quizzes. That is, it provides a sense of identity, allows us to simplify complexities, and tells us something about our favorite subject (ourselves!). People prefer brain-based accounts of behavior, and they like to categorize people into types. Learning styles allow people to do both of those things.”

It may also tie into common misconceptions of success.

Success is complicated. It requires the right mixture of education, resources, skill, and luck. But as David Epstein notes in his book Range, we tend to streamline this equation into specialization equals success.

The earlier we learn who we are and dedicate ourselves to that path, the thought goes, the greater our chances to succeed. Our cultural obsession with the likes of Tiger Woods, Mark Zuckerberg, and legions of chess prodigies bears this out. To get a head start on success, specialize early and to the exclusion of all else.

But while specialization has its place, Epstein argues, that obsession pollutes the principles that research shows help us learn. Those being: Engage with subjects in as many material ways as possible. Read, converse, seek out examples, get hands-on, and experiment. While we may have preferences, we should also challenge ourselves to try new methods and re-engage with less-favored ones. 

The Importance of Curiosity and Persistence

This week's article summary is The SEL Skills That Matter Most for Academic Success: Curiosity and Persistence.

Teachers who work in elementary and middle school have always known that social-emotional skills support academic development. High school teachers, on the other hand, are often so focused on the content of their discipline that student social-emotional concerns take a back seat in their classrooms. 

I’m not sure this recent international survey that finds strong correlation between classroom emphasis on social-emotional skill and habit development and academic achievement and success will lead to curricular and pedagogical change in high schools, which historically have been so slow to change. Yet one positive result of the Covid pandemic is high schools have started to recognize that many teens today struggle emotionally and psychologically and need the support and guidance from their teachers.

Elementary teachers  have always known that attention to social-emotional health and safety precedes academic focus and development. 

I like to talk about student outcomes of a Trinity education as the 4 Cs: Cognition (academics), Character, Curiosity, Confidence. 3 of the 4 focus on the social-emotional domain. The international survey referenced in the article categorized social-emotional qualities into 5 areas: Task Performance, Emotional Regulation, Collaboration, Open-Mindedness, Engagement with Others. All these areas are central to what we do in shaping our students foundation needed for future success.

I am hopeful that through our efforts, Trinity alums have the secure sense of self to weather the uncertainties of the past year and a half and to thrive not just survive in high school.

Joe

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Want students to succeed in math and reading? Nurture their curiosity and persistence.

Across 11 countries, those two skills are the most closely linked to better academic performance for both 10- and 15-year-olds, according to the first international survey of social-emotional skills. The study analyzed the way social-emotional skills affected students’ performance. Students in a wide array of educational systems and learning contexts showed that the development of social skills ranging from trust and creativity to assertiveness could boost students’ performance in core academic subjects.

“Some people still see this as opposing ends of the spectrum, you have the academic development and the social-emotional development. And some even think if you focus too much on social-emotional skills, you take something away, [such as] mathematics academic time,” said Andreas Schleicher, the director for education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which conducted the study. “Actually what our research shows is that they are two sides of the same coin, and actually quite closely connected.”

The OECD, which administers the global Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), analyzed the social-emotional development of more than 3,000 students from different countries.

The group looked at five key areas:

• Task performance (such as persistence, and self-control)
• Emotional regulation (such as optimism and reaction to stress)
• Collaboration (like empathy and trust)
• Open-mindedness (such as tolerance, curiosity, and creativity)
• Engagement with others (such as assertiveness and sociability)

The OECD found curiosity and persistence were the strongest predictors of academic success in both math and reading for both children and teenagers.

One of the most surprising findings to the OECD was that across countries and socioeconomic backgrounds, 15-year-olds showed lower social-emotional skills than 10-year-olds did. 

Surveys from students, teachers, and parents all showed lower social skills among teenagers beyond normal adolescent self-consciousness. The skills gap was particularly large for things like optimism, trust, energy and sociability, and the OECD found girls had bigger drops than boys across most of the skills.

“Ask yourself, what are we doing as parents, as schools, as education systems to help young people through this difficult period of adolescence. It’s something that I think we should take to heart, that there is a period in their lives where we should redouble our efforts,” Schleicher said.

That is particularly crucial at a time when many teenagers have faced social isolation and anxiety from the ongoing pandemic. “We know that the experience of trauma impacts development and learning and a host of other outcomes,” Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a psychology chair of social and emotional learning at the University of Chicago. “I don’t think we can really think about outcomes for young people without a trauma lens ... and how we as a society nurture and work to reduce the impact of trauma on young people.”

Yet educators point out that social-emotional learning programs, which in the US are often targeted for younger students, can be a poor fit for more world-weary adolescents.

 

Engagement, Creativity, and Fun in the Classroom

This week's article summary is I Teach Escape Room Design to Elementary Students and the Class Is a Literal Game Changer.

I was initially drawn to the article by its intriguing title but then found the content an apt reminder of what we at Trinity provide daily for our students that is sadly lacking in most other schools that, as the author describes, are ‘test-centric.’

As most of you know, children become disengaged from school as early as third grade, just as their enthusiasm for learning and innate curiosity begin to wane, skill and content demands in schools escalate, and high-stakes test result become the standard measure of success.

The author, a fifth grade teacher in a Rhode Island charter school, re-engaged her students by challenging them to design and create their own digital escape room game. While she set parameters and guided her students as needed, she gave them the latitude to be imaginative and exploratory. The kids saw the real-life use in what they had previously viewed as boring discipline-specific skills in math, humanities, science, and art. They worked collaboratively, solved problems and disputes among themselves, and worked harder on their escape room than their ‘regular’ school work. They were excited and had fun as they learned, applied, and demonstrated.

Isn’t that the way school should always be?

The author’s plight is that her escape room activity is a one-time, stand-alone rarity in her school because it measures success via standardized tests. And as we all know, high-stakes test preparations is often tedious and boring and they tests don’t measure creativity or engagement.

As I read the article, I took pride that at Trinity escape-room experiences are the daily norm, not the exception.

Our mantra is ‘We cherish childhood as we simultaneously prepare our student for the future.’ Sadly, most schools don’t see the interconnection between cherish and prepare and that by cherishing childhood schools can maintain student interest, excitement, engagement, and motivation, which in turn leads to better learning.  

I know we can all sometimes take for granted the mission, philosophy, culture, and the what and how we teach at Trinity, yet let’s always be thankful for our continuous efforts to make learning meaningful and fun for our kids.

Enjoy the fun-filled weekend: three Braves World Series games, Georgia-Florida football, and Halloween! 

Joe

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“Ms. Burt, I hate school.”

Gianna, a student in my fifth grade history class, confided in me during a lunch break. Her frustration did not surprise me; we were midway through the first full pandemic school year. Our charter school had lurched between online and hybrid formats more times than I could count. And given the combination of stressful COVID safety procedures, endless technical challenges, and limits on social interactions, I knew that many students were fed up.

“Why do you hate school, Gianna?” I asked, expecting her to list the COVID-imposed challenges. To my surprise, her complaint was not about pandemic learning. Here’s what she said: “School is a waste of my time. We are expected to listen to whatever the teacher thinks is important and then spit it back out. I should be writing my novel or working on a new play instead.”

I knew I was supposed to respond with the following: “Even if there are classes you don’t like, these lessons will help you in the future. You are learning foundational skills that will give you the freedom to choose independent projects in high school and beyond.” But I couldn’t bring my mouth to form words I didn’t believe.

Teaching amid a storm of global disasters — a pandemic, an economic recession, a racial reckoning, and an escalating climate emergency — I felt cynical about how I was supposed to teach, test, and talk to students. I feared that the testing-centric curriculum my school enforced caused students like Gianna to disengage and left them unprepared for the global challenges that will shape their lives. So, I told Gianna the truth: She deserved better. “You have more creativity and perception than this school allows,” I said.

When I was asked a few months later to teach a two-week class of my own design, I jumped at the chance to offer students creative opportunities lacking from their core classes. As a COVID hobby, I had taken up designing escape room games. In these multiplayer, collaborative games, participants work through a series of puzzles and riddles to escape a situation they have been trapped in by a fictional villain. I had been itching to help students create their own escape games, but I knew it would be a challenge. As it was hard for me to create engaging, solvable, and connected puzzles, I knew it would be even more difficult for my young students.

The drive and quick learning I saw in the class surpassed my expectations. On the first day of our virtual class, students worked together to navigate an online escape room. The multi-part puzzles encouraged quick cooperation. The time challenge built into the escape game stood in stark relief to other timed assignments that provoked groans of dread. In the context of a game, the timer became a thrilling motivator.

During each successive class, students explored a core aspect of game design — story, mechanics, puzzles, aesthetics, and technology — to craft their own digital escape rooms. We also began each session with a “puzzle of the day.” Students solved the puzzle together and then dissected its structure and efficacy.

Student engagement was off the charts. Even kids who disengaged from core classes showed laser focus on their games, working after school to perfect their final projects. The group cheered on each game designer as they presented their finished project. Several parents told me the class had been a highlight of the year for their kids.

It is not a revelation that students learn better in environments where they feel happy and curious. Yet, the challenge of cultivating these spaces remains elusive at many schools. In schools like mine that fall short on academic benchmarks, student creativity is typically a secondary concern. Teachers are pushed to add practice tests, increase homework assignments, and compete with other teachers to achieve the highest test scores.

In my game design course, students tackled grade-level standards — developing their writing skills as they composed game narratives and embracing logic and math to create puzzles. They also learned the value of experimentation, revision, and collaboration.

A recent Gallup study found that in K-12 classes with frequent creative assignments, students are more likely to engage in problem-solving, demonstrate critical thinking, make connections between subjects, and retain key concepts across units. If schools accept the research that creativity ignites learning, they must center hands-on, student-led projects in classes of all disciplines.

As schools grapple with making up for the so-called “learning losses” of the COVID era, I am disheartened to see teachers pushed away from creative projects. Instead, they are pressured to cram in extra review units, use repetitive teaching tactics, and tighten disciplinary rules.

This is a moment to transform how we teach. Educators must listen to students like Gianna, who know that they deserve better than stringent, rote lessons. We must reimagine the classroom as a space for experimentation, invention, and play. Integrating projects like escape rooms and other design challenges into core classes can boost student engagement and foster deeper learning. Most importantly, by championing creative problem-solving skills in the classroom, we better prepare young people to imagine solutions to the crises they will inherit.

The Preschool Debate: Academics Versus Play

 This week's article summary is We Mustn't Make Preschool Less Fun for 4-Year-Olds.

I liked the article for its historical overview of how and why preschools moved to being more ‘academic.’

As we touched on during our SAIS accreditation meeting last week, Trinity is both child centered (we cherish childhood) and academic (we prepare our students for the future), We also know that learning needs to be fun, engaging, and exciting. Particularly for young children play and learning are synonymous: at Trinity, we avoid the either-or/zero-sum extremes of separating academics from play, knowing that all classrooms—from Early Learners to Sixth Grade—are both student centered and teacher guided. Kids are naturally curious yet they also need guidance, explanation, context, and redirection. 

I also liked how the article defines an effective classroom: ‘purposeful instruction that supports deep learning in a playful, engaging, and fun way.’ To me, this definition needs to extend beyond our elementary years to middle schools, high schools, and colleges, which all too often lack play, engagement, and fun.

Think about the best teachers you had when you were a student. More than likely they made learning interesting and fun; held you to high standards; empowered you to think, problem solve, and make--and learn from--mistakes; and provided guidance and support when you needed it. They also valued you as a unique individual and you were known and respected in their classroom.

Although this article pertains to the preschool years in particular, it contains sage advice for all classrooms and teachers!

 Joe

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Which kind of preschool is more beneficial for young children: academic or play-based?  

Recent research has breathed new life into a debate that has been around for decades.

For many parents worried that children are being pushed into structured learning too early, there’s immediate concern when the word academics is associated with preschool. Children need to have fun, be creative and make their own choices, they say. 

To them, the term ‘academics’ connotes flashcards and a rigid, constrained environment. It’s the opposite of letting kids be kids and enjoying a childhood that will soon enough confront homework, lectures, testing, and sitting in desks all day.

Yet many of the parents who object to academic preschool are engaging in the very activities with their own children that are effective in laying the foundation for learning. They introduce numbers to their toddlers, counting fingers and toes, read to them and engage in conversations that are helping them develop the vocabulary they need to be good readers, point out letters on signs, and play games like chutes and ladders that teach counting.

What we know about teaching and learning has evolved to provide a research-based alternative that can satisfy people on both sides of the debate: purposeful instruction that supports deep learning in a playful, engaging, and fun way. 

But engaging in purposeful playful instruction with a group of children requires a great deal of skill – much more than either just letting kids play or giving them worksheets.

The question we should be asking is not either/or, but rather what will it take to bring about a substantial evolution in practice?

In the 1960s, policymakers and educators became concerned about the substantial gap of more than a year in school readiness between children living in poverty and their more affluent peers. Preschool learning became an issue of equity, and the federal government responded by creating Head Start to address the school-readiness gap. Additional pressure on preschools to prepare children academically came from K–12 accountability policies — George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, morphing into Every Student Succeeds Act under Barack Obama.

Throughout these changes, the play vs. academics debate persisted, with proponents on both sides voicing strong opinions. Those who dismissed exclusively play-based learning cited concerns about the school readiness gap, and pointed to research showing that direct instruction proved most effective in promoting basic math and reading skills.

Resistance to an academic focus came from two central concerns: that the focus on academic learning would crowd out attention to children’s social-emotional development, and that stress over academic outcomes or performance would squelch children’s natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.

Consider the following activity that I saw unfold in a classroom of 4 year olds:

The teacher maps a 6’ x 10’ grid on a shower curtain, which she spreads on the floor. She asks the children to take off one shoe and sort all of the shoes into six piles — sandals, slip-ons, shoes with laces, etc. Then, in the bottom row of the grid, they place one shoe from each pile in its own square, followed by the rest of the shoes from that category, one each in the squares above the first shoe. After the children count the number of shoes in each column, the teacher asks them what they notice, and the children discuss which columns are longer and shorter and which categories have the most and the fewest shoes. She follows up with questions: Are there any categories that have the same number of shoes? How many more sandals than slip-ons are there?

For the children, this is a game; they do not know they are experiencing instruction. The teacher, however, planned the lesson to help children develop particular math skills, including categorization, counting, graphing, and measurement.

In addition to math, the children are developing social skills — negotiating the shoe classification system, collaborating in creating the columns of shoes and learning to take turns to answer the teacher’s questions.

Young children need to be free to choose and explore on their own. But they also possess a natural curiosity and capacity to learn that, research shows, a skilled educator can harness.

They can learn a great deal about math, literacy, and science. Carefully planned activities with clear learning goals and a developmental progression can nurture young children’s enthusiasm and motivation for learning.

Since research confirms that these well-crafted and playful learning experiences help children develop important and foundational skills and understandings, why aren’t they more common in preschool settings?

One reason is that few teachers are provided with the training and support they need to plan and execute these activities, especially in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Appropriate and effective learning experiences for young children require preschool teachers to master the material they are teaching and know how to plan activities that will help grow the skills of children with varying learning styles and levels of understanding.

Teachers also need to know how to provide an emotionally secure social context and support the development of self-regulation and social skills while promoting academic skills.

We need to move the conversation beyond play versus academic preschool, and focus on the kind of playful learning researchers have shown contributes to young children’s academic skills without undermining their motivation to learn.

To do this we will need to invest in training and supporting the teachers we expect to implement this demanding approach to teaching.

Social-Emotional Support Beyond The Elementary Years

This week's article summary is Middle and High School Students Need Social-Emotional Learning Too But Are They Getting It? 

I feel very lucky to have attended a small (80 kids in my senior class) independent-private school for middle and high school. Even though the school was located in the middle of Long Island’s Gold Coast where opulence and conspicuous consumption were the norms (hence the reason F. Scott Fitzgerald set The Great Gatsby there), the values the school imparted on me were humility, moderation, and simplicity. Academics were important yet teachers also equally cared about their students’ character development. Who I am today (my sense of self, how I treat others, etc.) was significantly shaped by my middle and high school years. As we all know, our teen years require support and guidance beyond academics.

Next Tuesday is our first Admission Open House. Brad talks about how Trinity cherishes the wonder and innocence of childhood and then I follow by talking about how we prepare our kids for future. I cover a strong academic foundation (literacy, numeracy, well-rounded experiences through specials classes) but I spend just as much time discussing how we develop our students’ character: their confident but not entitled sense of self and their sincere care and concern for others.

Focus on the whole child (cognition, character, confidence, curiosity) is a given in most elementary schools, yet too often is lacking in middle and high schools. And as the article points out, adolescents need social-emotional support and guidance today more than ever. The limits of in-person interaction due to Covid is certainly a factor as is the ubiquity of social media and the expectation that kids need to be perfect to get and stay ahead of their peers.

There’s some optimism in the article as middle and high schools begin to devote more time to the social-emotional needs of their students although it takes a long time to effect change middle and high school cultures that are so different from us in elementary school. We do our part in shaping a solid foundation in our students, yet our graduates are still works in progress and need advice, guidance, role modeling, and monitoring.

Joe

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 In the secondary school years, students are grappling with some big questions: Who are they? How do they fit into the world? How do they form healthy relationships? These questions grow to a crescendo in high school where students face another daunting query: What will they do with themselves once they graduate?

Even in normal times, the journey through grades 6-12 can be fraught for students, but the pandemic has made it especially complicated as many are struggling with more anxiety, depression, grief, uncertainty, and loneliness. 

That’s why experts in social-emotional learning and child development say the secondary school years are a crucial time to focus on teaching skills, such as responsible decision-making, emotional management, and nurturing relationships.

But the older students get, the less schools have traditionally emphasized social-emotional learning.

“Not that I don’t think that schools think it’s important, it’s just where are you going to find the time and who’s going to teach it when they’re focused on different academic subjects?” said Tia Kim, from the Committee for Children, a nonprofit that promotes social-emotional learning and student well-being. “In our experience, that’s what we’ve heard—where logistically are you going to fit it in?”

It’s harder to find time to include explicit social-emotional lessons in a secondary school schedule, she said, where students are changing classes and teachers every hour. When schools do carve out the space to teach social and emotional skills, it is often during a specific class period such as advisory or English.

There is also more emphasis—or pressure—in secondary schools to focus on academics, said Kim, leaving educators to feel like they don’t have the time to teach social and emotional skills. 

Education Week has found that schools tended to emphasize social-emotional learning much more in the early grades and less so as students went on to middle school and high school.

Those attitudes may be beginning to shift.

New polling finds that 53% of district leaders say that a lot of focus is placed on social-emotional learning for students in grades 9-12, and 56% said the same for grades 6-8. Those figures are nearly on par with the 58% of district leaders who indicated a lot of focus was placed on SEL for grades 1-3.

In early 2020, when Education Week last put this question to district leaders, 38% said schools in their district placed a lot of emphasis on social and emotional learning in middle school and 31% said the same for high school.

COVID-19 has brought with it an overall rise in interest among educators in investing more in building students’ social and emotional skills to better equip them to handle the pandemic’s unique challenges.

From the student’s perspective, how are schools doing when it comes to teaching social and emotional skills? The EdWeek Research Center put several questions to a representative sample of middle and high school students at the beginning of this school year to get at whether students felt they were being taught important social and emotional skills, and whether their schools provided the support students needed to build relationships and sort out their identities. 

The feedback was mixed. A little under a third of students said their school had not provided them with the help or support they feel they needed over the course of the pandemic to improve on a range of skills central to social and emotional learning, such as making responsible decisions, establishing positive relationships, and managing emotions. Many students indicated they could use more guidance in answering some of the big questions around identity. When asked if adults at their school were helping them figure out their identity—who they are, what they want to be, where they belong, and what they believe—a little less than a quarter of students said they completely agreed with the statement. Nearly half said they partly agreed.

There is no question that the pandemic has been hard on students’ social and emotional well-being. Forty-four percent of middle and high school students reported in the survey that their level of social anxiety and loneliness has gone up. Teachers reported in another survey that their students struggled more with procrastination and class participation than they did a year before and that many of their students were more often distracted by anxieties, worries, and fears during class.

But things were hard for adolescents and teens even before the pandemic, said R. Keeth Matheny, who developed a popular SEL program for his school. He said the demands on teens’ and tweens’ social and emotional skills have changed drastically from when he and many other educators were young—in large part because of social media.

“If you made a mistake, it was a mistake, and people didn’t know and define you for the next 20 years based on that,” Matheny said. “Being a teenager today has lots of big challenges with it—not just the emotional part of being a teenager and impulsivity of being a teenager. When you are a teen, you do make mistakes and say and do things that you then later think back on and go ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ But all of the sudden now, those things are recorded for posterity.”

The adolescent years are a time when students are pushing boundaries and trying to work out who they are, he said, and they need more guidance on how to make responsible decisions and grow into their identity. Matheny now runs SEL Launch Pad, a consultancy that helps schools institute SEL programs. Because of his experience with high school students, many of his clients include secondary schools.

“While I do believe that work at younger grades can be very impactful, … I also think the teenage years are very tumultuous with big emotions and novel situations and extreme social pressure,” he said. “We’re seeing our teenagers and tweenagers have significant mental health challenges. And this work can be such a powerful support in the teenage years, whether we’re talking about emotional management or self-advocacy or self-awareness or relationship skills.”

Traditional Versus Progressive Teaching

This week's article summary is The 'How' and 'Why' of Teaching. It’s a longer summary than usual, so I’m sending it out early in case you want to print it and read it over the holiday weekend when you have some spare time.

I like the article for its explanation of the two extremes of education: the more traditional view of students as empty vessels that need to be filled with content knowledge contrasted with the more progressive, child-focused belief that children are innate learners and it’s our (school, teacher, parent) responsibility to engage, inspire, and motivate them to want to continue to learn.

As you’ll see from the article, the traditionalists under the name of ‘cognitive science’ stress the importance of knowledge acquisition as the key to future success, particularly student performance on high-stakes tests. My quibble with these cognitive scientists is they focus exclusively on effective ways to memorize material so it can be stored in long-term memory. For them, learning is a mechanical, one-size-fits-all, rote process where kids receive material from teachers and then commit it to memory. It’s all science and no art, and we teachers know there’s a much art and nuance to great teaching.

We are fortunate that Trinity being elementary-only doesn’t have to deal very often with the above cognitive science arguments that high schools do where content and teacher-centric classrooms rule. When you get to the article’s paragraphs on child-centered teaching, you’ll be in more familiar territory with words and terms like ‘problem solving, internal motivation, process of learning, individuality, student engagement, and play.’

I think It’s important to be familiar with education beliefs different from ours. We can even learn from them. I like reading Daniel Willingham and Daisy Christodoulou (two authors mentioned in the article) and even have some of their books in my office. I do agree with cognitive scientists that content knowledge is important as research consistently shows that background knowledge significantly supports better reading comprehension. Yet it's their pedagogy (the how of teaching) that I take exception with. We at Trinity see the importance of relevance, meaningfulness, and engagement as critical needs for students in and out of the classroom. When the article described how students learn at Michaela Community School I was deeply saddened and engaged. Cognitive science-based teaching is like an old black and white movie, while great teaching is technicolor. 

As we reach the quarter mark of the school year, huge thanks to all of you for an exemplary first eight weeks of the school year despite the continued ups and downs and fits and starts of Covid! Have a restful and enjoyable long Fall Weekend!

Joe

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Speaking at a National Education Summit last spring, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: ‘We know much more now about what works best: evidence-backed, traditional teacher-led lessons with children seated facing the expert at the front of the class are powerful tools for enabling a structured learning environment where everyone flourishes.’  

But hang on a moment. Many parents, educators and psychologists across the country responded to Williamson’s speech with a ‘huh?’ 

What is this evidence he’s talking about? How does it square with the research showing how important play and motivation is for learning? Where did he get that confidence about the same thing working for everyone, when any teacher knows that each child is different and that teaching a class of children rarely results in them all learning the same thing?

Williamson is referring to a school of thought which has gained traction in recent years, that of education based on ‘cognitive science’. 

Advocates such as Daniel Willingham (Why Don’t Students Like School?), Daisy Christodoulou (Seven Myths about Education) and Katharine Birbalsingh (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers) argue that the research illustrates progressive educational techniques don’t work. 

By progressive techniques they mean a wide range of methods, including the idea that schools should teach transferable skills (Christodoulou), that teachers should make an effort to make their lessons engaging and interesting to children (Birbalsingh), or that children should be encouraged to think critically and solve problems from early on (Willingham).  

From this perspective, progressive techniques are responsible for most of the educational ills of the world, and the whole thing could be put right if we just applied the science. Their approach is simple: An expert teacher instructs, children listen, repeat and learn. 

There’s an impressive body of research to back them up. So much so that it’s tough for your average parent or teacher to disagree. The studies are real, the findings are robust. Yet within that narrative there are some leaps of logic which may explain the disconnect between the ‘evidence-backed’ certainty and the day-to-day experience of most children and teachers. The research they cite is from cognitive psychology, and it looks at how humans acquire knowledge and skills. 

Cognitive scientists such as Daniel Willingham say that it is now indisputable that ‘thinking well requires knowing facts’. His book explains his model of how the brain works, which, when applied to schools and children results in the expert at the front, children as the audience model of education. This model is essentially an analysis of the process by which people move from being novices to experts. Willingham’s book explains in detail how experts have more information stored in their long-term memories, enabling them to ‘chunk’ their knowledge and therefore use their working memory capacity efficiently and creatively. 

The qualitative difference in the thinking between experts and novices is what leads to the claim that in order to ‘think well’, we first require factual knowledge. And when applied to children, this means that the central task of education becomes getting as much knowledge as possible into children by the most efficient means.   

Or as Christodoulou puts it, schools should focus on ‘knowledge accumulation’. She says this is essential before children can engage in what she calls ‘sophisticated higher-order responses’. Those sophisticated higher-order responses include critical thinking, hypothesis testing, and problem solving. 

Once it’s agreed that knowledge accumulation is the aim, the next step is how to achieve that. Here, another set of research findings come in. This is research into memory, and how information is best committed to memory. If your desired outcome is specific information committed to long term memory, repetition and practice over an extended period of time are what works. Many studies back this up. It doesn’t matter too much whether a person understands what they are meant to be remembering in this model, as it’s the retention of information which is important.  

So, the guiding principles are these. Experts think in a more sophisticated way than novices, and the difference between a novice and an expert is the amount of information stored in their long-term memory. Therefore, in order to turn children into people capable of sophisticated thinking we must first make sure they have lots of information stored in their long-term memory, and the sophisticated thinking will follow. Therefore, there is no point in wasting time at school in activities which create opportunities for novice children to use higher order thinking skills… it’s more efficient to spend the time on knowledge acquisition. 

Birbalsingh has founded a school, Michaela Community School, which takes these ideas as their founding principles. Teachers at Michaela focus on teaching content, students are expected to focus on retaining the information. There is no variation in teaching methods across the school, and there is no differentiation between pupils. If a child isn’t learning, that is their responsibility, and if they don’t comply precisely with expectations, they are punished. Teachers at Michaela, as they explain in their book, give detentions and demerits for infractions such as slouching at your desk, and there are no exceptions for difficult circumstances. From their perspective, those children who have experienced the most adversity have the highest needs for strict rules and so difficult home situations or a trauma history aren’t reasons for non-compliance. Michaela gets results. Children don’t have much other choice – if they don’t comply, they will quickly find themselves put under intense pressure to do so. Parents are expected to buy into the model too, and so the children are surrounded with the same ethos.    

So if standardized test results are the final benchmark of education, all that really matters, then perhaps the Education Secretary is right? 

Those of us who work with children might want more out of education, however. We might want to look at what children learn about themselves and their place in the world, and we might want to know how being so strictly controlled at school affects children’s wellbeing and ability to cope when they get into the less structured environment of university or work – one where intrinsic motivation matters.    

For this model of learning is all about how to get knowledge and skills into children. The science is procedural and mechanistic. Any difficulties in education are reduced to how can we persuade children to comply with the regime of instruction, practice and repetition. Educational philosophy is completely missing from their approach. The question of why children might learn goes unmentioned, and the question of what they will learn is answered again by ‘the science’.  

What’s missing in this Brave New World vision of well-behaved children sitting in rows absorbing knowledge? Well, remember that most of the research we’ve encountered is with adult experts, who have chosen to learn about something because they are highly motivated. Their drive to practice and read and learn comes from within. I’ve seen this process in action with my own children with a rather different pursuit – Minecraft. I did not set out to create Minecraft experts and I suspect that if I had, they would not have been interested. No direct instruction was required for them to acquire expertise: playing Minecraft.

The issue of motivation is a serious one. Children do not typically come to the school because they are fascinated by phonics or fractions. They learn because an adult somewhere has decided that this is what they should be learning. This means that most schools, as with Michaela, have to set up a complicated system of incentives and punishments in order to persuade children to comply with their demands, or they have to try to engage children on their own terms, perhaps by giving them more choices or a chance learn things they are interested in – so called ‘progressive techniques’. 

External motivation is less effective for learning than internally driven motivation, and affects the quality of learning. Low quality motivation typically shows itself through behavior, with children being disruptive or refusing. Schools then have to resort to ever more extreme behavioral regimes, and even then, not all children will comply. 

Beyond that motivation issue, there are other ways to think about learning. The cognitive model is only one of many. There is an extensive body of research which shows how, from a very early age, children are engaged as active agents in their learning and learn through play. They test hypotheses, problem solve, and come up with creative solutions. Alison Gopnik calls this the ‘child as scientist’ theory of learning, and anyone who has spent time with a young child will have seen it in action. They mix things together, they experiment with floating and sinking, they ask purposeful questions. 

It’s hard to square observations of young children learning with the idea that higher order thinking is impossible without extensive background knowledge. They are novices in every way, and yet their observations and experiments are frequently more creative and insightful than the adults around them. On the other hand, their ability to remain seated and listening to an expert is seriously lacking when compared to most adults, and so it seems perverse to insist on a method of learning which plays to children’s weaknesses rather than their strengths. 

To Gopnik, and to most developmental psychologists, learning is best understood as an interaction between what a child already knows, and what they experience around them.  Direct instruction can actually interfere with this, as the research shows that when children are told what to do with a toy they imitate the adult, whereas without direct instruction they explore freely and in the process discover more about the toy. 

The child is not an empty vessel, to be filled with expert knowledge, but an agent who acts upon the world around them. As they explore the world through play, they acquire higher order skills and knowledge – but the knowledge they acquire is not necessarily the same as the next child along. 

One child may learn all about the properties of mud and water, whilst another learns about tractors and diggers. It doesn’t really matter, because much of what they are learning is how to learn. This is constructivism. Knowledge is constructed by the child, based on what interests them, what they know already, and what experiences they have available to them.  

From this perspective, no two children will learn the same things from their experiences and so standardized curriculums can never guarantee standard results. But from this standpoint, it is not simply knowledge acquisition which an education should focus on, but rather the development of the child as an active learner, a person who sees that their choices matter and that they can have autonomy over their lives. These are the transferable skills.    

If your aim is for all children to learn a specific body of knowledge and retain it, and you are confident that you can motivate children to do so, then direct instruction from an expert with lots of repetition (otherwise known as drilling) may well be effective. 

If your aim is children who can think critically and creatively, and who are developing their potential as active and diverse human beings, then there is no evidence that drilling them will achieve this. 

Teaching Accountability

This week's article summary is How to Teach Kids the Importance of Accountability.

At our back-to-school TTT, I stressed to our students how important responsibility is to being a contributing community member. 

Last week’s article summary focused on resilience, which to me is also an aspect of responsibility: things don’t always work out the way we plan and hope; hence when facing hardships, we need to keep a positive frame of mind, regroup, re-strategize, and try again.

Like resilience, accountability develops over time with much practice as well as guidance and oversight from adults.

While there is nothing novel in the recommendations below, they are reminders of how intentional and patient parents and teachers need to be in order to develop accountability in our children.

Joe

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We’re living in a time and place in which it often seems the people in charge have no sense of accountability. Adults don’t seem to understand the consequences of their actions and refuse to acknowledge when they’ve made mistakes. And as always, our children are watching. So perhaps now, more than ever, is the time for parents to focus on teaching kids about accountability.

Accountability is a way to take responsibility for actions you’re in charge of. By teaching kids personal accountability, you’re teaching them that mistakes happen and when those mistakes happen, it’s important to learn to fix or grow from them.

Here are some ways parents and teachers can create a culture of accountability.

Start small: Accountability can start when kids are toddlers, e.g., “We can play with the puzzle but when we’re all done, we need to clean it up.” Too often parents resort to just cleaning it up themselves because it’s faster and easier that way. But it’s better to provide opportunities for kids to take ownership of their own little responsibilities. When you start early, you start setting the foundation that it’s important to be accountable.

Give more responsibilities: As kids get older, you can give them more things to be responsible for. The key is to make sure the tasks are developmentally appropriate, such as asking toddlers to pick up their toys and books at the end of the day. For kids that might be a little bit older, it could look like packing your own lunch, packing your own backpack, making your bed, or putting all of your dirty clothes in the hamper. Kids begin to understand that they do have responsibilities, and the choices they make ultimately have consequences. It also teaches them free will and how to be responsible citizens of society ― it’s ‘I do have a part in what happens in the world.

Teach them about consequences: Accountability means taking ownership of the decisions and the choices you make and accepting whatever consequences those choices come with. It’s important for every young child to learn so that they understand cause and effect and how the choices they make have consequences, positive or negative. There are many everyday opportunities for kids to make decisions or take actions and then experience the natural consequences of those choices. For example, don’t fight them if they don’t want to take a coat, but then when they moan about being cold or wet, simply explain that that is why you suggested taking a coat in the first instance, but that it was their decision not to bother. Perhaps they might not want to eat their lunch. There’s no need to start an argument or fight about it, but just make it clear there’s nothing else to eat until dinnertime and so if they are hungry, they will have to deal with it. Children should also understand that even when they experience negative consequences resulting from their choices, there’s always an opportunity to make things better or try again next time.

Offer positive reinforcement: Don’t forget praise at all age levels. Parents tend to notice when kids mess up, but when they are doing really well, they ignore it. Catch them being good! Kids should learn that taking responsibility isn’t just about negative consequences, but about positive rewards as well. 

Model accountability: I believe the primary way parents can teach their kids accountability every day is to model these behaviors. Parents can set an example by actively and openly practicing taking accountability for their actions. This can involve things like apologizing when they make mistakes, acknowledging when their behaviors or emotions are more extreme than a situation warrants, or identifying ways to make amends when they hurt others. Children are likely to repeat what they see others doing, so it is important for caregivers to be aware of the lessons kids are learning from them.

Show consistency: Consistency is the most important thing a parent can do while teaching their kids to be accountable ― consistency in how they handle times their child doesn’t take responsibility or creating and following family rules. Teach children to follow a routine, such as waking up, brushing teeth, making the bed, showering, etc. If you teach your child to follow a routine and they don’t follow through, it’s up to the parents to correct that action. In many cases, parents will often set rules but not follow through on the consequences once they set them. This behavior promotes irresponsibility by teaching kids that their behavior is acceptable and they don’t have to accept responsibility.

Discuss the feelings involved: Teaching a kid accountability can also help them learn how to process their feelings in an appropriate way. Everyone gets anxious, upset, angry and so forth. Being accountable involves learning to take charge of your emotions and process them in healthy ways, such as taking deep breaths or talking about how you feel. Encourage them to explore what triggers their feelings and ways they can accept responsibility for those triggers.

Be open-minded: Kids will make mistakes. Parents should take care to self-regulate and not have large emotional displays when their kids struggle with accountability. This can lead their child to be less likely to want to talk about times where accountability is difficult for them. Good mental health comes from correctly taking responsibility for things within their control ― for example, how hard they study for an exam ― while not taking responsibility for things they can’t control, like the disruption to schooling because of COVID, the lockdowns and home schooling. Children often have an egocentric mindset in that they think bad things happening around them are their fault.

Promote their independence: You want to build up an accountability system that eventually doesn’t rely on you. For example, you might want to help them with their organization skills or homework when they are in elementary school, but eventually, you want them to figure out how to check their assignments and organize their desks and rooms without your help. Promoting their independence and sense of accountability also empowers kids to take ownership of their successes and failures. This reduces children blaming other people for things that go wrong and also helps kids feel good about themselves when things do go well, which also builds confidence. Essentially, being accountable builds resiliency.

Raising Resilient Kids

 This week's article summary is Parents Who Raise Resilient Kids Do These Four Things.

The first few article summaries of the year have focused on our goals/outcomes (student emotional intelligence, confidence, resilience) and classroom structures (routines, practices, norms, rules, guidelines). 

The first article summary of the year stated, teachers “are often more comfortable around literacy strategies than around discipline strategies.” The reason for this is student behavior and their inter/intrapersonal skills, attitudes, and habits are harder to quantify than academic areas like numeracy and literacy. 

We all know emotional intelligence (EQ) is just as, if not more, important than IQ, yet we often expect our children and students to naturally and intuitively pick up character habits when in fact parents and teachers need to be just as intentional in instructing, monitoring, reinforcing, and modeling appropriate behavior in our students. 

For me, resilience—the ability to bounce back from missteps and disappointments—is an important virtue for success and happiness. Like most things, some of us are more naturally inclined to being gritty while others need to be guided and supported. Nevertheless, we all need opportunities to practice and further develop and hone the habit and skill of resilience.

Joe 

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The pandemic has highlighted the importance of resilience in the face of external stressors and unpredictable circumstances. But it’s not something you randomly develop — it’s a trait that parents can nurture in children early on to help them become emotionally healthy adults.

Kids aren’t just born resilient — they become so with the support of their parents and teachers.

Resilience is something that all kids learn through experiences, problem-solving, and watching others cope with stressors. Kids aren’t just born resilient, which means they can learn those skills, and parents and teachers have the power to teach kids how to manage stress.

From encouraging autonomy to avoiding the temptation of becoming too involved, here are four things parents and teachers who raise and educate highly resilient kids do differently.

They encourage autonomy: Parents/teachers who raise and educate children with good coping skills and resilience oversee their children and students in a style that builds healthy autonomy and fosters independent problem-solving skills.  Within an environment that encourages independent decision-making (in safe, age-appropriate ways), children start feeling more comfortable and capable of managing what life throws at them. It’s not about letting kids do what they want at all times, but involving them in decisions so they can feel more in touch with their inner guidance, commitment, and responsible, according to Advanced Psychology.

They help their kids develop coping skills: Stress-inoculated kids have parents/teachers who emphasize coping skills instead of coddling them when something doesn’t go their way. Explain to them that life isn’t perfect, that there will be times when you will be uncomfortable. Kids will adapt and learn to become more self-reliant and self-aware, which are skills associated with higher degrees of confidence, happiness, and overall wellness. While it’s difficult to see your children/students experience setbacks or uncomfortable emotions, it’s critical not to try to immediately fix the situation for them or brush it off, but to allow them to process their emotional state and develop the trust they can withstand and adapt to moments of discomfort. As a result, kids grow up to become resilient adults who are happier and see stressors in a more positive light — and are less likely to feel the effects of stress.

They don’t helicopter their children: if you want to raise mentally strong kids, it’s super important not to become a helicopter parent and to avoid jumping in every time something happens that makes a child uncomfortable or upset. Instead, spend time objectively debriefing what went wrong, focusing on solutions and giving the child positive reinforcement for how they coped. 

They foster self-awareness: Self-awareness is not only the cornerstone of resilience but also of lifelong mental health and wellness. When we become self-aware, our brain and body learn to self-regulate as we connect to our thoughts, sensations, and emotions. The beauty of self-awareness is that when you know yourself better, you can feel more confident making decisions as well as saying no to things that don’t feel right. So make sure you’re asking thought-provoking questions that will help your kids turn inwards and gain a deeper understanding of their unique selves.

Do Masks Stunt Social-Emotional Growth?

This week's article summary is Do Masks Stunt Students' Social-Emotional Growth? 

As we all know, ‘to mask or not to mask’ remains a controversial topic in schools.

As Nurse Debbie constantly reminds us, while there are many practices we all need to follow to help limit Covid’s spread, the most important are to get vaccinated and to wear masks when around others.

One reason offered from those who oppose mask requirements in schools is they detract from students’ social emotional growth. 

As you’ll see from the interview below from the Senior Director at CASEL, there is little to no research that’s been done on this question. Yet as you’ll also read, kids wearing masks have displayed remarkable adaptability over the past 18 months and have shown growth in both their academic and social-emotional development.

So for Trinity,  if masking ensures that kids can be at school learning collaboratively with their peers and developing the skills and habits of a responsible, respectful member of a community, then masks are a minor inconvenience that helps us achieve our greater school goals for our children.

Joe

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While many students wore face masks in school last year, the issue has become incredibly heated and polarized in some regions this year. One concern that has risen out of the debates over whether children and teachers should be wearing masks in schools is whether the practice inhibits the development of social and emotional skills. But with the surge of the Delta variant, the need to protect students and school staff from infection, illness, and death is paramount. After vaccines, universal masking is the most effective way to prevent the spread of COVID, public health and medical experts say.

At the same time, social-emotional learning is a top priority for educators right now, as many see it as vital to helping students cope with the anxiety and disruptions caused by the pandemic. So, does that strip of cloth covering the nose and mouth and muffling the voice get in the way of students learning about emotions? How do masks impact teachers’ ability to get a read on how their students are feeling?

Education Week put these questions and more to Justina Schlund, the senior director of content and field learning at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL. This conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

How could masks affect students’ social and emotional development: I’m not aware of any research that shows that masks have specific or meaningful social-emotional detriment to students’ development. I think, logically, part of social-emotional learning requires being able to understand other people’s emotions, and because masks cover part of the face, they probably in some ways obscure what we can see on someone else’s face in terms of their emotions, in terms of social cues that we might be responding to. But I think the question, whether this has a negative impact on their social-emotional development is a different question than, does it make it more difficult for me to see your emotion in the moment? The past year has shown us that there are lots of challenges with social-emotional connection and learning through virtual platforms. One of the things that masks allow a lot of schools and districts to do is resume in-person learning where they have more opportunities for in-person SEL or in-person relationship building that we know are also important for students.

Which is better? Is in-person and masks better than out-of-class and virtual: It is pretty agreed-upon by most of the experts in the field that in-person learning is going to be better for most students. And so the degree to which we’re able to continue that is beneficial for students, socially, emotionally, and academically. At the same time, there are lots of ways, regardless of if you’re in person or virtual, with masks or without masks, to promote students’ social-emotional learning. 

A masked teacher facing a room of masked students wants to continue imparting social-emotional skills. What are some of the workarounds? Is this an opportunity to teach new skills: It’s absolutely an opportunity to teach new skills, beginning with the most basic. We have traditionally relied on a lot of facial expressions to help talk to students about what emotions mean and look like and feel like. This is an opportunity to expand our language and awareness about emotions. Those emotions include facial expressions, and they also include body language, they also include tone of voice, and what people may be saying through their eyes or their eyebrows and helping students to tune into that type of social awareness. We’ve seen in a lot of classrooms the use of pictures and even emojis to do checks with students, to create that time to share how they’re feeling and what their perspectives are. What was critically important before the pandemic but especially now is building a really, really strong sense of community in every classroom. This means making time and space for students to learn about each other on a more personal level, to share their interests with one another, to ask each other questions, to collaborate on projects.

An important component of SEL is good decision making. How could this time offer a lesson in building that skill: We’ve seen this throughout the pandemic. This brought up a lot of conversations in classrooms and homes with students about what does it mean to be a good community member. And what does it mean to make decisions that are responsible and that benefit not just myself, but my family and other people? Whether or not schools are choosing to have masks on right now, it’s opened up a conversation for students to engage in around how can we keep each other safe and healthy. And what factors do I need to weigh to make those types of decisions? What are some of the pros and cons, exactly? And then, how can we all work together to make those healthy decisions that keep our community safe? We often talk about SEL within the school walls, but there’s so much SEL that’s going on at home and in the community as well. Even if students have moments where they’re masked at school, they have so many opportunities to practice facial recognition of emotions and things like that at home with their families, or outside on the playground. We need to think about SEL beyond the confines of school. 

This week's article summary is How to Foster Confidence in Young Children.

As we begin to settle into the routine of school, it’s critical in the first weeks of school that we establish a safe, trusting classroom in which our students can push and challenge themselves and gain self-assurance as they learn and grow.

While confidence ultimately is an intrinsic quality, it needs to be nourished, encouraged, and cultivated externally. 

The article below is intended for parents yet its advice is applicable to the classroom.

Celebrating the process of learning including effort, gently pushing your students beyond their comfort zone, encouraging their independence, and trusting them to make the right decision are all aspects of an effective classroom. 

These first weeks of school set a strong foundation for the remainder of the year and will buoy your students as they gain confidence, one of the outcomes of a Trinity education.

Thank you for all your efforts in making these first days of school so productive and foundational!

Joe

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Here are seven ways to instill self-confidence in your child.

1. Make your help contingent on their self-help: As parents we want to do everything we can to help our children, but at some point, everything does nothing for their development and confidence. This one's hard for me because that parental instinct to "rescue" my daughter kicks in, creating a desire to intervene and help solve her problems. But I've learned that making shortcuts for her only lengthens her road to true self-confidence. And I see the results-- when she tackles something on her own, she walks taller. 

2. Applaud the effort, not just the result: Over the long haul, consistently trying hard builds more confidence than intermittently doing well. That's because in trying hard the child knows they're doing their best, they see progress in some measure, and will define success in smaller steps along the way. These constant micro-wins and knowing that they're giving their full effort add up to sustainable confidence.

3. Don't tell them when you're worried about them: Expressing confidence creates confidence. It's our job as parents to be worried about our kids, but telling them we are is unhelpful (except on things related to their safety or health). When you do, you plant seeds of doubt, not growth. It's up to you to ensure the latter. I've seen the power of the latter many times as a leader. I tell someone who's not so confident that I believe in them and then their performance soars, thus boosting their self-confidence-- a wonderful virtuous cycle.

4. Encourage practice outside of pressure: As an adult, you should practice the way you'll be performing, under simulated conditions of pressure. Not so as a child. The point of practicing for kids is to instill the confident expectation that improvement will follow. You already know you'll get better with practice, kids need to learn this. And children build competence and confidence simultaneously in supportive environments.

5. Let them act their age: In certain areas you might want your child to mature faster. But striving to meet advanced age expectations can reduce confidence. There are two exceptions to this, however. The first is letting the child make as many decisions as possible, even more than their age might dictate (as appropriate). Second, encourage them to excel at their natural talents/advanced skills that by default put them ahead of their age (i.e. don't hold them back in those cases). Both of these exceptions build confidence, not burst it.

6. Expand their circle of challenge: Give your child new challenges, experiences, and responsibilities, and praise them for their courage in taking them on. When they make the inevitable mistakes, help them see those mistakes as a necessary part of the learning process. Share your own stories of failure and improvement, too. And give feedback and suggestions for improvement versus criticism. More often than not, parental criticism reduces the child's self-valuing and motivation.

7. Let them see you succeed at something: They're watching you. So demonstrate some moments of triumph to subtly ingrain, "If mom/dad can do it..." Just remember, don't expect them to do it as well as you or you undermine the point.

Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence

This week's article summary is 5 Questions to Assess Your Emotional Intelligence.

I liked that the article’s focus is on us—Trinity’s faculty/staff—and the importance of how we work in concert and in collaboration with one another. Our community bonding during preplanning sets us up for a great school year!

I also liked the article’s simple five questions we should ask ourselves about how we interact with others. As teachers, these are the same expectations we have for our students as they develop essential social-emotional skills and habits, particularly interpersonal,  needed for success in school and beyond.

Thank you for a wonderful first two days of school! Have a restful weekend!

Joe

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Employees who exhibit emotional intelligence (EQ) improve teamwork, communicate better with team members, and share ideas as well as are open to others' ideas. They are also highly adaptable and adjust easily to change and challenging situations.

In practical terms, employees with high EQ know how to handle unhappy customers, disgruntled co-workers, or managers not pleased with their work.

Is there a good metric for getting started in the right direction toward building up your EQ skills? 

You can start by asking a few look-in-the-mirror questions to help you determine where you measure up against the principles of EQ. Answering each question with a 'yes' will reveal your EQ aptitude.

Do you respond rather than react: High-EQ people typically respond, rather than react, with a more patient, "keep calm" approach. They process a situation, get perspective, listen without judgment, and hold back from reacting head-on.

Do you practice self-control: People with high EQ maintain control over their emotions. Self-control is a learned skill to help you be more present, calmer, and focused during times of high stress. It's a necessary emotional skill with a long-term payoff.

Do you exercise self-awareness: People with high EQ are adept at self-awareness and are able to see both sides of an issue to choose a different, and better, outcome.

Do you adapt well to change: Adaptability is a key hallmark of people with high EQ. They are able to recognize when to stay the course and when it's time for a change. In other words, when one strategy is not working, high-EQ people evaluate and determine a different course of action.

Do you serve the needs of others: Besides focusing on their own success, people with high EQ also maintain a strong desire for wanting to see the people around them succeed.

Getting Consistent with Consequences

Thank you all for an uplifting first week of preplanning.

For me, there’s always a mixture of excitement and nervousness as we begin preplanning and begin to put the finishing touches on all the work and effort needed for a smooth opening of school as we look forward to welcoming our students and their parents back on campus. I always enjoy preplanning (much longer and more formalized here in Atlanta than in other schools I’ve worked in), especially the opportunity for us to learn, grow, collaborate, and socialize together. This year it’s been particularly enjoyable as we’re meeting in-person, not via Zoom or Google Meet!

For those of you new to Trinity, most Fridays during the school year, I send out an educational article that piqued my interest and that I hope provokes thought in you as well.

As we live in fast-paced times, we’ve grown accustomed to the limited characters of Twitter and short video clips of YouTube and TikTok. Hence, I try to edit down the article to its most salient points so it’s a quick read. (If available, I link the full article.)

I try to find articles applicable to early childhood/elementary education in general and Trinity in particular.

I don’t necessarily agree with every article, but I enjoy articles that make me think, ask me to reflect on my educational beliefs, and perhaps even confront my educational biases. As we discussed in our DEI session this morning, our unconscious blindspots need a little cognitive dissonance and our brains need us to practice metacognition!

The school year’s first article summary is Getting Consistent with Consequences.

As you’ll see in the article (which is much longer than what I usually post as there’s so much valuable info in it), student behavior in schools is an age-old challenge. One of the article’s recommendations is for a school to agree on how it will approach, model, reinforce rules, norms, guidelines to help students behave in the moment as they develop vital social-emotional (SEL) skills, habits, and attitudes.

In the MyTrinity page of our website is the Social Emotional Learning Tile and it lays out Trinity’s SEL tenets, in essence best-practices from both Positive Discipline and Responsive Classroom.

The article below provides a comprehensive overview of classroom rules and consequences. I urge you to read and digest the article and discuss with your fellow teachers in your classroom, on your grade, and in your division.

Joe 

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Few topics cause as much angst in schools as consequences for problematic behavior. Colleagues can view the same challenging behavior and have wildly different ideas about an appropriate consequence. Educators can struggle with the proper use and role of consequences in schools even more than with academic issues. Why is getting consequences right so hard?

I'll explore here several ideas about consequences. One thread runs through them all: Using consequences effectively requires taking a nuanced view of disciplinary situations—and that's hard. 

Most of us would prefer consequences to be cut-and-dried. If a student does X, then Y should happen. This perhaps explains the appeal of one-size-fits-all approaches like "three strikes and you're out" or zero-tolerance policies. These systems are comforting because they seem to offer quick, easy solutions. We can feel like we've done something and get back to teaching.

When we step back, however, we realize that the reality of teaching students appropriate behaviors is much more complex. Punishing a student for a misbehavior offers us the illusion that we've held that student accountable, but have we really? 

Let's consider some reasons educators struggle with consequences, and how we might avoid each obstacle and employ consequences more effectively.

Consequences" Means Different Things to Different People

One reason adults in schools often struggle with reaching common ground on consequences is that when we use the term consequences, we're not all talking about the same thing. There are several different types of consequences for problematic behavior, so we should be clear about which type we're discussing or using.

• Natural consequences don't require any adult action or intervention; they simply happen. If Maria doesn't wear a coat to recess on a chilly day, she'll be cold. Natural consequences can be great learning opportunities for students, as long as they're not overly damaging.
• Logical consequences differ from natural ones in that they require adults to implement them. According to Jane Nelsen, effective logical consequences fit four criteria: they must be related to the behavior, respectful of the student, reasonable for the student to carry out, and (whenever possible) revealed in advance so the student knows the potential consequences of their actions ahead of time. These kinds of consequences can be powerful in maintaining calm, safe, and respectful learning environments.
• Punishments are the antithesis of logical consequences. They're often harsh and frequently involve shaming students. They can breed resentment and diminish students' sense of self, often leading to even more disruptive behavior in the future. They can even model bullying, in which people with more power (teachers) impose their will on others (students) through force.

With practice and understanding, educators can gain more consistency and ensure they rely on natural and logical consequences rather than punishments, even in the heat of the moment. 

We Try to Get Consistent with Consequences Before We're Consistent in Beliefs

Many factors go into our personal beliefs about effective discipline. The way we were raised, both at home and in school, is a huge one that often lurks below the surface. Our teacher-preparation programs and internships play a large role in how we view discipline in schools, and even the way we approach problem behaviors as parents can impact how we interact with students. With so many factors influencing how we view discipline and so many various (often conflicting) methods floating around, it's easy to see why approaches can differ greatly from one classroom to the next.

There's an underlying instinct in schools to view discipline the way U.S. society views parenting—you do your thing, I'll do mine, and we stay out of each other's business. Schools often have more success adopting common academic curricula than behavioral ones. Educators seem to be more comfortable being responsible to each other around, say, literacy strategies than around discipline strategies.

Educators need to start with some basic beliefs such as,  All kids want to do well, all students want to be a positive member of a community, all students need caring adults in their lives.

We Want Consequences to "Work," but Haven't Defined What That Means

Teachers often think, "I'm looking for a consequence that works." But what exactly do we mean by "works"? This gets to one of the most complex issues surrounding consequences. Knowing how to choose the right reaction to misbehavior requires us to understand what consequences can and can't do. Let's look at this issue more closely.

• Consequences can stop misbehavior in the moment. If we have a class rule that says that we will be safe, and two students are shoving in line, we split those students up. This creates a tone of safety and order.
• Consequences can get students back on track. If Jesse is playing Fortnite on his phone instead of working on his research project, and you say "Jesse, put your phone on my desk. You can get it back at the end of the period," you've just acted as Jesse's prefrontal cortex, enabling him to get back to work.
• Consequences can be part of how students learn. Stacy is playing with her snack. Her pretzels drop on the floor and she spills her milk, then asks for another bag of pretzels. "Nope," we reply. "Students get one bag of pretzels. Here's a dustpan and brush to clean up the mess." The natural consequence of losing her snack and the logical consequence of having to clean up help Stacy learn to be more careful.
• Consequences can't teach missing skills. Punishing a kid doesn't teach that kid the skills he or she needs to be successful. Even natural and logical consequences can't teach capabilities that students don't already possess. If a student doesn't have the self-soothing skills needed to handle frustration, giving her a consequence when she melts down over a test won't help her the next time a test rolls around.
• Consequences can't work as our only strategy. Imagine if we tried to teach students to write by simply circling their errors and making them rework their writing. While this might be one strategy to use as students are revising and editing, we know that they'll also need direct instruction in effective writing strategies, time to practice and make mistakes, and a nurturing environment.

 We Miss the Middle Ground

 When we don't use consequences at all or wait too long to use them, we become permissive. When adults set limits but don't follow through, students feel unsafe, which often leads them to push limits. It's almost like they're begging us to be in control—to keep them safe. However, the overuse of consequences—especially punitive ones—also leads to an unsafe climate. When teachers yell, levy harsh punishments for minor mistakes, or are overly controlling, the classroom climate becomes one of fear and resentment. Both permissive and punishment-heavy cultures put students, especially those already on the edge, in a place where it's almost impossible to learn well.

An important part of getting to that sweet spot between permissiveness and harshness is getting clear about how consequences feel for students. Again, this is nuanced and tricky. On the one hand, if a student has to leave the classroom because she was out of control, she may feel bad—but we shouldn't make feeling bad the goal. To invoke shame isn't productive or respectful. At the same time, we don't want the consequence of being removed from the room to feel like a party. Sitting quietly with a book or working on a jigsaw puzzle might soothe a student's spirit, helping him regain control so he can rejoin class. But if the student's allowed to play video games or is given candy during a time-out, this might send confusing messages and inhibit his ability to calm down.

When we're in that desirable middle ground, consequences help a classroom feel safe, orderly, and predictable. Students understand that mistakes, both academic and behavioral ones, are part of the learning process, and that their teacher is there to support them. They aren't necessarily happy when they experience consequences, but they aren't devastated. The overall tone of the classroom is one of firm caring and support.

We Act with Emotion, Not Reason

Using consequences effectively requires educators to react with reason and logic when our inclination is to be emotional. When a student says something mean to a classmate, we feel outrage for the child who is insulted. When annoying pencil drumming interrupts a lesson, we feel frustration grow.

Our students need us to be strong enough to react with reason, not emotion. They need to see what it looks like when mature adults respond to frustration in calm, respectful ways. And they need to be treated with dignity and respect, especially when they're in a crisis.

 We Misunderstand Consequences' Role in the Big Picture

There's a common misunderstanding about the role consequences play in the broader picture of discipline. Too often, educators view consequences as the center of the picture and see all other supportive strategies—like teaching skills, modeling appropriate behavior, and building relationships—as tangential. In fact, relationships should be at the center, with all other strategies seen as tangents. Without relationships, everything else falls apart.

This shift in perspective helps teachers change the question they often ask when considering consequences—"What's the consequence that will fix the problem?"—to a better question—"Is there a consequence that might be part of how we help this student?"

That shift is especially helpful for our most vulnerable students. It's a sad irony that kids who often aren't strong enough to benefit from the potential teaching power of consequences are the ones most likely to be hammered with frequent punishments. At the same time, kids who have the emotional stability and behavioral skills to learn from consequences are often excused from them ("She's a good kid and usually on track. I'll just give her a warning.").

 Digging Deeper

Consequences are tough. On the one hand, they're critically important. Like a rumble strip on a road, they help set clear boundaries and keep students and teachers safe—so that challenging behaviors don't spiral out of control. At the same time, we must not over-rely on them, because they have limited power to teach positive behaviors. 

Additionally, educators shouldn't adopt black-and-white consequence systems, since children are all different and each situation is nuanced—and yet a school that doesn't have a consistent approach to consequences will create anxiety for everyone. 

So we must engage in robust conversations with colleagues, developing more consistent beliefs and understandings of the role of consequences and practicing appropriate responses. When we do this, we create a school culture that's structured and safe while also supportive and respectful of students.