Life's Lessons Through Experience

This week’s article is titled Life Gets Easier Once You Realize These Five Simple Things.

If you’re a sports fan, you’ve probably experienced the thrill of a big win—maybe even a championship—but more often, you’ve endured disappointment along the way.

Even as a lifelong fan of an elite franchise like the Yankees, I’ve felt more frustration than celebration over the years. On the flip side, as a long-suffering Jets fan, I cherish their one Super Bowl victory!

As we get older, life’s ups and downs tend to shape a more balanced perspective: you win sometimes, you lose often, and things are rarely fair. While that might sound pessimistic, adopting a more stoic mindset can lead to greater happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

The article below offers a framework for recognizing and managing the reality that we can’t control everything that happens to us. Traditions like Buddhism, ancient Stoicism, and even modern mindfulness all emphasize a powerful idea: while we can’t control what happens, we can control how we respond. To me, this realization is empowering.

Some of you have already started exploring the summer learning options, which focus on helping elementary students develop a broader, long-term perspective on their learning. Two key takeaways—both from those readings and from the article—stand out. First, since stress and discomfort are unavoidable, learning how to handle disappointment is essential for a happy life. Second, learning—both in and out of school—is more about its process than final product.

For our students, one of the most important lessons from elementary school is developing the ability to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. In other words, building the self-awareness to recognize emotions without being controlled by them.

I’m looking forward to our preplanning conversations around the themes in the summer reading selections.

Joe

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Through life experiences, most people learn that the ups and downs of life get easier once you realize the nature of life and dealing with stress. They have figured out what helps and what doesn’t.

As you mature, you realize life doesn’t always give you what you expect, and what you think is true sometimes isn’t true at all. The secret to happiness isn’t to resist these conundrums but to learn and adapt, so you can live a fulfilling life despite the inevitable stressors and downturns.

Realization 1: Stress Happens

Stress is a natural part of life. Whether it’s day-to-day stresses, like traffic and bills, or major life changes and upheavals, we all get our share of stress. Strive to be stress-proof. What that means is that you learn how to manage stress so it doesn’t derail you or permanently block you from your goals.

Research shows that having a growth mindset towards stress in which you see it as having a potential upside makes you a more active coper and helps you persist when things get difficult. That doesn’t mean you wanted the stressor to happen, but rather that you try to make the best of the situation when it does.

Research showed that people who are higher in a personal quality called hardiness can survive even major stressors.

Hardiness involves commitment, control, and challenge. Commitment means showing up and actively engaging, rather than avoiding. Control means perceiving some sense of control, even if things get difficult — perhaps exerting some control over your own reactions or perceptions. Challenge means viewing the situation as a challenge to master, rather than an overwhelming threat.

Take-Home Message: Try to find ways to view your stressors as manageable challenges, show up and contribute, control what you can, and let go of what you can’t.

Realization 2: There’s No Such Thing as a Happy Ending

We grow up with fairy tales in which the hero slays the dragon, rescues the beautiful princess, and the hero and princess fall in love, gain in wealth, and live happily ever after. In real life, things aren’t so simple.

We cannot attain a state in which we are guaranteed to be completely safe and to never experience any unhappiness, stress, or adversity. Even if we attain most of our life goals, we will inevitably face our aging, our parents' aging, our children leaving home, and health issues.

Mindfulness is an attitude toward living in which you learn to let go of clinging to positive experiences and moods and dreading negative ones. You learn to let go of attachment to things being a certain way, and you become more flexible and willing to adapt to what is.

Take-Home Message: Accept the inevitability of change and uncertainty in life. Stop thinking that the world needs to be a certain way (e.g., fair or kind) for you to be happy. Learn to go with the flow.

Realization 3: The Cover-Up is Worse Than the Crime

When it comes to emotions, the cover-up is worse than the crime. In other words, the things we do to suppress and not feel difficult emotions create greater difficulties for us in the long run than if we learned to tolerate the emotions.

Experiential avoidance--the desire not to feel uncomfortable mental states (e.g., thoughts and feelings)--is the source of many mental health problems. That’s because it doesn’t work to just shove down negative thoughts and emotions — they pop up again.

As a classic study shows, trying not to think of a white bear makes you more likely to think of white bears. You also may act in unhealthy ways in order not to feel difficult emotions — you may smoke, drink too much, eat unhealthy food, or zone out in front of the television for hours. All of these will negatively impact your health, mood, and/or ability to reach your life goals. Instead, you need to develop a “willingness to be uncomfortable” to move forward towards your goals.

When you face what you fear, especially if you do this regularly, your anxiety goes down because you get used to the situation. An example of habituation is if you live near the airport and, after a while, start automatically tuning out the plane sounds. The sounds are just as loud, but your brain and body can adapt.

Take-Home Message: Think about what role avoidance plays in your life and how it holds you back, and then think about how your life might change for the better by taking risks and putting yourself out there.

Realization 4: There’s No Magic Solution

Self-help authors tell us that they have the secret formula that will cure all of our emotional ills, help us overcome all of life’s roadblocks, and live happy, successful lives. While some advice can be helpful, no one answer fits everybody.

There are some universals, like it helps to be healthier, socially connected, and to manage your anxiety, but beyond this, one size doesn’t fit all. What works for your friend may not work for you, because you don’t have the personality to pull it off, it doesn’t feel authentic.

The essence of mental health is flexibility and integration. In other words, you use different coping strategies mindfully, finding the one that best fits the specific situation, and you find answers by integrating information from your head and your heart.

Take-Home Message: Find your own solutions and adapt strategies to suit your lifestyle and personality. Don’t compare yourself to others, and don’t look to others to solve your problems. While it’s good to reach out, you’re the only one who can take it to the finish line.

Realization 5: There’s No Elevator. You Have to Take the Stairs

Carol Dweck’s research on a growth mindset and Angela Duckworth’s research on grit show that you are much more likely to succeed if you put in sustained effort over long periods. Although the adult brain can change, this change is generally the result of sustaining new habits consistently over periods of months or years.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that in musical proficiency, success is the result of tens of thousands of hours of practice. While the amateurs practiced for about 2,000 hours on average over the course of their career, the professional pianists had practiced for 10,000 hours on average — five times as much. So, when it comes to musical proficiency and some other areas, it’s not about being a natural talent — It’s about working much longer and harder than your competitors.

Take-Home Message: To be successful requires a huge amount of hard work and perseverance; talent and potential alone are not enough.

 

 

Why is Education So Fad Prone?

This week’s article summary is Why is Education so Fad Prone?

Having spent over 45 years in education, I found this week’s article summary particularly resonant. Throughout my career, I have seen countless "new" ideas arrive with fanfare, fade away, and eventually return under a different name.  Design Thinking, Flipped, Portfolios, Interdisciplinary Studies, and even Khan Academy emerged with great fanfare to change the face of education; they’re used by some but have been forgotten by most teachers. 

Compared to fields like medicine or engineering, education often suffers from the belief that the adoption of faddish ideas will result in systemic change. The article below identifies four primary reasons why schools are so prone to the implementation of unproven ideas:

• Ease of Entry: In education, it is remarkably easy to present a new concept. While the field has legitimate research, many new ideas lack sufficient evidence to support their adoption. Unlike other professions, there is no standardized, formal testing process before a "treatment" is introduced to the classroom.
• The Teacher’s Heart: Because educators care deeply about their students, they are naturally passionate about improvement. When we hear of a new method that promises a better experience for our children, our eagerness to help can sometimes override our skepticism.
• The Difficulty of Measurement: Enhanced student learning—the ultimate benchmark for success—is difficult to measure. Veteran teachers are often doubtful about new ideas because they understand that learning is a multi-faceted process influenced by many variables. Without a clear, direct link between a new initiative and student growth, many ideas simply drift away once the initial excitement wears off.
• The Expectation of Change in Leadership: Whenever a new leader steps in—be it a superintendent, head of school, or principal—there is an expectation to usher in change. Too often, stewardship—being consistent, pragmatic, and organized—is unfairly viewed as stagnant leadership, pushing leaders to adopt change for the sake of appearance rather than impact.

Like any school, Trinity is susceptible to the allure of change for the sake of change, yet we are also uniquely insulated. We benefit from a recognized, time-tested brand and a strong culture that balances research-based innovation with proven best practices.

We don’t rush; we take the time to study and discuss new ideas, often piloting them in small groups before a full rollout. We recognize that long-lasting success isn’t found in the onset of an initiative, but in the ongoing teacher training and support as well as measures of student learning.

Over the past few years, we have successfully integrated several new programs—such as Fundations, new pedagogical approaches in math, and the FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) model. We recognize that no single program is a panacea. By maintaining a healthy dose of professional skepticism, we ensure that every new idea is adapted to fit into Trinity’s curriculum and instructional practices. 

Joe

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Every few years, education seems to discover something new that will finally fix schools — a new framework, a new approach, a new way of thinking about teaching and learning. It arrives with urgency and conviction, spreads quickly, reshapes professional development and classroom practice and then fades away, replaced by the shiny new thing: twenty-first century skills, trauma-informed pedagogy, flipped classrooms, 1:1 devices, etc.

Ask veteran teachers to list the major instructional initiatives they’ve been trained on over the years, and you’re likely to get a weary laugh before you get an answer. Discipline systems cycle from zero tolerance to restorative practices; “data-driven instruction” yields to “personalized learning,” which is now being rebranded yet again in the age of artificial intelligence. Each shift arrives with urgency and moral clarity. Each requires retraining, new materials. and a reorientation of practice. Spend enough time in schools, and the pattern becomes impossible to ignore. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Why is education so fad-prone?

Education isn’t fad-driven because educators lack judgment. It’s fad-driven because the system they work in makes churn not just common, but inevitable. Four structural forces, in particular, push schools toward constant reinvention:

Limited Feedback Loops: In most sectors, failure reveals itself quickly. Customers leave, revenue falls, and performance problems become unmistakable. In education, by contrast, the signal is slow. Instructional changes may take years to show results. Outcomes depend on factors well beyond the classroom, such as attendance, family circumstances, and peer effects. Even when results improve or decline, attribution is murky. There are too many moving parts to say with reasonable certainty that any single input was determinative. Under these conditions, it’s impossible to offer decisive proof that a given approach is or isn’t working. This makes education unusually vulnerable not just to bad ideas, but to the premature abandonment of good ones.

Leadership Legitimacy Requires Change: School systems churn through leaders with striking regularity. The onus is on each new superintendent and principal to demonstrate they are, in fact, leading. Many will come to the unfortunate conclusion that leadership is signaled not through stewardship, but through action: launching initiatives, unveiling strategic plans, introducing new frameworks, reorganizing priorities. Anyone who has spent time around school systems has seen the pattern: A new leader arrives, announces a bold vision, rebrands existing efforts, and introduces a new set of priorities. Three years later, often before results are fully visible, that leader departs (school superintendents tend to last a single contract cycle) and the wheel turns another revolution. A leader who says, “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, but do it better,” risks appearing passive or directionless, even if the system is performing well. It is a structural expectation. In education, visible change is how leadership signals its worth.

Low Barriers to New Ideas: In fields like medicine or engineering, new approaches must pass through layers of validation before they reach widespread adoption. Education has far fewer guardrails. A new framework can be published, marketed, and adopted in rapid succession. Professional development cycles spread new ideas quickly, consultants package innovations into turnkey programs, and procurement systems often treat instructional approaches as interchangeable. The result is a highly permeable system — one in which ideas can enter and scale rapidly, often long before their effectiveness is firmly established.

Moral Urgency: Education is not a typical service sector. It concerns children’s lives and futures, and that reality creates a constant sense of moral urgency. If a proposal claims it might help struggling students succeed, the pressure to act is immense. Waiting for perfect evidence can feel ethically unacceptable; trying something new, even with incomplete proof, feels compassionate. This isn’t foolish or irresponsible. It’s what happens when moral responsibility collides with uncertainty. But it creates a powerful bias toward action — and, by extension, toward constant change.

Taken together, these forces produce a system in which reform cycles are not accidental but predictable. Slow, ambiguous evidence makes it hard to know what is working. Leadership incentives reward visible change. New ideas face little resistance to adoption. Moral urgency pushes systems to act rather than wait. Under those conditions, stability is not the natural condition. Change is. Indeed, stability can easily be mistaken — and often is — for complacency or indifference.

The problem is not that education experiments with new ideas. Some experimentation is necessary and healthy. The problem is that the system struggles to sustain success once it finds it. Schools that improve often do so through unglamorous means: adopting a coherent curriculum, building teacher expertise, reinforcing consistent instructional routines, and maintaining focus over time. None of this is flashy. None of it lends itself to prizes or glowing media profiles. And all of it is fragile.

The solution for breaking the cycle is not to scold educators for chasing new ideas. It is to realign incentives so stability and execution are valued as forms of leadership. That means treating implementation fidelity as an achievement, not an afterthought, and creating political and institutional cover for leaders who choose continuity over novelty. It means building systems that measure and reward long-term improvement, not short-term activity, and elevating professional norms that prize mastery over constant reinvention.

In short, we need to make competence visible. Because until we do, the system will continue to reward the appearance of change over the reality of improvement. So, yes, education is fad-prone, just not for the reasons we usually assume. We don’t chase reform because we forget what works, but because the system makes standing still look irresponsible — even when standing still is exactly what success requires.

Student Boredom in the Classroom

This week’s article summary is I'm Bored: The Dreaded Student Complaint.

We are lucky to teach in an elementary school. For the most part, complaints from students about being bored aren’t very common, unlike in middle and high school.

We are also fortunate to teach at Trinity, which has always emphasized a pedagogy that fosters student engagement.

So, while the article below is aimed more at middle and high school teachers, the recommendations for mitigating student boredom in the classroom have merit in our elementary classrooms too.

The words I’m bored from a student can mask several reasons a student is disengaged.

The student may not be understanding the content being presented in the classroom.

The student might find the material too repetitive or easy. Think of what you learned about Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development in which students are optimally engaged with material they can complete with some guidance — the sweet spot between what students already know and what is new.

The student might find the classroom too sedentary. Kids need brain and physical breaks throughout the day. The article says even for middle and high school students 15 minutes of lecture is their maximum limit.

The class may be too teacher-led and lecture-based. Like adults, kids need opportunities to be autonomous and collaborative. 

The classroom may be too predictable. While classroom routines are essential, teachers need to find that balance between predictability and novelty. The human brain seeks to make patterns, but it also needs freshness.

So, while our kids won't often tell us that they’re bored, we need to reflect on both what and how we teach to optimize their engagement and learning.

Joe

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I’m bored. This class is so boring.

Teachers hear these frustrating words often, and while we may have been tempted in recent years to blame technology use and increasingly short attention spans, these familiar complaints usually signal something deeper.

To decipher what students are really trying to communicate and determine what they need to thrive, we need to dig a little deeper into what I’m bored might mean.

A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING: Often, I’m bored really means I don’t get it. Social psychologist Erin Westgate notes that boredom frequently hides confusion or frustration: “A student who proclaims, ‘I’m bored,’ may be struggling. Scaffolding difficult concepts and providing individualized assignments help students learn to calibrate.” Additionally, students who are afraid to be wrong might mask their trepidation by claiming boredom, which takes the form of students who exhibit behaviors such as ignoring assignments, feigning illness, skipping classes, or acting out. These actions often mask deep feelings of inadequacy or invisibility.

To help students who are feeling confused, ending each class with an informal check for understanding provides formative data that can accurately reveal where everybody stands. For example, if the learning goal in a sixth-grade world history class is to identify the characteristics that define a culture, students might write as many characteristics as they can on a slip of paper before exiting for the day. The teacher can then use this quick check-in to pinpoint students who might be lost, a key step toward addressing boredom rooted in confusion.

NOT ENOUGH CHALLENGE: On the other hand, students may also fall prey to boredom when they’re not being challenged enough. I recently spoke with a high-performing sophomore who shared that when she gets bored, it’s not about her readiness to learn. “In math, we learn the same concept a thousand times. In other classes, I start tuning out because I already know what we’re learning, or the teacher is assigning busywork.”

One way to mitigate a lack of interest on the part of students who are achieving beyond grade-level expectations is to offer extension options on assignments, such as solving “spicier” (more challenging) problems in math class or enhancing a written report with an audio component. Suppose that middle school life science students are drawing cells and labeling their parts, and some students want more leeway to be creative. Those who opt for extension can take their learning further by creating a detailed model of a cell in a medium of their choice.

THE PACING OF THE CLASS IS OFF: Sometimes boredom stems less from a single lesson and more from the overall pace of a class. When the curriculum moves too slowly, students feel stuck in place; when it rushes ahead, they may quietly give up. Both patterns erode engagement over time. Thoughtful pacing includes decisions about how long to linger on a concept, when to spiral back, and when to move on.

Suppose that in an eighth-grade algebra class, students are solving systems of equations, and the plan is to move from one set to the next as a group. If the teacher notices that most students are completing the first set of problems quickly and accurately, a possible tweak to pacing might be to have students who are finished work together to develop their own problems and then trade with one another while the teacher pulls a small group of students who are struggling aside for instruction. By adjusting to in-the-moment data that students present, the teacher is more likely to increase productive interaction and stymie feelings of boredom.

TOO MUCH TEACHER TALK: One high school senior expressed a deep appreciation for school, but his passion for learning has a hard time withstanding lengthy lectures. “If the teacher is just standing up there talking or going off on tangents, I get bored,” he told me. Students tend to find listening to a lecture for an extended period both wearying and boring.

Long stretches of sitting drain focus as blood flow literally shifts away from the brain, making movement essential for learning. The brain-to-body connection is a key ingredient to helping students refresh their cognitive capacity, and teachers can implement strategies like these:

• Limiting “teacher talk” to about 15 minutes and ensuring that students get at least 90 seconds to stand, stretch, and process information.
• Weaving in brief movement breaks, such as a walk across the classroom to talk to a partner about a new concept or to answer a question.
• Integrating standing group work into the class period for activities like solving a math problem or completing a joint exercise such as a historical timeline or a presentation.

REPETITIVE STRUCTURE: Early in my career, a student pointed at an agenda item on the board—a book discussion—and sighed: “We do this every day. Can we do something else?” His question revealed that repetition can drain engagement. Retired teacher Larry Ferlazzo calls this “satiation,” which occurs when students lose interest in overly predictable routines. As the high school senior pointed out, the issue can stretch beyond just one classroom: “We go from class to class that all have the same structure.”

To counter this slide into the mundane, teachers can identify and maintain core daily elements of instruction such as framing and summarizing learning while varying how they deliver content. For instance, in any text-heavy class like science, social studies, or English, the class might alternate between partner reading and instructional read-alouds to keep learning fresh and purposeful. By intentionally ensuring that students achieve course objectives in different ways, teachers have the power to allay boredom that comes from static instruction. Ultimately, when students show little to no interest in class, we can infer, as Westgate explains, that “boredom is a healthy warning that something is off in our environment.” Ensuring that lessons are challenging, varied, and connected in meaningful ways to students’ lives reminds everyone that their voices and experiences belong in the classroom.

 

 

iPad Babies Have More Tantrums

 This week’s article summary is Why iPad Babies Have More Tantrums.

The author is an educational researcher on the effects screen time has on children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. Her research began years ago by measuring the length of time kids watched television, which used to be the dominant entertainment technology. Today mobile phones and tablets are more commonly used by children. 

Whether it’s TV or iPads, she has consistently found a correlation between the overuse of technology and delays in children’s physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. 

But there’s a major difference between TV and mobile devices: televisions aren’t portable.

With mobile devices, parents have a readily-available babysitter beyond the living room — the article refers to using mobile devices to keep kids occupied as digital pacification. 

Many kids today use a mobile device not only as a distraction but also as a calming device when they are emotionally dysregulated. Research shows that by using an extrinsic method, younger children aren’t being given the chance to develop their own internal calming and coping mechanisms, i.e., developing executive function skills, discussed in last week’s summary

This inability to regulate emotions in age-appropriate ways has an adverse effect on students in school: poorer attention, lack of self-regulation, inability to work with others, difficulty with problem solving, etc.

While I am always hesitant to find one cause for a change in students, the article is a reminder that as an elementary school, Trinity needs to avoid leaning too heavily on technology. It’s a useful tool, but our children need face-to-face time with peers to build the skills they need for middle school and beyond.

I do wonder if the technology pendulum has begun to swing back: at this year’s Admissions Open Houses, prospective parents have asked how we limit technology use in the classrooms. Perhaps our incoming students will be less reliant on technology as their parents are beginning to limit its use and availability at home.

Joe

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We’ve all seen it happen: a young child is having a tantrum in public. They get fussy, sitting in the seat of the grocery cart or waiting with their parents to board a plane. Their voice gets louder, their face goes red. They might start pulling things off the shelves at the store, kicking their seat or even their parents. 

But before the cranky child reaches full-blown meltdown mode, they’re pacified; a tablet appears before them, playing their favorite cartoon, and, like magic, the tantrum is forgotten. The child stares, wide-eyed at the screen. Everyone around them sighs, thankful that the meltdown was avoided. 

I’ve been studying children’s screentime since 2009. Back then, I was interested in how TV consumption was contributing to their early school readiness and development.  

I studied a sample of children born in 1998 who would have been preschoolers in the early 2000s—years before the introduction of tablets and smartphones. Our studies found that TV screentime contributed to children’s school readiness across the board: it was related to their cognitive readiness, their social readiness, and their physical motor readiness. Kids who spent more hours per day watching television had less classroom engagement, more interpersonal problems with peers, a smaller vocabulary, and worse motor development. 

Of course, TV is no longer the default screen for kids. A 2025 report by Common Sense Media found that 40 per cent of toddlers have their own tablet by the time they’re two. Children in the two-to-four age range spent about two hours per day on screens, while those under two watch screens for about one hour per day. 

Imagine a three-year-old named Emma who likes to watch her favorite cartoon on a tablet. Her parents are happy because it keeps her occupied while they make dinner or do chores. But over time, Emma wants to spend more time on the tablet. When her parents say no, she gets angry and frustrated. The tablet calms her down, so sometimes, Emma’s parents bring it out to avoid a tantrum. This is what researchers call digital emotion regulation, or digital pacifying, and it’s an effective and often immediate strategy. The child calms down nearly instantly, and parents avoid a public outburst. In the short term, it’s a miracle. In the long term, not so much. 

In 2020, I ran a study measuring children’s and parents’ screen use. We found that three-year-olds who spent more time on tablets had more outbursts of anger and frustration one year later. We also found that, by age four, the children who had more outbursts were more likely to have even more screen use by age five. In a separate study, we asked parents how frequently they used tablets specifically with the aim of calming children down. Once again, more tablet use at age three was associated with more outbursts of anger and frustration at age four, and worse self-control. 

It’s a vicious cycle, where using screens to calm tantrums actually increases how often a child has tantrums in the future. We don’t know exactly what it is about screens that are causing this spiral, but it likely comes back to the fact that a tablet is an external regulation tool. That’s why it’s an effective way to stop a meltdown—it shifts children’s focus away from their emotions and onto the screen. It’s a quick fix, but it stops children from learning to regulate themselves.

Educators are concerned that children are coming into kindergarten with insufficient autonomy. This is one of the first times we expect kids to act on their own—they need to be able to take off their own jackets, follow instructions for classwork, sit at their desks. When kids struggle with autonomy, they have a hard time adapting to this transition.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from early childhood professionals who say children now struggle more with social situations. When a conflict arises—say, if another child takes their toy—they are overly reliant on the teacher to intervene. I’ve also heard occupational therapists say they are noticing more and more young children with motor delays who can’t tie their shoes, zip up their jackets, or put on their winter clothes.

These delays might be explained by the displacement hypothesis: if children are spending more time using screens, they have less time for imaginary play, exploring their environment, or interacting with caregivers or other children. Screens can borrow time away from these activities that are developmentally essentially for children. 

Children generally improve their self-regulation during preschool years, but it’s not an automatic fix: they need adults to help them. One way is through shared book-reading, when parents can explain how characters handle negative emotions. Understanding how Junie B. Jones deals with a tough situation can help a child adopt similar strategies.  

We know that low emotional regulation can plague kids into their adult life, affecting their relationships and their physical and mental health. When we use phones as pacifiers, we’re denying kids critical opportunities to learn to regulate their emotions, setting them up for a harder go later in life. The earlier we intervene, the easier it is to snap out of the cycle.

 

 

The Power of Yet

This week’s article summary is The Power of Yet.

I saw this article over Spring Break as I was previewing two summer reading options -- The Kids Who Aren't Okay and The Executive Function Playbook. 

While many common themes emerged in these readings, most significant to me was that we teachers always need to keep our focus on the long game: teaching, after all, is about tour students’ gradual development of essential habits and skills, particularly executive functioning.

The readings also pointed out that just as kids are more prone to be preoccupied with the present and lose sight of the progress and process of learning, teachers can also get consumed with the here and now.

Even during the inevitable stressful times in a school year, we need to resist letting little irritants cloud our perspective; we need to always look for the growth — no matter how incremental — in our students.

The Executive Function Playbook described how difficult it can be for kids to focus on the future. Using hindsight (looking back) and foresight (looking forward), which are key components of self-regulation, are challenges for many children. Students are more driven by immediate gratification and external stimuli; nevertheless, our goal for them is to develop self-control, including the ability to delay gratification. As research shows, self-regulation and self-control are critical indicators of future success. 

So, while our focus is often on math, literacy, and our students’ immediate behavior, we can never forget that executive function development of self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, and self-evaluation are equally, if not more, crucial for our students.

The article below focuses on Carol Dweck’s research about the benefits of our students having a growth mindset, which can help them look towards the future. Using the word yet can help them recognize that learning is a process that requires effort, perseverance, and time. The books above provide scaffolding strategies teachers can utilize to help students:

• Frequent reminders about how learning is a process of many small steps and that missteps are inevitable and vital to learning
• Mindfulness techniques, like taking deep breaths, to avoid instantly reacting to external stimuli can help students make more thoughtful, rational decisions
• At the start of the school day, have students close their eyes and visualize the many choices a student will make in a day
• Limit screen time at home and at school (the books agree that even in school screen time needs to be limited)

As teachers, we know we are preparing our students for the future. However, as they are prone to think mostly about the present, we need to remind them of the future, i.e., to be their executive function until they develop their own.

Joe

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A few weeks ago, my daughter burst through the door after school, ranting about her social studies teacher. “He’s making us label all 50 states on a map, and the test is in two days,” she fumed.  “I think he wants us to fail! I’m not even going to try.”

For teachers and parents, this is an all-too-familiar scenario. A task is set, it feels insurmountable, and, instead of embracing the challenge as an opportunity for learning and growth, our young scholars wave the white flag.

I can’t do it. It’s not possible. What’s the point in trying?

Carol Dweck, pioneer of mindset research, posed a powerful question: “Are we raising our children for now instead of yet?” 

To illustrate her meaning, consider a statement you’ve likely heard (or said yourself): “I’m not good at math.”

Presented this way, mathematical ability (or lack thereof) is as indisputable as eye color. But add one small word and the meaning shifts: “I’m not good at math—yet.”

In one of her early studies, Dweck and her team explored how different types of praise influenced students’ reactions to struggle. 

Fifth graders were asked to complete a simple set of problems, then randomly assigned to receive one of two responses: “You must be smart at this,” or, “You must have worked hard.” 

Next, they were given a far more difficult problem set. Predictably, they performed poorly and were told as much by the research team. 

Then, something interesting happened. The students initially praised for hard work wanted to keep at the tougher problems, attributing their struggles to insufficient effort. 

But the students praised for their smarts? As Dweck described it, their failure felt catastrophic. Their core intelligence had been tested and devastated. These students largely showed no interest in further attempts at the hard problems, blaming their lackluster scores on lack of ability. 

Lastly, the students completed a final problem set similar to the first they’d done well on. Here, the effort-praised students improved their scores, while the ability-praised students did worse.

Dweck concluded that ability-focused feedback had negative short-term implications on students’ motivation. Or, as she put it, “Instead of the power of yet, they were gripped by the tyranny of now.”

She went on to posit that repeated exposure to effort-focused feedback over time could help shape students’ core beliefs about their capacity to develop intelligence through hard work. 

For teachers interested in cultivating growth mindsets, yet is a simple, effective feedback technique that can be used in a variety of contexts to reinforce the changeable nature of one’s ability.

• I’m not a good writer—yet.
• I can’t draw—yet.
• I’m not organized—yet.

Yet acknowledges where a student is right now while refusing to accept it’s where they must remain. Paired with the right resources and support, yet can create the ideal conditions for growth and change.

Back in my kitchen, I agreed with my daughter that recognizing every state is hard—especially those small ones in the Northeast—and two days isn’t much time. But her teacher clearly believed she could do it, and so did I. “But, Mom, I can’t remember all 50 states in two days.”

“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “You can’t identify them—yet.”

And thus began the journey. An app was downloaded. Her first effort yielded 12 correctly identified states. I showed her how Michigan resembles a mitten and Louisiana a boot. 

Her dad tried his hand and scored a dismal 21. We Googled why there’s a North Dakota and a South Dakota and not just a Dakota, and where the word “Wyoming” comes from. 

Two days later, she burst through the door again. This time, declaring victory: “50 out of 50!”

The task didn’t change. The timeline didn’t change. The only thing that changed was her willingness to try—fueled by the power of yet.

Next time a student enters your classroom carrying a story about their ability, adding yet can interrupt their conclusion and invite them to keep going. Yet as part of your feedback repertoire helps create a classroom culture where learning is expected to be incomplete, mistakes are normal, and effort is part of the process—not evidence of some fundamental inadequacy. Over time, the echo of your yets may even take root in your students’ inner voices, ready to remind them that where they are today does not limit where they can go.