Friday, September 30, 2016

How Early Does Your Personality Take Shape?

This week’s article summary is Clues to Your Personality Appear Before You Talk, and its focus is on research conducted on infants to assess to what extent early traits and behaviors remain in adulthood.

My guess is most of us feel there is a connection between the traits we demonstrated as infants and our personality as adults.

In the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate, environment and experiences exert some influence in subsequent personality, yet based on the research studies in the article, our genes play a much more significant role.

One of my favorite books is Daniel Willingham’s A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. 

In one chapter on the 'nature v. nurture’ question Willingham discusses studies of identical twins separated at birth and growing up in different households and different environments. Often the twins, regardless of the household or environment, end up by having similar interests, outlook on life, etc. (including spouses who look alike). Willingham concludes that genetics influence how you see the world, how you interact with it, and what interests you pursue. So, while it’s incorrect to say that ‘genes are our destiny’, they do preprogram us to seek and favor certain experiences.

At my previous school—a preschool through eighth grade—the graduation ceremony included every 8th grader giving a short speech about how the school shaped him/her as a student and as a person. Not surprisingly some speeches were very short and straightforward while others were much more heartfelt and emotional. Invariably after the ceremony, 3s and PreK teachers would talk to me about how similar each graduate was to when they entered school at 3 or 4. There were some exceptions ("I would have never thought Jimmy could talk in front of hundreds of people!"), yet it was amazing how similar their personalities were at 3 and then 14. 

The importance of genetics does not mean we should take a fatalistic approach to life. Rather we as teachers work with students' unique (though somewhat hardwired) personalities in helping them grow and develop as students and as people.

Joe

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Your personality has been sculpted by many hands: Your genes, your friends, the schools you attended, plus many other factors all play a part in making you the person you are today.

But when exactly did your own distinct character first begin to take shape?

If you’re a shy person now, for instance, does that mean you were a shy child?

In all likelihood, yes. 

In fact, research suggests there are significant links between our behavioral tendencies when we’re just a few months old and our later personality. That isn’t to say that our personality was set in stone that early, but that the roots of who we are can be traced all the way back to our earliest days.

Psychologists who study babies usually refer to “temperament” rather than personality and one of the first ever investigations in this was the New York Longitudinal Study in the 1950s, which observed children from their birth up to age 30, as well as interviewing their parents.

Researchers concluded that there were nine different facets of infant temperament, including activity level, mood, and, distractibility. They noted that scores on different facets tended to cluster in three categories: “easy children”, “difficult children” and “slow to warm up” children.

The New York study found evidence that children categorized as easy or difficult at age three also tended to be categorized the same way in early adulthood.

Today the original nine aspects of temperament have been distilled into three broad dimensions: 
  • Effortful Control which describes things like the infant’s self-control and ability to focus (resisting, for example, the lure of a tempting toy)
  • Negative Affectivity, which refers to levels of negative emotion like fear and frustration
  • Extraversion, which is to do with activity levels, excitement and being sociable
In a recent study parents rated their infants’ temperament on these dimensions when they were just a few months old (seven months, on average) and then rated their children’s personalities again an average of eight years later.

Infants who scored higher on the extraversion domain (they did things like smiled more) tended to score lower, at age eight, on the adult personality trait of neuroticism (that is, they were more emotionally stable); and those infants who scored higher on this study’s equivalent of effortful control went on to score higher on aspects of the adult trait of conscientiousness when they were children. 
If your baby seems to have a decent attention span – good news, this probably means they’ll keep their room tidy when they’re older.

Links even stretch across four decades. In another study researchers took measures of infancy temperament a little later, between the ages of 12 and 30 months, and found an association with personality traits in the same individuals when they were tested again 40 years later.

The two traits in question were toddler disinhibition (similar to the more widely used extraversion rating) and adult extraversion. That is, the more active and assertive the participants had been as toddlers, the more likely they were to score highly on extraversion as adults and on self-efficacy (our belief in our own abilities).

It’s worth remembering when reading about these findings that our personalities, although they show consistency through life, are also constantly evolving and it would be impossible to pinpoint any one moment when a person’s personality in their youth had taken on its adult form. However, as an infant grows into a small child, their personality is gradually crystallizing. Wait until a child is aged three, for example, and now their behavior will even more strongly foretell the adult personality.

Anyone who has young children of their own, or spends time with them, knows that it’s tempting to look for signs of emerging personality traits in a baby’s giggle or frown. The latest psychology research suggests such speculation might not be entirely in vain.

Researchers are also realizing that the roots of adult psychological problems may lie in behavioral tendencies that first appear in early childhood. By learning to recognize these signs, it might be possible to intervene carefully at an early age and to help steer children on the path to a healthier future.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Best Spot for 6th Graders

This week’s article summary is Sixth Grade is Tough. It Helps to Be Top Dog.

This article went viral when it was published earlier this week, especially among K-8 schools which are always on the look out for evidence that their school model is preferable for young children and adolescents.

I liked the findings of this study that determined in what school model do 6th graders fare best in, but I was a  bit surprised that the study didn’t not include Trinity's pre-6th model. 

The study’s conclusion is that it’s optimal for 6th graders to be as close to the 'top dogs' of a school as possible, with the 6-12 model being the least effective option for 6th graders.

If you’ve taught middle schoolers in either 6th, 7th, or 8th grade, you know firsthand that social matters and peer pressure dominate those years for young adolescents. For kids are searching for their 'sense of self and belonging,’ it’s natural that peer approval and social standing become paramount concerns. Middle schoolers still hope for good grades, yet fitting in and belonging preoccupy their thoughts, wishes, and actions, which can manifest themselves in exclusion and in the extreme meanness and cruelty. 

From my experience teaching those grades, the height of the ‘lemming years’ where fitting in is of uber  importance is most prevalent in second half of 6th grade through the first half of 8th grade. (Most first semester 6th graders are still young and innocent and the majority of second semester 8th graders have ‘matured’ enough to see that individuality is something to be proud of.)

At Trinity we all see the tremendous social and personal growth of children during the 6th grade year. Being the ‘top dog’ gives 6th graders ample opportunities to be leaders and role models and to develop strong character habits like responsibility. 6th graders at Trinity carry themselves in a more self-assured, empowered, and self-confident manner than 6th graders in other school models. 

My hypothesis is that by having 6th grade be the ‘top dog’ of elementary school, we prolong the start of the lemming years a little longer and allow 6th graders that extra time to become surer of themselves, more empathetic and inclusive of others, and a little less prone to the negative aspects of peer pressure. 

The study below illustrates the benefits of K-8 over K-12 or 6-12 models.  

But we know at Trinity that the ideal is for 6th graders is to be the ‘top dog’ of elementary school!

Joe

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Oh, middle school. Mean girls who won't let you sit with them in the cafeteria. And, these days, cryptic taunts posted on social media, where parents and teachers can't always see them.
Middle schoolers report higher rates of bullying and fights than students in any other grade span, and their academic performance also tends to dip. But, things could be a little better — if we just got rid of middle schools, according to a big new study.

The study looked at the experiences of sixth- through eighth-graders in New York City at schools with different grade spans: K-8 vs. 6-8 and 6-12.

In the K-8 schools, those tweens and young teens were the "top dogs" — the oldest, the most comfortable and familiar with the school.

But, in traditional middle schools and 6-12 schools, sixth graders were the "bottom dogs.”

In the three-year study, the researchers drew from a group of 90,000 students in more than 500 schools. They found that when students were not the "bottom dogs," they reported feeling safer, less bullying, less fighting and a greater sense of belonging. And their grades and test scores were better, too.

There's been a lot of research already supporting what's called the "top dog/bottom dog" hypothesis. But this study is the first to find that position in the school affects experiences.

For example, the negative effects of being a bottom dog don't just come from being new to the school: The students who transferred into a K-8 school in sixth grade still had better experiences than students who started at a 6-8 school.

Today the prevailing practice nationwide is for middle schoolers to go to, well, middle schools. So, should this research motivate a wave of school reorganization?

EndFragment

Friday, September 16, 2016

Rethinking Differentiation

This week’s article summary is “Rethinking Differentiation.”

While the article focuses on the ideal of differentiation, what its detractors complain about, and the author’s compromise middle ground, more important to me is how this article parallels what Maryellen and Rhonda talked about in this week’s Wednesday’s divisional meetings: the three interdependent parts of the Instructional Core.

As we have discussed since preplanning, our principal goal as a school is student learning.

And the three interdependent parts of student learning are the thee parts of the Instructional Core—Teacher Knowledge and Skill (in both content and instructional practice), Student Engagement in Learning, and Academically Challenging Content.

Student learning is optimized only when all three are working in unison.

For me, differentiation has always had three main problems:

One, can be presented in an overly mechanical manner, i.e., the student-choice equation of content (what is learned), process (how it’s learned), and product (demonstration of understanding), when, in fact, as we all know as teachers, so much of what we do daily in the classroom requires nuance, judgment, readjustments, and art in being responsive to both whole class and individual student needs. 

Two, it makes academic content a variable. While we have easier access to content/knowledge in today's Information/Digital Age, we still need to know some common ‘stuff’ in our heads.

Three, it is often presented as a panacea for learning and an end in itself, rather than one of many instructional techniques we employ as vehicles for learning. (For many schools, technology can fall into this category as well.)

The article wants us to see that while differentiation can be intimidating and daunting to teachers, its components are really just good, age-old teaching techniques that focus on the two questions that all teachers keep in the forefront: What are my students supposed to learn? Are they mastering it?

The main point Rhonda and Maryellen made on Wednesday is those three parts of the Instructional Core: Teacher/Student/Content need our attention and focus to achieve the goal of student learning—and a technique like differentiation is one of many classroom strategies.

Joe

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What is the problem to which differentiation is the solution? 

Clearly it’s the fact that students walk into school with a wide range of differences in prior knowledge, vocabulary, reading proficiency, fluency in English, attitudes toward school, mindset about learning, tolerance of frustration and failure, learning-style preferences, special needs, and distracting things on their minds.

Whole-group instruction for a classroom of students with even a few of these differences is likely to leave many students bored or confused, so differentiation would seem to be a moral imperative.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, a leading expert in this area, makes the compelling case for effective attention to the learning needs of each student by orchestrating the learning environment, assessments, and instruction so all students learn what’s being taught.

Tomlinson suggests that teachers differentiate by content (what is taught), process (how it’s taught), and product (how students are asked to demonstrate their learning).

Differentiation is not without its critics, and they have raised a number of concerns:
  • Can a teacher realistically tailor instruction to 20-30 different students?
  • Can differentiation result in lowered expectations for students who are behind?
  • Does it balkanize classrooms, sacrificing group cohesion and collective experiences?
  • Is it even effective?

 Tomlinson stresses the importance of high standards, clear objectives, and frequent checks for understanding, and stoutly defends differentiation’s track record: students learn better when the work is at the right level of difficulty, personally relevant, and appropriately engaging.

Let’s step back and analyze the differentiation challenge from a broader perspective.

Consider the following classroom scenarios with two questions in mind: Which is the most and the least differentiated? And in which is the most learning taking place?
  • A college professor gives a lecture to 700 students
  • First graders sprawl on a rug engrossed in books they chose.
  • Fifth graders use a computer program that adapts the level of difficulty to their responses.
  • A Reading Recovery teacher tutors a struggling 1st grader for 30 minutes a day.
  • A middle-school physical education class does stretching and aerobic exercises in unison.

 On the first question, differentiation runs all the way from zero in the college lecture hall to 100 percent with one-on-one tutoring and a personalized computer program.

On the second question, well, it depends. Even one-on-one tutoring can be off-track on the curriculum and produce bored, confused, and alienated students.

But handled skillfully, each scenario has the potential for high levels of appropriate learning – even the college lecture (in the hands of a brilliant and charismatic professor) and the gym class (aerobic exercise has an especially beneficial impact on ADHD and overweight students).

The conclusion: trying to assess a teacher’s work asking, Is it differentiated? runs the risk of missing the forest for the trees.

Better to ask two broader questions: What are students supposed to be learning? Are all students mastering it?

Embedded in these questions are all the variables that research tells us will produce high levels of student learning: appropriate cognitive and non-cognitive goals; a positive classroom culture; instructional strategies that best convey the content; the right balance of whole-class, small-group, individual, and digital experiences; frequent checking for understanding; a clear standard of mastery (usually 80%); effective use of assessment to fine-tune teaching; and follow-up with students below mastery.

With these two questions in mind, teachers’ work falls logically into three phases – a different way of thinking about content, process, and product that is more in synch with the day-to-day work of schools:

Phase 1: Planning units and lessons: Good unit plans, ideally crafted by same-grade/ same subject teacher teams, focused on standards with clear statements of what students will know and be able to do; a pre-assessment; likely misconceptions; essential questions to guide students to the key understandings; periodic assessments; and a lesson-by-lesson game plan. All students learn more when content drives the choice of modalities.

Phase 2: Delivering instruction: Lessons are where the rubber meets the road and a major factor in student success is a set of in-the-moment moves that effective teachers have always used, among them effective classroom management; knowing students well; making the subject matter exciting; making it relevant; making it clear; taking advantage of visuals and props; involving students and getting them involved with each other; having a sense of humor; and nimbly using teachable moments.

Phase 3: Following up after instruction: No matter how well teachers plan and execute, some students won’t achieve mastery by the end of the lesson or unit. This is the moment of truth – if the class moves on, unsuccessful students will be that much more confused and discouraged and fall further and further behind, widening the achievement gap. Timely follow-up with these students is crucial – pullout, small-group after-school help, tutoring, and other strategies to help them catch up.

In all three phases, another priority is building students’ self-reliance and not doing too much for them. Among the most important life skills that students should take away from their K-12 years is the ability to self-assess, know their strengths and weaknesses, deal with difficulty and failure, and build a growth mindset. Student self-efficacy and independence should be prime considerations in planning, lesson execution, and follow-up so that students move through the grades becoming increasingly motivated, confident, and autonomous learners prepared to succeed in the wider world.

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Science of Timeouts

This week’s article summary is The Science of Timeouts

When we were kids, the discipline we received from our parents ranged from very strict to more permissive to somewhere in between.

I’d put my parents in the middle with a slight lean toward permissive. 

I was never spanked or hit, yet they were masters at making me feel guilty for my missteps and misbehaviors.

I doubt they read any parenting books; their parenting was more intuitive. But they definitely fell into what the article (and Positive Discipline) calls “authoritative discipline—firm but fair. 

When I was a kid, I knew what was expected of me as a student, person, son, sibling, and friend.  

My parents gave me plenty of room to make decisions about how to act and  be a student in school and, more importantly, how to play with others. My friends and I had ample play time without adult supervision. We had many disagreements, yet we aways managed to settle our disputes in a civil yet age-appropriate manner.

When I messed up (I never did anything too egregious), my errors were opportunities to learn and grow. 

I don’t have any memories of my parents lecturing me too much or sending me to bed without dinner. 

Rather they had a knack for putting the onus of my indiscretions on me and making me think and reflect and--with their guidance if needed--figure out how to make whatever I did wrong right again.

My parents didn’t know that--a la Positive Discipline--all kids search for 'belonging and significance' and that in our childhood years both agency (sense of self) and communion (sense of others) develop over time through practice and experience and positive role modeling from adults.

They weren’t too loose and permissive: an entitled, selfish, bratty, spoiled child was the last thing they wanted me to be or to become. Or overly strict: they understood intuitively that strict punishment hampers the development of intrinsic motivation and personal responsibility.

The article below provides an overview of what 50 years of research shows about what does and doesn’t work at home and in the classroom.

Certainly, societal norms, parenting, and childhood are vastly different now compared to 50 years ago. 

Yet, as I read this article I thought not only of my parents but also of our preplanning session with Kelly Gfroerer and her introduction of Positive Discipline.  I look forward to her remaining sessions, as my guess it will affirm what attuned parents I had!

Joe

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For centuries, spanking and other forms of corporal punishment were the main disciplinary tools of parents in America. 

In the 1960s, though, researchers began to turn their attention to a newfangled option: the timeout.

Sometimes controversial, the timeout is nevertheless now among the most mainstream 
disciplinary recommendations for children. 

The good news is that there's strong science supporting the timeout.

Studies of spanking or corporal punishment show that children who are spanked typically comply with parents in the short term but they become increasingly aggressive in the long term. 

Conversely, over 30 years of timeout research reveal that timeouts are effective at both home and school.

As with all things parenting, though, timeout has its controversies. 

Some critics say that timeout is unnecessary and harsh, and positive parenting should do the trick without the need for punishment.

A closer look, though, reveals less daylight between the schools of thought than it seems. 

Advocates of timeout agree that it's often misused. And they also push many of the positive parenting techniques advocated by researchers in the no-timeout camp.

So what does an appropriate timeout look like? 

First, it must be part of an otherwise warm and loving parent-child relationship. Timeout is a term originally shortened from "timeout from positive reinforcement," meaning that kids are forced to take a break from something they enjoy. If a kid is being ignored or treated badly by the parent, there's no positive reinforcement to take a break from. 

Praising for good behavior, awareness of a child's needs, and teaching about social skills like sharing and turn taking are crucial. Most children respond positively to the kind of parenting that the influential developmental psychologist Diane Baumrind characterized as "authoritative." Authoritative parents set firm boundaries for kids, but pair their expectations with warmth and responsiveness.

The next rule of thumb for timeout is that it should be used very specifically. Timeouts are for kids ages 2 to 6. (Older children are better served by consequences such as removal of privileges.) Parents should pick one or two behaviors — say, hitting and disobeying direct requests — and make very clear to children what behaviors will result in a timeout.

Effectiveness of timeout by duration is hard to study, but anywhere between 2 and 5 minutes is plenty.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Pros and Cons of Homework

This week’s article summary is Should Second Graders Get Homework? 

The article is about the Texas teacher who last week sent a letter to her students’ parents about not assigning homework for the school year. (You may have read or seen the myriad stories last week about this teacher and her letter.)

As the article attests, homework remains a controversial topic at most schools. 

Those who favor more homework argue that it develops responsibility and independence in students, reinforces skills and concepts taught in the classroom, and allows for greater exposure to content.

Those against homework feel that all kids—just like adults--need downtown at home, that too much homework often leads to tensions in families (it did for me both when I was a kid and parent), and that research shows no correlation between homework and student learning/achievement, especially in elementary school.

Education likes to debate issues in either/or extremes when, as most of us recognize, the middle ground is the appropriate place to be.

To me, some homework provides extrinsic structure for kids (and almost all of us need external limits) and develops student independence and confidence. 

But kids also need free, unstructured time after school to play, to pursue other interests, and to begin to develop intrinsic motivation by having opportunities to think, decide, reflect, imagine, and create on their own.

Ideally school should be so interesting and engaging that kids at home thirst to learn more or follow up on topics explored at school--especially easy in our digital age. While parents often ask “What do you learn in school today?”,  I think better questions to ask children begin with “why” and “what else do you want to know?” One of the pillars of my educational philosophy my belief and trust in kids to be intellectually curious and to pursue on their own.

After school should be a time when kids can read, think, research further, play, create, experiment, and, yes, sometimes practice skills taught at school.

Joe

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A second-grade teacher from Texas has taken parenting corners of the social media world by storm with a letter announcing her new homework policy. The policy? No homework at all. In the letter, which has been shared by thousands, she explains the reasoning behind her decision: 

"After much research this summer, I am trying something new. Homework will only consist of work that your student did not finish during the school day. There will be no formally assigned homework this year. Research had been unable to prove that homework improves student performance. Rather, I ask that you spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eating dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early."

The letter has its critics, of course: one unimpressed Facebook commenter argues that homework is “very crucial" in helping children "not only to learn schooling but also beginnings of responsibility," adding that "kids nowadays are definitely babied more.” 

But the majority of commenters express support for the policy, reflecting a pushback in recent years against what many parents say is too much homework. An ongoing poll on Debate.org asking whether schools should abolish homework currently shows 71% of respondents in favor of the idea.

A number of studies have found that students, especially those in elementary school, are on average assigned more homework than education experts recommend. One study published last year found that first and second-grade children were being assigned three times the homework load recommended by the National Education Association (NEA). Kindergarteners, who according to NEA recommendations should not have any homework at all, were assigned on average 25 minutes of work a night. 

Many anti-homework advocates have pointed out that there is little to no evidence that homework significantly improves academic performance in elementary students. For high schoolers, researchers have found links between moderate amounts of homework and achievement

“All the research and evidence point to the fact that no elementary school in America should be making students work a second shift with homework because there are no proven benefits, "Alfie Kohn, author of the book "The Homework Myth," told The Christian Science Monitor last year. "Homework is all pain and no gain." 
Indeed, researchers say, too much homework is not only ineffective but can also be harmful. 

"The cost is enormous," said Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, clinical director of the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology, to CNN. "The data shows that homework over the recommended level is not only not beneficial to children's grades or GPA, but there's really a plethora of evidence that it's detrimental to their attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social skills and their quality of life.” 

The second-grade teacher from Texas isn't the first educator to take this research – and complaints from displeased parents with overworked children – into consideration when establishing homework policies. Some schools have abolished homework altogether, citing “children's frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and family time and, sadly, for many, loss of interest in learning.” 

But not all parents and educators are in favor of less homework – especially those at elite schools. Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology at Duke University and the author of "The Battle Over Homework," says that attitudes toward homework swing in cycles lasting about 30 years – and, as the current anti-homework revolution has been underway since the early 2000s, we may be starting to see a backlash against the backlash. 


"We’re in a heavy-homeowork part of the cycle,” says Dr. Cooper. "The increasing competition for elite high schools and colleges has parents demanding more homework.