Parent-Teacher Relations

There was a recent article in The New York Times called The Dicey Parent-Teacher Duet that provided some sage advice on how to foster stronger relationships between parents and teachers.

The author is both a teacher and parent, and she wrote the article from both perspectives.

Parent involvement in a child's life is a delicate balance:  On the one hand, you want need to provide guidance and support while on the other hand you don't want to smother your child and "become an obstacle to your child's growth."

The author points out that in fact many parents are not very comfortable at school. They think of school they way they experienced it. I have heard from many parents how uncomfortable they are in my office: they feel like they're in trouble.

Parents also typically have one to a few kids, and they don't have much experience with the full gamut of kids, as teachers do. (I'm a parent with two kids, yet I've taught and coached thousands of students through the years.)

But teachers are uncomfortable as well. Most of us became teachers because we liked school, the classroom, and kids. We leave our comfort zone when we have parent-teacher conferecnes. The author of the article also points out that teaching today is tougher than ever: "Teachers are being bashed everywhere they turn. They're scared. They feel parents put their jobs in jeopardy. The parent is in the position of power."

She offers a few tips on "how to best reduce the mutual anxieties and establish and maintain the kind of trust that is essential to respectful and productive parent-teacher communications."

First, parents need to empower their children to be personal advocates. The author cautions parents to resist contacting the school whenever their child is dealing with some difficulty at school. As many child psychologists (Wendy Mogel, Madeline Levine, Robert Evans, etc.) have noted, kids need to learn how to deal with and overcome problems and disappointments. Don't call the school when your child doesn't make the basketball team or gets the part he/she wants in a play. Instead ask them how they will deal with and settle the problem. (Of course, there are times--bullying, etc.--when parents need to take the lead, yet in my experience parents are all too often much too quick to get involved with a school issue that the child needs to deal with on his/her own.)

Second, be mindful of how dangerous electronic communication can be. Use it to convey factual information. Teachers and parents should not get into lengthy email communication over meatier topics. Use email to set a time to speak on the phone or better to meet face-to-face.

In terms of email etiquette, the author also cautions teachers or parents to not cc the teacher's supervisor. To her, "it's disrespectful to teachers and parents alike, as it sends the message you don't think there's even a chance you can work this out on your own."

Teachers need to respond to parents inquiries in a reasonable time period. Even if you won't be able to deal with the issue immediately, still let parents know that you have it on your list and, if possible, give them an approximate time you'll be in back in touch with them.

Teachers also need to develop a trusting relationship with parents. This occurs more easily if, early in the year, the teacher contacts parents with good news about their child. Teachers need to show parents that they know and understand every student as a unique individual. With that accomplished and a level of trust set, it's much easier for a teacher to contact a parent about a concern.

Finally, the author advises parents to listen skeptically to your child's explanation of what happens at school. We are all the protagonist of our own life story and our version is rarely 100% accurate and objective. And going back to her first recommendation, if your child does complain about something at school, empower him/her to work out the problem.

Student Engagement in School

I came across a sobering (but not very surprising) result from a Gallup survey of students.

The survey asked students in elementary school, middle school, and high school if they were "engaged in school".

While we can argue about the the actual definition of "being engaged", most of us would agree that relevance, purpose, meaning, and enjoyment are major aspects of being engaged.

Anyway, 80% of elementary school students say they are engaged at school.

Middle school students: 60%

High school students: 40%

As the head of school of an elementary/middle school, I was pleased to read that for high schools that had student engagement averages well above the 40% mark, the most common reason given was "well, our high school feels and operates more like an elementary school".

The reasons for student engagement declines in middle and high school are not surprising.

Elementary schools typically build upon a child's innate sense of curiosity. Most days in an elementary school classroom are filled with new discoveries, wonder, and excitement. Plus, while parents still often want to compare and rank kids' academic performance and aptitude, elementary school remains a time when kids are on a more personal, individual journey. Also, students in early elementary school in general are less self-conscious and typically do not compare themselves to others.

Clearly this begins to change as students move into the later elementary years through middle and high school. Most of us can probably remember when we began to compare ourselves to others: "I'm not a good writer, I'm not good at sports, Will anyone want to date me". Comparison and self-doubt set in.

As kids mature and begin to question their abilities, schools then begin to "sort and rank" more than they did in elementary school. Courses become much more content focused. There is usually much more teacher-directed learning, e.g., lecturing, notetaking. Textbooks, which are used sparingly in elementary school, are the norm in high school classes. Assessment in high school is more "pencil and paper tests" and less experiential, project-oriented. In general, school is much more sedentary.

In other words, school becomes boring and more of a chore to survive, even fake your way through: I remember teachers telling me to "at least pretend you're interested".

A hoped-for student outcome in Orchard's middle school is continued engagement and interest in the learning process. This is accomplished by being child-centereed and child-focused, giving students voice and choice in what they learn, how they learn it, and how they demonstrate their understanding.

Until more high schools look to elementary/middle schools to help them make learning more relevant, exciting, and interesting to students, high school surveys will continue to show low scores on student engagement.

Character Counts..But Can It Be Taught?

A recent article entitled Content of Their Character in CommonWealth Magazine reviewed two books on how to develop students' character.

One book, Paul Tough's How Children Succeed, has been covered in a few of my previous blogs.

The most interesting point the author, Michael Goldstein, makes about Tough's book is that Tough's belief in home and school developing a child's character traits like grit and persistence makes more sense for middle class families who don't have to worry as much as low-income families about their child's acquisition of knowledge.

As the author writes, "As educated, middle class families, both Tough (whose child is three) and I (my children are two and four) are relaxed about our children's acquisition of knowledge only because we know it will invisibly and inevitably seep in. Hence, we have the freedom to turn our attention to character."

Goldstein doesn't believe his children are more intelligent than kids from  low-income family; rather, his children--by virtue of their parents financial comfort--will live in a environment of intellectual stimulation (i.e., have opportunities beyond school to learn and acquire knowledge).

Hence, while he supports Tough's thesis that character needs to be stressed in schools, he recognizes that knowledge cannot be ignored, especially for children growing up in poverty.

"Beyond IQ and character, there is knowledge. IQ affects the rate at which we develop knowledge; and character affects our willingness to devote time needed to pursue knowledge. But individual schools and teachers are probably even bigger factors affecting a poor child's knowledge...A parent of a kid whose family background does not confer knowledge absolutely needs to worry about how her kid will acquire it, quite apart from any focus on building character."

Although I still support the premise of Tough's book, Goldstein's points made me recognize that educational ideas, policies, and "innovations" are simpler in the ideal than in delivery.

The other book Goldstein references (which I just ordered on Amazon) is Character Compass by Scott Seider, which researches the question of whether or not character can be explicitly taught in schools.

Seider references a recent "mega-study" of character education programs by the Institute of Education Sciences that concluded that sadly the answer seems to be "No".

However, Seider believes that character emphasis in schools will not be successful with imported, packaged programs from outside the school but can be successful if the program/emphasis is home-grown and unique to a school.

The remainder of his book explores three schools in the Boston area that have developed and have implemented different kinds of character education programs: performance character (skills like persistence and optimism), civic character (emphasis on improving the community), and moral character (e.g., empathy and integrity).

Even though theses schools focus on different kind of character (and Tough would opt for emphasizing performance character traits--as I also do), they all have resulted in their students A. doing better on knowledge-based standardized tests and B. showing growth in the character traits emphasized at each school.

Again, character education, specifically performance skills, is the current new thing in education, and maybe I've gotten caught up in the excitement and flash of all the articles, books, and studies that tout character education; yet I feel there is traction here and feel schools need to look beyond knowledge acquisition to the development of character habits and skills.

Yes, I may be overly influenced by my middle-class upbringing and values, yet I have wintessed in myself, my children, and the hundreds of students I have taught that knowledge/intelligence/IQ is nothing without strong character--performance, civic, and moral. And I do believe that character is not innate but is malleable and influenced by school and home.

Can We Learn From Finland?

A book I read over Winter Break was Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg, who is considered the preeminent expert on Finland’s educational system. He devotes much of his time to hosting tours of Finnish schools and lecturing about Finland in other countries.

This book was not the easiest read, but it successfully highlighted how different the Finnish educational system is compared to others', particularly the U.S. 

The Finnish educational system for the past few years has been an international “rock star” because A. its reforms are so contrary from most other countries' ideas at improving education and B. because of its very high student scores in reading, math and science literacy on the international PISA standardized test. (PISA stands for Programme for International Student Assessment and is given 15-year-olds in many countries. The test asks students not only to recall content learned but to apply that knowledge through problem solving. Click for some sample questions on the PISA test.)

Finland’s success was also touted in the recent documentary Waiting for Superman.


Finland dramatically changed its educational system a generation ago and did so in a very different direction compared to other countries—like the U.S. Sahlberg refers to other countries as the Global Educational Reform Movement, which typically stresses the following:

• Competition and choice, e.g., vouchers, charter schools, private schools
• Standardization of teaching and learning, e.g., academic standards like Common Core
• Test-based accountability, e.g., standardized tests and state end of course assessments
• Merit-based pay for teachers

Sound familiar?

This is basically what the Unites States has done for the past number of years with limited success in improving student outcomes.

How is Finland different?

All education is public. There are no private schools, including no private colleges and universities. Hence, everyone’s education (from food to classroom supplies) is paid through public monies.

Little quantitative measurement (standardized testing) of students. As Sahlberg states, “We prepare children to learn how to learn, not how to take a test.”

While teachers are not necessarily highly compensated, teaching is a respected and highly-sought profession. Typically one in ten applicants are accepted in college as education majors and before one gets to teach, he/she must earn a masters degree.

Teachers and schools have a high degree of autonomy. While America does not have a national curriculum (like a country like Japan), state and national standardized tests and academic standards (like Common Core) have led to many schools teaching to the test. In Finland each grade’s math goals easily fit onto one piece of paper. Finnish teachers are not rushed to cover material but have ample class time to help their students truly understand.

Every child is known. Schools are small. Elementary school teachers often teach students for multiple years. Much emphasis is placed on early identification, intervention, and remediation of learning difficulties.

Students receive very little homework. The school day includes ample time for recess and creative play. Emphasis is on conceptual understanding. Classes are not ability grouped.

I hope as you read the above, you recognized that these "reforms" are common characteristics most progressive (and often private) schools in America have provided for more than 100 years.

Many counter that while Finland has been successful in its reforms, it is so different from America, that we really can't learn much from its system of education. After all, its has a fairly homogeneous population of 5 million while we have a very diverse population of more than 300 million.

As I read the book, though, I kept thinking that the real difference between Finland and the U.S. in Finland’s premise of the goal of education: commitment to equity, i.e., equal educational opportunity for all students.

The American system of education is based much more on competition. We believe that through student hard work and scaffolding to support and challenge a child (like tutors and private schools) he/she will succeed and surpass his/her competition, i.e., other students.

In Finland, there are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland as is common in America. Educational policy is based on cooperation between teachers, schools, and students, not competition.

Finland is somewhat embarrassed by its high test scores. The goal of its educational reform movement a generation ago after all was not “excellence but equity” with every child having exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background or income. Great standardized test scores are a byproduct.

In Finland, education is not a means to produce star performers but means to even out social inequality.

Interestingly, Finland's neighbor Norway has an educational system similar to America’s and its student scores on PISA are in the middle of the pact like the U.S. However, South Korea and Singapore, which have an educational system that is much more drill-heavy, competitive, and content based, score very high on PISA.

I don’t think the U.S. public school system will ever move from competition to equity. We seem rooted to the idea that competition will strengthen the overall education system, hence making schools better for all.

But I do feel that the characteristics of the Finnish educational system are just like the ones progressive schools in the U.S. espouse.

And, most important, these are the qualities that best benefit and engage students---and provide them not just content and knowledge but opportunities to apply that knowledge.

Paul Tough's Book on How Children Succeed

Early in the school year, I wrote a blog on the positive reviews Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character received.

Last year I wrote a blog on an article Paul Tough wrote on how KIPP schools and highly-prestigious Riverdale Country School were attempting (with varying degrees of success) to include character--specifically habits, skills, and attitudes that help in academic achievement (hence performance rather than moral character)--in student progress reports.

Over Winter Break I finally had the opportunity to read Tough's book, and, while I don't want this blog to become one long ode to Paul Tough, his ideas resonate so much with me that I had to begin 2013 with a synopsis of his most recent book.

(My favorite book on education is Daniel Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, but Tough's book now prominently rests next to Willingham's.)

Tough begins his book by explaining that the American educational system remains predicated on the cognitive hypothesis: "the belief...that success depends primarily on cognitive skills--the kind of intelligence that gets measured on IQ tests...and that the best way to develop these skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible."

However, research over the past ten years--be it in psychology, neuroscience, education, even economics--is character skills and habits like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence are much more important for academic success than cognitive ability. Tough references a research study that found that these habits and skills are more than two thirds more crucial than cognitive ability in academic success.

These habits and skills extend far beyond school and help a person in the workplace and in life in general.

He furthermore states that these habits and skills are not imprinted in each of us from birth but can be developed and honed by parents and schools.

To Tough, "we need to approach childhood anew, to start over with some fundamental questions about how parents affect their children; how human skills develop; how character is formed."

I won't go into Tough's description of the effects of stress and nurture in a child's (and rats') early lives, but if you read the book and are a parent,  you'll probably re-visit how you treated your kids as infants. (FYI, in one of the final printed issues of Newsweek, Jared Dimond wrote an interesting article about the difference in child-rearing in current nomadic cultures versus sedentary cultures.)

Tough devotes a chapter to how both affluent and low-income families can fall short in providing physical and emotional support to their children needed to develop these critical performance character habits and skills.

"For both rich and poor teenagers, certain family characteristics predicted maladjustment, including low levels of maternal attachment, high levels of parental criticism, and minimal after-school supervision. Among affluent children, the main cause of distress was excessive achievment pressures and isolation from parents--both physical and emotional."

Tough concludes his book by describing how he parents his infant son: he recognizes that being a parent is much more difficult than advising people how to parent.

Yet, he writes that from researching and writing this book, he has moved away from the cognitive hypothesis and is now focusing more on nurturing and supporting his son as well as helping him "learn to manage failure." Before Winter Break I wrote a blog where psychologist Robert Evans in a webcast advised parents to let their children learn from failure. I prefer Tough's advice to allow children to learn how to "manage failure."

Tough closes his book with the following: "Science says that the character strengths that matter so much to young's people's success are not innate; they don't appear in us magically, as a result of good luck or good genes. And they are not simply a choice. They are rooted in brain chemistry, and they are molded, in measurable and predictable ways, by the environment in which children grow up...Parents are an excellent vehicle for those interventions, but they are not the only vehicle. Transformative help also comes regularly from social workers, teachers, clergy members, pediatricians, and neighbors."

Are American Kids Spolied?

Last summer an article in The New Yorker entitled "Spoiled Rotten" got me thinking about my own parenting style and skills.

Since my kids are now 24 and 21 (both college graduates and both gainfully employed), it’s easier for me from this distance to reflect on what I did right and wrong as a parent.

The article focuses on how families in different countries with different cultures raise their children.

For the most part, children in the United States have the least responsibility/chores asked of them, yet they were the beneficiaries of the most material objects and attention from their parents. This all too commonly results in “parents wanting their kids approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval.”

 Two thirds of American parents feel their children are spoiled.

This is vastly different from child-rearing in a country like France, where the “French believe ignoring children is good for them. French parents don’t worry that they’re going to damage their kids by frustrating them. To the contrary, they think their kids will be damaged if they can’t cope with frustration…They view learning to cope with ‘no’ as a crucial step in a child’s evolution. It forces them to understand that there are other people in the world, with needs as powerful as their own.”

I’ve heard respected psychologist Robert Evans say that in America today parents want school to prepare the path for the child rather than prepare the child for the path.

I’ve heard Dr. David Walsh talk about how today we live in a "yes culture" with its resulting characteristics of impatience, instant gratification, and sense of entitlement.

I’ve written before about the how parents and teachers need to stress the importance of motivation, hard work, effort, determination, and perseverance as well as the benefit striving against obstacles and dealing with disappointment.

As parents, we need to help and support our children but also give them more responsibility and the latitude to make mistakes and solve their own problems.

While I regret not assigning more chores to my kids when they were young, my wife and I did place the responsibility for schoolwork on them. Before they each went off to college, we told them that we would cover reasonable college costs for no more than four years: if they didn’t graduate in four, they had to pay.

Had they not graduated in four years, I believe we would have followed through on our threat and made them take out college loans, but like most American parents, we would have struggled with this decision.

Raising Resilient Children

Robert Evans is one of my favorite educational presenters; he is a clinical and organizational psychologist who has provided schools and parents, especially those is independent schools, with guidance and advice for more than 30 years.

Here is a link to his website.

Earlier this week Dr. Evans gave a webcast entitled "Raising Resilient Children in Challenging Times".

Here is the link to the webinar (which lasts about a hour). Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Raising Resilient Children 12/5/2012. The password is onion.

If you don't have time to listen to the recording of his webcast, below is a summary of it (taken almost verbatim from the PowerPoint of his presentation).

Evans believes that all kids in order to become resilient need the following:

• Nurture: To function as a member of a community, one needs to have been nurtured. Why? Because being nurtured helps one develop faith, confidence, and experience in reciprocity. No matter how old one is, she/he never outgrows the need to be nurtured (as my kids in their mid 20s remind me constantly). For children, both home and school need to provide appropriate amounts of nurture, which does not have to be as Evans states "a super fabulous" amount of nurture.

• Structure: Evans uses the metaphor of a box: inside the box is what we do--and are allowed to do--and outside the box is what we don't do and aren't allowed to do. Structure for kids needs to be clear but not hard or rigid. Structure helps kids develop important qualities like perseverance and empathy

• Latitude: Appropriate latitude to Evans is not freedom for a child to do what he/she wants, but the opportunity to learn from experience, especially errors, mistakes, and the unfairness of others.  For us to become adept at work and relationships (the twin essentials of a healthy adult life), we all need practice as kids in working through our problems and challenges; learning (and character) come from overcoming obstacles. 

Evans then outlined the challenges to nurture, structure, and latitude in today's world:

• Challenge to Nurture: To nurture children, you need to be with them, yet over the past 20 years there has been a 20 hour decline in time a parent typically spends with his/he child. To Evans, kids don't need "scads of our time to be appropriately nurtured, but they do need enough time." Evans also states that while we live in a competitive world, competition at too young an age leads to child stress. He advises parents to focus not just on achievement and outcome but character and effort as well.

• Challenge to Structure: To Evans, kids today live in a world where negotiating is the norm.  Evans laments that American society today has lost of the "you can't do this and must do that" structure from previous generations. We need to be clearer defining the box of what is and isn't permitted. To Evans, parents need to be  especially clearer about non-negotiables, even if child won't like it: he says "the key is not whether kids like you but whether they will be like you."(He tells a great story of a mother who nightly tells her kids at dinner time "Who's having lasagna, and who's going hungry?" rather than offering to make multiple meals for picky eaters. I can't imagine many parents today--myself included--saying this.)

• Challenge to Latitude: For Evans, this is the hardest "need" for parents to provide: most of us over protect our kids. We are too lenient with our kids and also come to our kids rescue much too frequently and quickly. Adults need to recognize that if a child's path is too easy (often because we ensure it's easy for him/her), the child won't have the opportunity to develop resilience and become a well-adjusted adult. Evans advises parents to not race to fix their kids' problems before they have a chance to try to fix it themselves.

Evans closes his webinar by advising parents to "take a grandparent pill": in other words, be more relaxed, broaden your perspective, and recognize that every event in you child's life is not urgent. 

Love your kids, give them your time, and provide them the latitude to be kids and to make mistakes within a box of clear and consistent "have to's".