What's Going On with Boys?

This week's summary is What's Going On with Boys? It was written by an independent school teacher who’s a parent of a young girl and a younger boy.

The article provides an overview of the gradual decline over the past 15-20 years of boys’ academic performance in schools.

The prevailing culture of school today is often a mismatch for a lot of boys. 

First, boys’ brains mature later than girls, even in the preschool years. Girls on average have an easier time adjusting to the expectations of school, especially the emphasis on self-regulation, attention, and self-control.

Second, boys are generally more physical than girls, yet most school classrooms, particular in public schools, over the past 20 years have become more sedentary environments with little movement or recess time.

Third, with the ubiquity of technology, boys out of school spend a lot of time playing video games and are susceptible to social influencers who may espouse anti-social, misogynistic, hyper-masculine beliefs. Hence, boys can fall victim to dangerously poor role models.

Fourth, boys’ lack of readiness (both academically and social-emotionally) results in them lagging behind girls from early on in school. The current college graduation rate of female (60%) versus male (40%) is sobering evidence.

While there are no simple solutions for this, a very important need to help boys in school is the development and constant presence of strong relationships with their teachers. And the author reminds us that ultimately it’s up to us adults to develop these relationships. Some ways to do this are for teachers to show an interest in what boys do outside of school, to provide scaffolding to support boys’ emotional development, to allow some latitude for boys’ (mis)behavior, and to make all students a partner in expected classroom behavior.

At Trinity, we are clearly at an advantage in that many of the above recommendations are already utilized by our teachers.

Still, all of us need to be more mindful of the difference between boys and girls and avoid the negative bias about boys.

Joe

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When my daughter started kindergarten in 2021, she came home with stories about her new and wonderful experiences: what she was learning, who her teachers were, what the other kids were like. Almost within days, she began telling me another part of the story. 

“The boys are always in trouble,” she’d say.

“The boys are always at the teacher’s desk.” 

“The boys are so loud and distracting, I can’t concentrate sometimes.”

I began to worry about my then 3-year-old son. What was in store for him in two years’ time?

As both a parent and an educator, I felt compelled to answer this question: What’s going on with boys in school?” And as I researched and learned, the answer became clear: Boys are not doing as well in school as girls. 

In Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves provides evidence to back up this claim. Boys are twice as likely as girls to say that school is a waste of time, three times more likely to be expelled, and two times more likely to be suspended. In reading, girls are ahead by about one grade level, and reading and verbal skills are a strong predictor of college matriculation. So it should come as no surprise that young men attend and graduate from college much less often than young women. In 1972, 57% of college graduates were men; by 2022, only 42% of college graduates were men.

As I learned more and more about these alarming trends, I reflected on how rarely schools have explored issues that affect boys. By understanding what’s going on with boys—how their brains develop and what they are experiencing in today’s world—we can meet the moment to provide effective support for boys’ success inside and outside the classroom. 

One clue to help us understand what’s going on with boys in school lies in the significant differences in the timing of brain development of boys and girls. The first major gap in brain development occurs around kindergarten. One study shows that by age 5, girls are 14% more likely to be school-ready than boys. In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson describe typical young boys as having “high activity, impulsivity, and physicality.” This behavior is “often seen by teachers as something that must be overcome for a boy to succeed in school.” 

So from their very first school days, many boys are starting off on the wrong foot. This is exacerbated by female teachers being more likely than male teachers to view boys in their class as disruptive, while male teachers tend to have a more positive view of boys and their capabilities.

The gap between girls’ and boys’ brain development widens drastically during puberty. A typical girl’s prefrontal cortex matures about two years before a typical boy’s. The prefrontal cortex plays a role in planning, strategy, and executive decisions, inhibiting primal survival responses, and regulating emotional states. This offset in brain development and executive function has a direct impact on boys’ educational outcomes. Study after study suggests that the best-performing students are ‘good’ students … who have high levels of self-regulation, which is exactly the area where boys display, on average, a deficit compared to girls during adolescence. 

In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt, identifies two other sources of boys’ recent struggles in school: diminishing independence and free play; and massive amounts of time online, playing video games, using social media, and learning about masculinity from what is called “the manosphere”—a miasma of bloggers and influencers often hostile to women and feminism. Manosphere influencers have large followings including teen boys. They advocate a limited vision of what it means to be a man. According to a recent report “the more a man subscribes to cultural norms about manhood that support emotional repression, self-reliance, dominance, and control, the less mentally strong and adaptable he is.” The more likely he is to have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and bullying and sexual harassment of women.

In the face of these challenges, what can schools do? A study concluded that teachers need to cultivate a positive relationship with their boys. Even when boys make this challenging, it is crucial that educators overcome their own frustration and remind themselves that the relationship is their responsibility, not the boys’. 

The study painted a picture of a successful independent school teacher of boys, one who: employs transitive teaching (“the capacity of some element in the lesson … to hold student attention in a way that leads to understanding and mastery;” builds a strong relationship; shares a common interest; accommodates a measure of opposition; is willing to reveal vulnerability; and holds students to high standards.

Alongside the academic program, schools must also reconsider advisory, counseling, and co-curricular programs with boys in mind. Schools must provide the space, instruction, and practice so that boys can develop a wide-ranging emotional vocabulary to both understand themselves better and communicate their feelings more effectively. For boys of all ages, we should constructively channel their high activity level and give them positive ways to express it. 

These are the first steps in a journey to help boys identify and create what Reeves calls “a prosocial masculinity.” Kindlon and Thompson suggest several concrete strategies for formulating this identity: Talk to boys in ways that honor their pride; be direct with them; cast them as partners in problem-solving; teach them emotional courage; use discipline to build character, not to alienate or humiliate; model and practice emotional attachment; and teach boys that there are many ways to be a man. 

My journey into understanding the struggles boys are facing in schools today started from a personal place of concern for my son, but we should all be concerned for all our boys. Equipped with knowledge of the current state of boys and some strategies to point the way forward, I am confident that independent school educators can work together to change the story. As my children make their way through school, I hope they will tell me more stories about energetic, engaged, emotional, courageous, and awesome boys. 

Is Self-Discovery Effective Pedagogy

This week's article summary is The Seductive Appeal of Discovery Learning, and it provides an overview of the roots of progressive education. 

In a nutshell, progressive education trusts children’s innate curiosity as the catalyst of their learning. Contrast this belief with traditional education that emphasizes the importance of direct, explicit instruction from teachers.

Which is the better pedagogy, progressive or traditional?

We’re fortunate at Trinity in that we have always embraced the best of both progressive, child-centered teaching and traditional, teacher-directed learning.

From the progressive side, we recognize that student engagement is critical to their motivation for learning. We give our students time to explore and discover – sometimes directed by the teacher but other times trusting the child’s innate curiosity. From our experience, awe in the classroom, a subject of an earlier summary, can occur internally and externally.

From the traditional side, we recognize that children need to be directly taught certain concepts, skills, and procedures. Also, it’s the teacher’s responsibility to provide reinforcement opportunities to ensure new learning is firmly stored in students’ long-term memory.

I worked in a school that proudly defined itself as providing a rigorous, traditional education: the predominant pedagogy was teacher lecture, student note-taking, and written quizzes and exams to assess student learning.

I also worked in another school that proudly defined itself as providing a child-centered, progressive education: the common pedagogy was student exploration, problem-based learning, and focus on process over product.

I enjoyed teaching at both schools, but I always had the feeling that each one too rigidly adhered to a particular pedagogy: kids need variety.

So, as we are now settled into the school year, check yourself to see if you’re utilizing multiple pedagogical options to support your students being engaged and learning deeply!

Joe

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The historical roots of discovery learning are as follows:

The Romantic Ideal of Learning: Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that children learn best when they interact with nature and engage in real-world experiences, exploration, and discovery. Educators and parents in this tradition believe children are naturally curious and are capable, in the right conditions, of constructing knowledge independently. This romanticized idea is deeply ingrained in educational thought and resists empirical challenges.

The Progressive Movement: John Dewey and others inspired a movement holding that learning should be student-centered and driven by children’s natural curiosity and democratic values – and critical of rote memorization and instruction in which students were seen as passive sponges. These ideas became deeply embedded in teacher education. Terms like ‘guide on the side’ vs. ‘sage on the stage’ were popularized, reinforcing the idea that teachers should step back. 

Anti-Authority Sentiment: Discovery learning is allied to cultural and philosophical mistrust of hierarchical control, centralized expertise, and imposed knowledge. Thought leaders like Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich portrayed traditional education as a means of social control, viewing teachers with suspicion and mistrust. From this perspective, explicit instruction became equated with indoctrination, while discovery learning was seen as a path to emancipation. In this cultural context, discovery learning isn’t just a teaching method. It becomes a symbol of freedom, self-determination, and resistance to authority. 

Cultural and Political Appeal: Self-directed learning resonates with the values of independence, creativity, innovation, personal growth, self-reliance, and breaking free of outdated traditions – values that are prized in western societies. This points to repositioning the teacher from authority figure to facilitator, with children constructing their own understanding rather than being told how the world works. 

All this explains the continuing appeal of discovery learning, yet this teaching method has not stood up well to educational research. Strong empirical evidence shows that explicit, teacher-guided instruction is better than discovery learning in three ways:

• It’s more effective – students learn more
• It’s more efficient – it takes less time and mental effort
• It’s more fulfilling – students feel successful and are motivated to learn more 

Given the research track record, why does discovery learning continue to have so much support? 

Overgeneralizing Success Stories: It’s true that some students thrive in a discovery-based learning environment, especially those who are already highly motivated and have a strong foundation of prior knowledge. But these students are not representative of the general student population, including many in under-resourced communities. 

Confirmation Bias: People tend to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, while ignoring or downplaying evidence that contradicts them. This can happen when educators see some success with discovery-based approaches, selectively remembering those successes and overlooking things that didn’t work out as well. 

The Illusion of Understanding: While students are engaged and working hard with discovery learning, it can feel like they’re learning deeply, but they may be reaching incorrect solutions and buying into misconceptions. Students may feel like they get it because of the effort they’ve put in, and may be resistant to correction, even if they get timely feedback. 

The Constructivist Teaching Fallacy: It’s true that people learn best by integrating new information into their existing knowledge structures. But when teachers provide only minimal guidance, students may not have enough information to construct coherent knowledge.

The Appeal of Active Learning: Research shows that active learning enhances retention, but if students use trial and error to solve a problem, they may have no idea how they got there. Well-guided discovery and explicit instruction can still be highly interactive and engaging.

 Treating Students as Experts: The idea behind discovery learning is that since scientists and other experts work through discovery, students can learn that way too. But experts see the world differently than novices, bringing to bear extensive background knowledge and mental models that guide them as they wrestle with problems. Scientists do science and students learn science. 

Studies in cognitive science consistently demonstrate that students learn best when they’re first explicitly taught foundational concepts before engaging in problem-solving or exploration. Scaffolding and well-designed instructional sequences allow students to explore and apply knowledge meaningfully after they have been given the necessary tools. This doesn’t mean that learning should be passive. Well-designed instruction incorporates active engagement, inquiry, and critical thinking, but within a framework that provides necessary support. 

Developing Student Independence

This week's article summary is Are Today's Students Really Less Independent Than Previous Generations.

My wife and I had very different high school experiences, even though our schools were only two miles from each other.

My wife attended a very large public school (600 students in her graduation class) while I attended a much smaller private school (85 kids in my graduation class).

She was a straight A student; I got mostly Bs.

But when we went to college, she struggled mightily and I blossomed.

We’re about the same in terms of IQ and ambition. 

So, why was it easy for me to transition to college and such a shock to my wife?

I think the key differentiator for me was my high school placed the responsibility for my learning directly on me. Over my four years in high school I learned how to study (although through fits and starts), how to synthesize material, how to ask for help, and how to organize myself and my time. High school for me an apprenticeship. By the time I got to college, I had pretty much figured out how to be an independent student.

My wife conversely in high school was asked to follow along in class, fill our worksheets, and take fairly low-level assessments, e.g., fill-in-the-blank questions. She generated an impressive GPA but didn’t learn how to study or how to think. Her undergraduate college years were where she learned how to be a student. It wasn’t until graduate school that her performance and grades caught up to her ability.

We at Trinity are committed in helping our students develop not only a strong moral, ethical character, but also organizational and executive function skills and habits needed for success in middle school and beyond. As nearly all our graduates matriculate to private schools like the one I attended, they need these study skills and habits to thrive.

As our kids move through the grades at Trinity they first learn how to self-regulate, then learn to be attentive in class, and finally by fifth and sixth grade they become more responsible for their time management. In age-appropriate ways, they learn to be persistent, resilient, and independent.

As you’ll see in the article below, there is concern that high school students today lack self-confidence and agency. 

Yet I feel proud that what we stress for our students is what they need to be not only successful students but high-functioning adults in the workplace!

Joe

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Are adolescents less independent thinkers and decisionmakers now than they were a decade ago?

A good number of teachers in middle and high school report that their students are struggling to direct their own learning, advocate for themselves, and take responsibility for their education.

There can be big repercussions for students who struggle to self-govern, especially high schoolers who are preparing to launch into the real world where the ability to work and learn independently is a prerequisite for success in college and the workforce.

However, with a lack of research on whether adolescents are less independent than they were 10 years ago, that leaves anecdotes and media coverage to color people’s perceptions of adolescents’ independence or lack thereof.

Whether the problem is exaggerated by some doesn’t change the fact that middle and high school students need to learn how to be independent. Goal-setting, delayed gratification, self-management of emotions—these are all social-emotional skills that lead to greater independence. It’s the teaching of nonacademic skills that are essential to success in school and life. 

Although it may seem counterintuitive for adolescents, a major part of being independent is knowing how to communicate their needs and ask for help. Teaching students how to manage their emotions so they persist when tasks get challenging is also key.

SEL experts say there’s long been a perception among educators that SEL is a “little kids thing,” discounting its importance for older students. Most SEL curricula and programs are directed toward younger students, and they fall flat when grafted onto a secondary school program. Incorporating SEL into middle and high school can also be challenging simply from a scheduling perspective. As students move from class to class, there is no single teacher who “owns” SEL. Plus, with a heavy focus on coursework in the upper grades, teachers may feel they don’t have the bandwidth to incorporate SEL into their daily lessons.

Middle and high school students need SEL programming that is designed for their developmental needs. Chief among those needs is learning how to become independent from adults. Giving middle and high school students more responsibility and control in how their classes and schools are run—"choice and voice” in SEL parlance—is a powerful way to help students build these skills .

Being an independent thinker and decision maker has always been an important trait for success in college and the workforce. The notion of self-directed learning, and upskilling and reskilling as the economy shifts is going to separate people who are going to be successful from those who are going to struggle in a knowledge-based economy.

Building Agency in Students

 This week's summary is Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results, and it carries on the theme of developing student independence and autonomy in last week’s summary 

One of our goals as a school is to support the development of agency in our students. 

The formal definition of agency is as follows: The sense of control you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and belief in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations -- agency helps you be psychologically stable yet flexible in the face of conflict or change.

It’s an apt description of a well-functioning and regulated adult, which is what we hope our students become.

At admissions events, I express a simpler definition of for prospective parents: we develop in our students a strong, confident sense of self.

The article below reminds us through examples that agency in our students needs to be cultivate and developed with scaffolding, direction, and intentionality.

The last paragraph of the article was particularly impactful for me: Let kids do for themselves what they can already do, guide and encourage them to do things they can almost do, and teach and model for them the things they can’t do yet.

 Joe

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Many young adults feel woefully unprepared for life in the work force.

Employers agree, saying that new hires from GenZ lack initiative, communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and resilience. 

The reason? It’s not just social media and the pandemic. It’s also because parents and schools aren’t building enough agency into childrearing and schooling. 

Giving kids agency doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want. It doesn’t mean lowering expectations, turning education into entertainment, or allowing children to choose their own adventure. It involves orchestrating the development of three important life skills:

• Identifying and pursuing goals that are meaningful to young people
• Building strategies and skills to reach those goals
• Assessing progress and making course corrections

The problem is that very few students have these experiences, which may be why the percent of kids who say they love school goes from 74 percent in third grade to only 26 percent in tenth grade. 

Studies around the world show that building in goal-setting, strategy development, and self-monitoring has a significant positive impact on classroom engagement, grades, peer-to-peer comity, and happiness .

Some specific examples:

At the start of a lesson on the solar system, instead of giving a step-by-step outline, the teacher asks students what they’re curious about, what they’re interested in and care about, and what they want to know.

Instead of using controlling language – You need to read this article by Friday – taking a reasoning approach – I’m assigning this article because I want you to understand how photosynthesis can be useful in trying to invent new climate change technology. Reasoning language lowers the shield and kids open up. 

Instead of saying, Here is an example of a good essay. Please go write one, a teacher says, Here is an example of a good essay. What is your goal for your first draft? and then monitors and coaches as students write.

A Dallas, Texas elementary teacher has her students set learning goals in every class and reports that students chase her down in the hallway to report on their progress, proud of what they’ve accomplished. 

Rather than ordering a resistant child to do homework, a parent says, I know you hate doing homework. I felt that way too when I was a kid. But homework can make a big difference in helping you master a new skill. We could work for 15 minutes and then take a break, or would you rather take a break now and start in an hour?

In the words of psychologist Aliza Pressman: “Let kids do for themselves what they can already do, guide them and encourage them to do things they can almost do, and then teach and model for them the things that they can’t do.” 

Building Resilience in Children

This week's article summary is How to Raise Kids That Can Handle Any Challenge.

While the article’s intended audience is parents, teachers can glean much from the article as well.

Our goal as parents/teachers is for our children/students to develop into independent, fulfilled, compassionate, and resilient adults.

But sometimes in care for our children, we neglect to give them enough freedom and latitude to make decisions (good and bad) and to experience the inevitable highs and lows of life. Part of growing up is learning from mistakes and coping with failure and disappointment.

Yet it seems to be in our nature as adults to rush to provide help and assistance to children, hence not giving them the opportunity to figure things out for themselves. 

Similarly, children are quick to fall into the habit of too quickly asking for help. 

As parents and teachers, we need to learn to trust our children/students more and embrace the journey not only the outcome of learning (and life). 

I appreciated the five recommendations from the article on how to support children: prepare rather than protect them, listen more than lecture, comfort more than chide,  collaborate more than control, and celebrate imperfection rather than expect perfection.

Joe

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The parenting trends of today are not setting up our kids for success. Overprotection, control, and perfectionism are causing more problems than they are worth. Research suggests better ways to connect with and guide your children—ways that serve their futures, and the future of society.

Below are five insights from the book Hello, Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies for Raising terrific Kids in Terrifying Times.

Preparing is better than protecting:

When we ask ourselves what our number one job is as parents, we would all most likely agree that we want to help our kids become independent and well-adjusted adults. We want them to grow into human beings who can take care of themselves, as well as others, and who can manage all kinds of situations, including ones they’ve never come across before. Ironically, many common parenting trends and instincts work against this goal.

First, we often think we should protect our kids from hard experiences and curate their environment so they are always comfortable. These approaches make kids less able to tolerate and work through challenges and discomfort. Getting better at hard things takes practice. We need to give our kids opportunities to practice dealing with frustration and disappointment.

We also sometimes fear for our kids’ physical safety when we shouldn’t. We don’t let them walk to school or play outside with friends because we have been fed misleading statistics about stranger danger. By constantly hovering, intervening, and protecting, we rob our kids of opportunities to build social and problem-solving skills.

We often step in and do things for our kids to ensure that they don’t fail, too. We take over their science projects, pay them for good grades, hire private baseball coaches, and put them in intensive acting classes. We do it because we worry about their futures, but this kind of overprotection and pressure can backfire, putting kids’ futures at risk. The pressure parents put on kids to excel increases the chance that kids will develop low self-esteem, use substances, and suffer from mental health problems. When we emphasize that success is the only acceptable outcome, we make kids less willing to try hard things. We make them less resilient.

 Listening is better than lecturing:

Ask kids questions. It’s simple, takes the pressure off, and is a great way to start a conversation. Asking kids questions gives you a moment to breathe, gives them the chance to share their perspective before you jump in, and can help clarify the aspects of the topic you may want to zero in on next. 

Asking questions also models a curious mindset, which is important for kids to see in us. We want kids to learn that life isn’t about always having the answers, that everyone is a lifelong learner, and that it is okay to make mistakes. Asking questions tells kids that we, as adults, are still curious and willing to learn—and that as they grow up, they should be, too.

Listening to kids—really, truly listening—is crucial. When kids feel heard and understood, they feel valued and loved, as well as calmer and safer. They become more connected to us and more willing to listen to our perspective. They feel less aggrieved. They learn through our modeling to listen to their friends and other loved ones, which helps them build stronger relationships over the course of their lives.

Listening to kids benefits humanity more broadly, too. From the research, we know that when people feel heard, they become more self-reflective, humble, and less extreme in their beliefs. When we deeply listen to our kids, we are helping build a less polarized, more open-minded, and more respectful society.

Comforting is better than chiding:

Kids have big feelings. Emotions are part of the human condition, although some of us are more attuned to them than others. Feelings provide essential information about our wants and needs.

For a long time, parents were encouraged to ignore, diminish, or chide their kids for their emotions. The problem is that when we communicate to kids that their feelings aren’t welcome, several unfortunate things can happen. First, when kids perceive that we are uncomfortable around feelings, they may stop coming to us when they are upset or in need of help, because they assume we’d rather not know. This can close crucial opportunities for connection and understanding.

When we chide kids for their big feelings, they may also learn to suppress or repress feelings instead of expressing them, which then makes it harder for them to listen to and interpret the useful information their feelings offer. When feelings are suppressed, kids are also not given the opportunity to practice different coping skills for learning how to emotionally regulate.

We also know from research that when parents comfort their children and regularly discuss feelings, children become more compassionate. If a child wants to do something nice for a friend, she has to be able to perceive her friend’s feelings and needs. She has to be able to read her friend’s face and body language and translate that into an understanding of what her friend is going through and what she might need, without letting her own feelings and desires get in the way. Studies have shown that the more parents talk about feelings, the more helpful and generous kids (even toddlers) tend to be.

Negotiating is better than controlling:

Parents often feel the need to assert themselves and take control. If we don’t, our kids will take advantage of us, right? But this is not what the research shows. When parents are overly controlling, kids tend to act out more and are more likely to develop mental health problems and substance abuse issues. Yes, we should be in charge, but we will be much more successful if we do it in a way that is respectful and allows for our children’s autonomy.

This notion is especially important when managing kids’ screen time and social media use. Rules and limits can be helpful, especially with younger kids. But with tweens and teens, research suggests that what works best is when parents set limits while also considering their child’s perspective and involving them in the decision. Instead of saying, “You can’t have TikTok, end of story,” we will be much more successful if we ask our kids what they find compelling about it, research the app along with them, discuss its benefits and drawbacks, and help our kids understand our concerns. When we restrict or assert without open communication, our kids may not understand the rationale behind our decision and may be less likely to respect it.

Blundering is better than mastering:

One reason parenting seems so hard is that it feels like the stakes are so high. We are expected to always know what we’re doing, always know what to say, and how to react. We are expected to be perfect.

But the research suggests that when it comes to parenting, imperfection is preferable to perfection. When we make mistakes, we illustrate to our kids that nobody’s perfect, so it’s okay that they aren’t, too. When we accidentally yell at our kids, we are then given the opportunity to model for them how to take responsibility for their actions and how to apologize. When we fight in front of our kids, we are giving them the opportunity to learn how to engage in healthy conflict. When we don’t have the answers to their questions, we can model curiosity and information literacy by inviting our kids to research the topic with us. We can show them how to use Google and how to identify trustworthy sources. When we tell our kids something and later realize it wasn’t accurate, we can be honest with them about it, illustrating to them the value of acknowledging our blunders and keeping an open mind.

Parenting is a form of activism. Through the ways we engage with our kids and the conversations we have, we can help our children learn key life skills—healthy coping, resilience, empathy, financial literacy, humility, open-mindedness, and media literacy, among others. We, as parents, can build a stronger, more humane world based on how we raise our kids.

 

Wonder in the Classroom

 This week's article summary is How Experiencing Wonder Helps Kids Learn. Its focus is how critical a sense of awe is in learning.

Our students are at the onset of a new grade: through this newness they will experience awe as they’re exposed to new knowledge, content, and classroom expectations. 

These elementary years are so enjoyable because student learning and growth is so dramatic and visible.

While we may think awe in humans is primarily an emotional experience, it also occurs in the cognitive realm. I still remember an a-ha moment as a sixth grader when I finally understood how to add and subtract negative numbers; I had struggled for days with this concept and then in an instant a light switch went on in my brain. I experienced both awe and relief (as I was the last kid in class to understand this concept).

Our students are innately curious, yet a sense of excitement and wonder help them maintain interest and motivation to learn new things.

As many of us know, for new information to be retained in long-term memory, it requires frequent reinforcement. Hearing or seeing something new one time rarely results in the information being remembered. Awe helps us find new ideas intriguing, but then it’s up to practice, including retrieval, to store it permanently.

Awe is the impetus, or, as the article states, “awe motivates people to explore things that stretch their understanding of the world.”

Our young learners are eager and excited to learn. Our responsibility is to offer them experiences and ideas that stimulate their awe.

Thank you for a great start to the school year!

Joe

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Awe is perhaps our most overlooked and undervalued emotion. It is what we feel when we encounter something vast, wondrous, or beyond our ordinary frame of reference. It is the feeling that washes over us when we hear a beautiful song, watch a flock of geese fly south, or see images from the new NASA telescope.

Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley who has spent two decades studying this emotion, describes three ways you might know you are experiencing awe: tears, chills, and “whoa.”  For example:

• Think of a moment when you watched your child do something beautiful, and your eyes got misty (tears).
• Think of a time you heard a song or a story on the radio, or read a passage of text, that gave you goosebumps (chills).
• Think of a time when you saw a stunning sunset or vista that prompted you to utter, “Wow!” (whoa).

For kids, especially, I would add this: wide eyes. I love seeing a young child’s eyes pop with amazement when they encounter something brand new—like a chicken hatching out of an egg, an ocean wave, a parade, a street performer, or a baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano. 

We can all find the extraordinary in the ordinary  -- the wonders of life are so often nearby.

Awe is more than an emotion of the heart. It also improves our thinking. That’s because cognitive accommodation is a feature of awe. Put simply, when we learn something new, we alter or expand our existing mental schemas to make room for it.

Cognitive accommodation is at the heart of good education: It is what allows students to build on prior knowledge to revise, expand, and deepen their understanding of a concept. 

Awe is sometimes described as a “knowledge emotion.” Paul Silvia, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina describes knowledge emotions as “a family of emotional states that foster learning, exploring, and reflecting.” These emotions include surprise, interest, confusion, and awe and stem from experiences that are “unexpected, complicated, and mentally challenging, and they motivate learning in its broadest sense.” According to Silvia, awe is a powerful educational tool because it motivates people to explore things that stretch their understanding of the world. 

According to researchers, curiosity has a “fundamental impact on learning and memory.” When kids are curious, they are more motivated to learn and more adept at retaining information.

This is news teachers and parents can use. Engaging with kids’ big questions and helping them discover what sparks their curiosity is a concrete way to support their learning in general. The challenge is not to make them fall in love with all subjects. But what if we nurtured their curiosity with one or two? What if we paid close attention to what sparked their interest, what inspired their awe, and nudged it along?

What Fulfills People?

Thank you for an uplifting and productive first week of preplanning! So much productive energy, camaraderie, dialogue,  consistent messaging, and ample time to prepare classrooms -- especially in the EED -- and plan with classroom and grade teams.

For me, there’s always a mix of excitement and worry as we begin prepping for and putting the finishing touches on what’s needed for a smooth start of school. I feel the same when I host Thanksgiving or Christmas!

Yet, preplanning is professionally fulfilling with its opportunities for to learn, grow, collaborate, and socialize together.

This year there’s special aura of esprit de corps. Let’s continue to build on this momentum and inaugurate the year with energy, positivity, purpose, and, of course, fun!

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

I don’t agree with every article. In fact, I  especially enjoy the ones that challenge me to reflect on my educational beliefs and even confront my educational biases.

This week’s article summary is What Makes People Flourish.

Finding personal and professional happiness and fulfillment is the life goal for most of us. Teachers are selflessly dedicated to their students, yet we need to ensure we’re attending to our needs as well. 

The French philosopher Voltaire is often credited (somewhat erroneously) with the aphorism perfection is the enemy of the good. I know we strive to be perfect in all we do for our students, but as we gear up for the start of the school year, let’s accept there will be times when good enough will have to do. Give yourself grace to not be perfect every day of the school year.

According to the article, happiness and fulfillment (human flourishment) comprise six key dimensions:

• Life Satisfaction and happiness
• Physical and mental health
• Meaning and purpose
• Character and virtue
• Close social relationships
• Financial and material stability

As head into the new school year with responsibility for 602 students, think about how you help develop and support these flourishment dimensions in your students (excluding financial stability), colleagues, and especially yourself!

Enjoy the final weekend of summer break!

Joe

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What does it mean to live a good life? For centuries, philosophers, scientists and people of different cultures have tried to answer this question. All agree that the good life is more than just feeling good − it’s about becoming whole.

More recently, researchers have focused on the idea of flourishing, not simply as happiness or success, but as a multidimensional state of well-being that involves positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment − an idea that traces back to Aristotle.

Flourishing is not just well-being and how you feel on the inside. It’s about your whole life being good. Things such as your home, your neighborhood, your workplace, and your friends all matter.

An international collaboration called the Global Flourishing Study annually surveys people to find patterns of human flourishing across cultures. Do people in some countries thrive more than others? What makes the biggest difference in a person’s well-being? Are there things people can do to improve their own lives?

The survey asks people about their lives, their happiness, their health, their childhood experiences, and how they feel about their financial situation. It looks at six dimensions of a flourishing life:

• Happiness and life satisfaction: How content and fulfilled people feel with their lives
• Physical and mental health: How healthy people feel, in both body and mind
• Meaning and purpose: Whether people feel their lives are significant and moving in a clear direction
• Character and virtue: How people act to promote good, even in tough situations
• Close social relationships: How satisfied people are with their friendships and family ties
• Financial and material stability: Whether people feel secure about their basic needs, including food, housing and money

Some countries and groups of people are doing better than others.

We were surprised that in many countries young people are not doing as well as older adults. Earlier studies had suggested well-being follows a U-shape over the course of a lifespan, with the lowest point in middle age. Our new results imply that younger adults today face growing mental health challenges, financial insecurity, and a loss of meaning that are disrupting the traditional U-shaped curve of well-being.

Married people usually reported more support, better relationships and more meaning in life.

People who were working tend to feel more secure and happy than people who were seeking jobs.

People who go to religious services once a week or more typically reported higher scores in all areas of flourishing – particularly happiness, meaning, and relationships. It seems that religious communities offer what psychologists of religion call the four Bs: belonging, in the form of social support; bonding, in the form of spiritual connection; behaving, in the cultivation of character and virtue through the practices and norms taught within religious communities; and believing, in the form of embracing hope, forgiveness, and shared spiritual convictions.

Your early years shape how you do later in life. But even if life started off as challenging, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Some people who had difficult childhoods, having experienced abuse or poverty, still found meaning and purpose later as adults. In some countries, including the U.S. and Argentina, hardship in childhood seemed to build resilience and purpose in adulthood.

Some countries are doing better than others when it comes to flourishing.

Indonesia is thriving. People there scored high in many areas, including meaning, purpose, relationships and character. Indonesia is one of the highest-scoring countries in most of the indicators in the whole study. Mexico and the Philippines also show strong results. Even though these countries have less money than some others, people report strong family ties, spiritual lives, and community support.

Japan and Turkey report lower scores. Japan has a strong economy, but people there report lower happiness and weaker social connections. Long work hours and stress may be part of the reason. In Turkey, political and financial challenges may be hurting people’s sense of trust and security.

One surprising result is that richer countries, including the United States and Sweden, are not flourishing as well as some others. They do well on financial stability but score lower in meaning and relationships. Having more money doesn’t always mean people are doing better in life. In fact, countries with higher income often report lower levels of meaning and purpose. 

The Global Flourishing Study is helping us see that people all over the world want many of the same basic things: to be happy, healthy, connected, and safe. But different countries reach those goals in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to flourishing. What it means to flourish can look different from place to place and from one person to another. 

Thank You for a Great 2024-25 School Year

This year's final article summary is Teaching is Hard. Why Teachers Love it Anyway.

As we come to the end of another exemplary school year, all of us are exhausted and more than ready for summer break.

This final summary is a reminder that no matter how fatigued and frustrated we can get during a long school year, our jobs still provide us with much fulfillment.

When I was about to start my senior year in college, I remember talking my dad talking to me one night as we watched a Yankees game on TV. We generally didn’t share our feelings and stuck more to topics like sports, but for some reason he was in a more reflective mood that night.

From out of nowhere, he said to me that wherever my post-college career took me, he wanted me to be happy and fulfilled. He said that as a dentist, he had been able to provide financially for his family but that the job of dentistry was more a chore than a passion for him. He told me to try to find an occupation in which I loved getting up in the morning and going to work. 

At that point I had no idea I would become a teacher. I was a history major at a small liberal arts college and assumed I would head to law or medical school after my undergraduate studies like most of my classmates. But during my senior year, I just wasn’t excited about going to either law or med school. I was a little burned out from my studies and decided to take a gap year to re-energize. 

It was a freak coincidence that I was offered a job at an independent school teaching middle school English and coaching middle and upper school soccer, basketball, and baseball.

Within two weeks of working with kids in the classroom and on the sports fields, I knew I had found my calling and purpose – the epiphany moment in life we all hope to get!

I don’t think my dad thought teaching would be my career, but I am ever thankful to him for his advice and support. 

45 years later I’m wiser, grayer, and more experienced, yet the passion I had as a 22 year old is still present.

I hope you’re as fulfilled as I am working in schools in general and Trinity in particular, as there’s no school I’ve worked in or visited that is as magical as Trinity.

Thank you all for a another great school year and enjoy summer break!

Joe

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There is no shortage of stories about how teachers have a difficult job. They work long hours for not a lot of money, and they are expected to meet a wide range of student needs – physical, academic, and social-emotional—physical, academic, and social-emotional -- with limited resources.

But the job can be beautiful, too. There are special moments unique to the profession—the inside jokes with a roomful of tweens or teens, the moment a student’s face lights up as they grasp a difficult concept, the feeling of making a real difference in young people’s lives.

 Education Week asked teachers on social media to share their favorite part of teaching. Dozens of teachers weighed in, with thoughtful, heartwarming responses about what makes the job worthwhile.

 The Lightbulb Moments: One of the most common responses from teachers was that their favorite part of teaching is when a student suddenly gets it. The times when students are curious and engaged in a lesson are what one teacher called “magic moments.”

• When you convince a student to not give up, and it is followed by a moment of insight leading to happy success, and then eight years later that student shows up to give you a hug and show you her doctorate...that is a heart-melting thrill!
• Seeing the 'I get it!' moment. Teaching math is tough but these moments make it worth it.
• Seeing my 5th graders' faces light up when they understand a math concept after trying many times. It is very emotional

The Relationships with Kids: The research is clear: Strong student-teacher relationships are key to student success on practically every measure schools care about. Those bonds and connections also constitute many teachers’ favorite parts of the job.

• Recess. Going out to play with the kids. Chatting with them about stuff, like movies, and pets, and vacations, and places to eat....you know, getting to know them as people.
• When kids get really into a book, movie, or video game that I share with them.
• Spending my days with kids. They are so much more fun than adults. So much hope, and intensity and excitement. 

The Instruction: Teachers spend a lot of time in meetings and doing administrative work. But there’s nothing like the actual work of teaching, teachers said.

• Preparing lessons! No kidding. I dream about my lessons in anticipation for enthusiasm from my students.
• Actually teaching! There’s so much on our plate these days with testing and more testing, dealing with behaviors. I love just being able to teach. And forget about all the other stuff.
• Seeing students' lens on a topic, their questions and wonders, their perspectives and curiosities—a collaborative learning experience, so to speak, where you teach and they teach you with their curiosities.

The Subject: Many teachers entered the profession because they are passionate about a subject—literature, math, science, art—and want to share that passion with students.

• The read aloud! That moment when you go to close the book and the kids beg for "one more chapter, please!!!" For me, it's a great bonding time; and I love developing a love of stories.
• I'm an art teacher because when I was a kid, making art was the only area of my life in which I had any sense of control. I enjoy providing a safe space for students to express themselves while also learning a discipline that will benefit them later in life.
• I’m a music teacher. Allowing students to express themselves, learn collaborative teamwork and responsibility, learn to both give and take constructive criticism in a safe environment where it’s OK to make mistakes and try again….while having fun (and still learning a hundred standards that need taught). It’s gratifying to watch students create performances through music from start to finish and seeing them light up at the progress they have made. It was one of the things I enjoyed coming to school for each day, and I want to share that with my students.

 The Lasting Impact: Many teachers said their favorite part of teaching is the knowledge that their work matters—and makes a difference in students’ lives for years to come.

• When they contact me long after graduation to let me know how much they learned in my classes. Really anything that expresses that my effort was not wasted.
• Seeing former students as successful adults. It reminds us why we do what we do.
• Seeing students apply the standards in my classroom to their own lives and seeing them succeed because of it.

The Benefits of Teacher Read-aloud in Classrooms

This week's article summary is Make Time for the Read-Aloud.

As most reading is done silently, children don’t get much opportunity to hear an adult (teacher or parent) read with clarity and intonation. 

There are many benefits to reading aloud to children, no matter what age. As the article states, the benefits of reading aloud to children has been supported by countless research studies for decades.

While engaging them in the joy of reading, reading aloud also helps children begin to understand how writing is structured.

They also get to hear the correct pronunciation of words and, if they are following along with the text, they can see how punctuation supports word syntax.

The article below provides some ways teachers and parents can prep in advance to ensure their oral reading not only engages kids but also helps them enhance their own literacy skills.

Joe

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Reading aloud to students during class time may sound like a quaint endeavor from a bygone era. 

But literacy experts insist that it’s every bit as relevant now as ever, and they urge English/language arts teachers—especially of early elementary students (although many experts espouse the practice as meaningful throughout K-12)—to make the ritual part of their daily instructional practice.

The “read-aloud” requires a significant commitment by the teacher—beyond simply committing to the act of reading aloud to students routinely. In its most effective form, the read-aloud demands thoughtful advanced preparation. It’s time well-spent, say literacy experts.

“I would argue that, of all components of reading, read-alouds have one of the longest-standing research bases. There’s a lot of data showing the power of read-alouds,” said Molly Ness, a former teacher, reading researcher, and vice president of academic content at Learning Ally, a nonprofit organization that supports educators.

Ness’s perspective isn’t new. The Commission on Reading, in 1985, declared read-alouds “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading.”

The rationale behind support for the read-aloud is simple: The activity offers an engaging way to pack a big literacy “punch” into a single classroom activity, particularly regarding reading comprehension. 

“The read-aloud increases vocabulary and background knowledge, which increases comprehension. And the better you can understand, the more likely you are to read, and it becomes this cycle, an upward spiral of a literary trajectory,” Ness said.

Below, literacy experts and teachers share three strategies on how to plan for read-alouds that ignite a passion for the joy of reading while also boosting literacy skills.

Examine texts for literacy components: Ness recommends that, well before picking up a text to read to students, teachers consider its potential obstacles and opportunities by asking themselves questions like: Will the vocabulary present a challenge? Do students have the background knowledge to grasp the text’s content? Weighing these elements beforehand can help teachers plan a developmentally appropriate read-aloud accordingly, she explains. Try to choose texts whose content matches what is being taught in other classes. This strategy mirrors an instructional strategy a growing number of districts are implementing called “knowledge-building curriculum,” which is intentionally designed to grow students’ knowledge about topics they’re learning in other classes, including in social studies and science.

Choose texts that unlock the joy of reading: While read-alouds aim to boost literacy skills, their goal of sparking the joy of reading is perhaps equally important. Not every student will be attracted to the same text, but there do seem to be some common features in literature that children find engaging. A 2023 Harvard study assessed factors that contribute to “story absorption”—the mental state a reader experiences when fully immersed in a story. Students prefer information presented in a narrative format, regardless of whether the text was fiction or nonfiction. Mysteries and fast-paced plots proved to be engaging genres to young readers. Respondents said they were also drawn to characters who are misfits as well as those to whom they could personally relate.

Make seating arrangements a high priority: Seating arrangements can impact students’ learning experience. At the very least, all students should be able to see and hear the teacher with ease. To promote the read-aloud as a special ritual, teachers may consider emphasizing students’ physical comfort, some proponents of the practice suggest—perhaps allowing them to stretch out on a rug or use pillows or bean-bag chairs. But ultimately, teachers will need to assess their students individually and as a class before determining how to balance the twin goals of creating an environment for the read-aloud that encourages comfort yet supports students’ ability to focus on the learning activity. Presenting a read-aloud differs from a standard classroom presentation. Appropriate prosody—reading with expression and meaning, which includes elements like correct pronunciation, appropriate pace, effective pauses, and adopting different dialects—takes practice. Doing it daily, as literacy experts suggest, allows for plenty of practice.

“There are so many reasons to read aloud to students,” Ness said.

Are Educational Apps Valuable For Learning in Early Childhood

This week's article summary is Can Young Children Learn from Educational Apps?

Last summer, I spent a week with my grandkids in Hilton Head. Most of the time they were either on the beach or in the backyard swimming pool. In the early morning and late afternoon they played various card and board games with my wife and me.

What was interesting to me was during the entire week they never asked to watch TV or to use any technology. On the five-hour drive from Atlanta, they had used their iPads, but once they got to the beach, they ignored technology.

Even though my grandkids never asked for technology, we adults occasionally offered them technology as a distraction, so we could have some adult time. (You can only play so much Uno after all.) 

What further amazed me was how quickly my grandkids laser focused on whatever app they opened or You Tube video they watched. They were transfixed until we physically yanked the iPads from them. 

So, the article below intrigued me. Do younger children (my grandkids are now 8 and 6) learn from technology?

With certain parameters and enhancements, educational apps, including video games, can result in student learning. 

The article refers to the Sesame Street ‘video deficit’ effect: kids don’t learn lessons through TV shows, even if they’re ostensibly educational. They need human interaction, dialogue, and explanation to have lessons from TV or educational apps stick and transfer to real life. 

So, the lesson for parents and teachers is there is certainly a place for technology to support young children’s learning but nothing as of yet is a substitute for human interaction. (Take that, ChatGPT!)

I’ll remember this article this summer, as I endure never-ending games of Uno with my grandkids rather than tempt them with an iPad!

Joe

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Parents often hear about the dangers of screen time for children, but rarely does there seem to be a distinction among different types of screen time. 

In particular, apps on smartphones or touchscreen devices for children seem to be growing in popularity, even among young children. 

In fact, research finds that 90% of children aged 2 to 3 years use a touchscreen device and that infants and toddlers on average spend 10 to 45 min per day on touchscreen devices.

Many apps claim to be “educational” and some apps are used as part of the curriculum in elementary school classrooms. 

Can young children actually learn from this technology? Are apps more educational than TV shows and movies? And if parents allow their children to engage with apps, which apps are best?

Research broadly finds that young children can learn from interactive apps, but it remains unclear the extent to which this learning is transferable to the real world. A meta-analysis found that most studies involving children five years and younger show an overall positive impact of touchscreen apps on learning. 

Another study found that children under 6 years old can learn from interactive apps, particularly in math skills. They also found some evidence that apps may improve phonics skills, teach science facts, and improve executive functioning. 

The review failed to find evidence that apps improved social communication skills.

Although we have consistent evidence that young children can learn from apps, it remains unclear the extent to which they can transfer this knowledge to the real world. It is well documented that young children (particularly children under 3) do not learn as well from video as they do from real life interactions and do not transfer learning from video to real life, referred to as the video deficit. However, there is some evidence that children can transfer learning when screen time is more interactive such as Facebook or video chat.

So, research finds that it is possible for children to learn from apps and that engaging in apps with them may enhance the transfer of learning to the real world, but does this mean they can learn from just any app? How can you determine which apps are truly educational?

A recent study evaluated 124 popular “educational” apps and found that 58% of popular apps were “low quality” in terms of how they promote learning.

The researchers evaluated apps based on the following:

• Active learning – whether the app requires critical thinking or intellectual effort versus a simple cause-and-effect
• Engagement in the learning process  – whether the interactive features enhance or distract from learning, including whether the app has unnecessary visual and sound effects and distracting ads
• Meaningful learning – how relevant what the child is learning in the app is to the child’s life and existing knowledge
• Social interaction – the extent to which the app encourages children to interact with characters in the app or with their caregivers while engaging with the app

The following apps received the highest scores in terms of promoting learning: 

• My Food – Nutrition for Kids
• Daniel Tiger’s Stop & Go Potty
• Toca Life (Neighborhood, School and Hospital)
• LEGO DUPLO Town
• Zoombinis
• Measure That Animal
• Math Shelf
• Know Number Free
• Endless Alphabet
• Letter School
• First Word Sampler
• Word Wall HD
• Pocket Phonics
• Skills Builder Spelling
• Phonic Monster 1
• ABC Touch and Learn
• Bee Sees
• Kindergarten Lite
• Starfall
• Super Why

This research provides the following tips for parents related to apps: 

• If possible, wait until your child is at least 3 years old before trying educational apps. Research finds that although children younger than 3 can learn within an app, they may be less likely to apply this knowledge to the real world. 
• Engage in apps with your child. Provide some help and assistance without doing the task for them. Help the child to understand the instructions and pay attention to relevant features.
• When engaging with apps together, use a lot of language to help to explain the task to the child. Offer frequent praise and encouragement.
• Choose apps that require the child to think critically rather than simple cause-and-effect, such as an app in which they have to choose the correct answer rather than an app in which they simply press a button and an animation plays.
• Avoid apps with irrelevant or excessive features or advertisements that are not related to the learning process.
• Look for apps that teach children skills that they can easily transfer to real life and that are related to their existing knowledge, such as an app that teaches about letters of the alphabet.
• Choose apps that encourage your child to interact with the characters in the app and/or with you or other caregivers while engaging with the app.

What is Reggio Emilia

This week's summary is Everything Parents Need to Knoe About the Reggio Emilia Approach, and it’s follow up to last week's article on Maria Montessori.

Reggio Emilia pedagogy (so named for the town in Italy it originated from and where a number of our Early Learners’ teachers will visit this summer) began after World War II in the mid-1940s.

A Reggio Emilia approach, primarily in the preschool years, has become especially popular over the past 20-25 years.

As you’ll see in the article, the qualities of a Reggio Emilia classroom are time-tested pedagogy that, similar to the Montessori approach, respect children as innate, inquisitive, learners. 

Some of the key aspects of a Reggio Emilia classrooms are as follows:

• Trust the child as a capable and motivated learner
• Utilize project-based learning activities to give children opportunities to be critical and creative thinkers and problem solvers
• Document the students’ process of learning
• Provide a classroom environment that is rich and stimulating and that encourages exploration and discovery
• Involve children, teachers, and parents as partners in a child’s learning process

This article is a reminder of the educational values we esteem at Trinity. As you read the article, even if you teach upper elementary grades, look for the parallels in your classroom, i.e., emphasis on child-directed learning, creativity, and collaboration, and see to what extent you provide similar experiences for your students.

Joe 

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Anyone researching alternative schools and/or non-traditional curriculums will come across the concept of the Reggio Emilia approach or schools inspired by the philosophy, as it continues to become more and more popular across the US. 

But, what is the Reggio Emilia Approach, exactly and what makes this model different from others?

Reggio Emilia is not a person, it is a city in Italy where this educational philosophy and pedagogy originated after World War II and is most commonly used in preschool and early elementary classrooms. 

Unlike in traditional-model schools where lessons are teacher-led, educators that follow the Reggio Emilia approach let the students lead the way and offer guidance, knowledge, and direction as needed. Teachers closely observe children to help them in planning and offering learning opportunities that will connect to their interests or questions. This shows the children that their ideas, thoughts, passions, experiences, and preferences are valued.

Even though they aren’t leading a class in the traditional sense, teachers are still observing the students’ academic growth and evolving their classrooms as needed to ensure students have the tools they require to master benchmark skills. Teachers are consistently documenting the learning and making it visible to children, parents, and the community. Documentation provides the opportunity for children to reflect and revisit learning experiences and reflecting with the children allows them to make meaning of the work and helps plan for future learning experiences.

Reggio Emilia-inspired curriculum is hands-on, collaborative, and taught through projects, exploration, and play. Because of this, the classroom’s setup is very important. The environment is set up as the ‘3rd teacher’ so children can independently engage and learn in a space that has been intentionally set up to be beautiful, engaging, encourage investigation, and promote relationship building. Materials are carefully chosen based on sensory elements and kept within reach of the students, and learning spaces are set up so that there is enough room for multiple kids to work together.

The Reggio Emilia approach falls somewhere between Montessori and traditional classrooms, in that there are still daily routines (like the traditional model) but the actual learning is student-led (like Montessori), so it’s the best of both worlds. However, unlike traditional and Montessori schools, this approach gives kids the freedom of demonstrating their knowledge through various methods. Children tell the teacher what they know as they build, dance, draw, paint, sculpt, create, explore, read, write, observe, investigate, experiment, garden, dream, engineer, talk, act, cook, etc., which illustrates that there are many ways for children to express themselves outside of writing and speaking.

Other benefits of the Reggio Emilia approach include:

• A relaxed learning environment that encourages exploration 
• Teacher-student relationships that are rooted in respect
• Students build social skills through a collaborative environment
• A student-led approach allows consistent opportunities for problem-solving
• Kids develop a strong sense of community
• Emphasis on creativity and artistic expression
• Adaptive curriculum means lesson plans are created based on what the students need to master a skill (as opposed to standard curriculum that continuously moves forward and can leave some students behind)

All of that being said, the most important benefit is that children are shown that learning is a joyful experience.

Maria Montessori's Impact on Education

This week's summary is How Maria Montessori Transformed the Realm of Children's Education.

Most of us have a rudimentary idea of Maria Montessori and her impact on education philosophy and practice.

Much like John Dewey, Montessori was a pioneer of progressive education tenets that shifted schooling away from a mechanical pedagogy of lecture, worksheets, and rote learning to a more child-centered, process-oriented, problem-based focus.

Even though the roots of progressive education can be traced to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book Emile in the mid-1700s, it was Montessori and Dewey in the early 20th century who put children’s innate curiosity and desire to learn at the forefront of the classroom.

Rather than viewing the child as a blank slate whose brain needed to be force fed with knowledge, Montessori put trust in her students and developed classroom pedagogy and activities (many of us are familiar with her pink tower) to engage children’s natural instinct to learn. A major belief for Montessori was to allow a child to learn at his/her own pace.

While today she is primarily associated with preschool grades, her beliefs influenced changes at all levels of education.

The article below is a short introduction to her life and influence. For a more comprehensive picture of her, you can read the recent biography of her, The Child is the Teacher.

 Joe

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Maria Montessori stood before a crowd of 60 underprivileged children, her students. It was January 6, 1907, and the 36-year-old educator was opening her first school: the Casa dei Bambini or “Children’s House,” a preschool that would revolutionize children’s education.

Today, the legacy of the Italian woman behind Montessori schools lives on in preschools around the globe. 

But at the time, the theory that providing children with stimulating activities would help them more than rote learning and academic drills was revolutionary.

Though her innovations inspired a movement in young children’s learning, Montessori saw her work more simply. “I did not invent a method of education,” she wrote in 1914. “I simply gave some little children a chance to live.”

Montessori was passionate about education from a young age. Born in 1870 and raised in Rome, she took a path that defied the era’s expectations for women. Montessori studied engineering, then applied to medical school at the University of Rome, telling a professor during her interview, “I know I shall become a doctor.” The school refused her, so Montessori enrolled in the general university; studied physics, mathematics and natural sciences; and reapplied to medical school. She was finally admitted, becoming the first woman to enter the university’s medical school, and in July 1896, she became Italy’s first female doctor.

Montessori’s medical work led her to the University of Rome’s psychiatric clinic. As part of her job, she visited asylums for children with mental disorders, searching for patients eligible for treatment at the clinic. It was here that her interest in child development intensified.

In 1898, Montessori spoke at the National Medical Congress in Turin, advocating that lack of adequate provisions and care for children with mental and emotional disorders caused them to misbehave. She continued her advocacy at the 1899 National Pedagogical Congress, where she proposed special training for teachers working with special-needs children.

Montessori’s interest in early childhood education strengthened over the next few years. She developed her own teaching materials, and in 1907, she opened her first school.

Her method revolved around engagement. Though Montessori introduced her students to many activities and materials, she retained only those the kids were interested in. She realized that activities could help children socially develop, and she theorized that, surrounded by such activities, students could educate themselves. Montessori’s self-dubbed “auto-education” approach soon had the 5-year-olds at Casa dei Bambini reading and writing.

News of Montessori’s success spread quickly, and by 1908, her name was known around the world. By the fall of 1908, five Case dei Bambini were operating in Italy. Her method soon crossed borders as kindergartens in Switzerland adopted her methods. 

A couple of years later, Montessori published a book, The Montessori Method -- over time, it would be translated into 20 different languages. In the following decades, Montessori schools and teacher training programs sprang up around the world.

Before her death in 1952, Montessori lived to see her educational theories enacted around the globe, as more and more “awakened” children—as she called activity-stimulated students—successfully learned their letters.

As Montessori biographer E.M. Standing notes, Montessori proved that the “awakened” child “develops a higher type of personality—more mentally alert, more capable of concentration, more socially adaptable, more independent and at the same time more disciplined and obedient—in a word, a complete being—a ready foundation for the building up of a normalized adult.”

“This is Montessori’s great achievement,” Standing writes, “the discovery of the child.”

Teen Pressure to Succeed

This week's summary is Teen Grind Culture.

Unlike today’s teenagers, I had the time and freedom to discover who I was during high school and college. There was little internal or external pressure on me as a young man to have it all it figured out and my future path established.

As you’ll see in the article below, today’s teens feel pressure (from parents, social media, themselves) to be on duty all the time with the expectation of excelling in everything (school, sports, social life, appearance, community service).

Consequently, many teens feel that they can’t ever take a breath and relax. It was particularly disturbing to read that some teens feel guilty for doing anything at all for pleasure and enjoyment.

The small percentage of teens who don’t feel this pressure shared similar practices: more sleep, more time outdoors, a less structured daily schedule, and limited activity on social media and with technology.

Fittingly, those habits the healthiest teens possess are what Trinity as an elementary school espouses for its students. 

It’s tougher for teens today yet we do have the opportunity to shape our students’ attitudes and habits during these formative years so they’ll perhaps learn to relax a little bit when they reach high school.

Joe

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Like it or not, children and teenagers today are live participants in an unprecedented experiment. Ubiquitous cellphones and hyper-engagement in social media have coincided over the last 15 years with a sharp increase in teen anxiety and depression.

Researchers from Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving surveyed U.S. teenagers in the fall of 2023. 

What emerged was a vivid description of the “grind culture” dominating kids’ lives – “this sense of always needing to be productive, to be striving in all these different areas, even at the expense of your health,” said Center co-director Emily Weinstein. 

Some specific findings:

• 56 percent felt “game plan” pressure – to have their future path clear and set
• 53 percent felt pressure to earn impressive grades or excel in sports
• 51 percent to look their best
• 44 percent to have a robust social life
• 41 percent to be available to support friends
• 32 percent to stay informed and do good for their community

All these were more intense for girls. And one in four respondents described symptoms of burnout more common among adults in high-stress jobs.

On the “game plan” pressure, it’s striking that teens said they didn’t have time for the typical adolescent quest to figure out who they are and what they want to be. They seemed to believe that noodling around with new interests and ideas would work to their disadvantage. “Teens literally described feeling guilty for reading a book for pleasure,” says Weinstein.

Where do all these pressures come from? Parents, teachers, teens themselves – and social media. About one in five of those surveyed said they were “almost constantly” on social media, messaging apps, and YouTube. Using Instagram, Tik Tok, and Snapchat intensified the pressures teens felt.

The researchers were struck by the fact that 19 percent of those surveyed said they were not feeling pressure in any of the six areas listed above. Several practices and patterns were common among these outliers:

• They got more sleep
• Were more likely to spend time outdoors
• Had more open schedules
• Watched less television
• Spent less time on social media and the Internet.

The more self-care practices teens engaged in – including seven or more hours of sleep, regular exercise, time in nature, hanging out with a friend, engaging in creative projects – the less likely they were to feel burned out. 

The Benefits of Applied Math

This week's article summary is Applied Math Education Can Make Americans More Numerically Literate, and it’s written by a college science professor who bemoans her students lack of mathematical confidence and reasoning skills.

It’s a follow-up to a recent summary on the importance of math in elementary school.

Her worries extend beyond her classroom: due to math illiteracy, many adults are ignorant about personal finances and blindly believe politicians and others who spout exaggerated statistics without providing any evidence.

She encourages elementary schools to do a better job teaching math, including real-life applications so kids can see the connections between math and real-life.

As mentioned in the earlier summary, Trinity is in the vanguard of enhanced math instruction in elementary school. Over the past number of years, we’ve all seen our students and teachers gain much more confidence and comfort in math.

Joe

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As American elementary schoolchildren head back to school, one subject just might be the most dreaded of all—mathematics. 

A distaste for arithmetic, calculations, and numbers in general starts young in America, where it's socially acceptable to claim to "hate math" or simply "be bad with numbers." 

By the time U.S. students hit middle school, our educational system has already failed them. American 15-year-olds score far below their peers from other countries in mathematical literacy. 

I will meet many of these students a few years later in my college classroom, where they will react with dismay at encountering calculus-based modeling in biology class, a subject which, in their prior experience, was virtually a math-free zone. While math is a key tool of modern biology—allowing us to predict how diseases spread or calculate the sustainability of our food supply—it's usually avoided in introductory classes, where it's viewed as "too complicated.” 

The American educational system is failing to prepare its citizens to face mathematical challenges with confidence.

This "math anxiety" has serious social and political consequences. 

In personal finance, Americans typically struggle to scale expenditures with income. 

More dangerously, innumerate people may become data-avoidant, assessing risk and quality of arguments based on "gut feelings" rather than numerical facts.

In contrast, math and statistics classes provide us with the logic frameworks we need to assess risk and link the magnitudes of cause and effect, making us better decision makers. There's still a role for experts and pundits, who help us make sense of a complex world. But as an American voting public, we should strive for better mathematical reasoning skills to supplement these expert analyses.

Educators have shown that it's possible to build strong math skills from Day 1 by investing more time on mathematical reasoning in our elementary school classrooms. 

And for those who remember math as boring or recall struggling to learn something wholly disconnected from daily life, there's a solution—applied math, which grounds math concepts in real-world examples.

These examples can start early. When our research team visits second-grade classrooms, we use "helpful" and "harmful" relationships between animals and humans to introduce number lines with positive and negative values. 

Similarly, elementary school educators have shown time and again that music lessons improve student math scores by introducing students to this note-based arithmetic. The same concepts apply for little girls curious about engineering and little boys helping parents measure ingredients in the kitchen.

Even after we've left the classroom, let's challenge ourselves to stop flinching away from numbers or blindly trusting (or mistrusting) those reciting them. When hearing a number or statistic, let's adopt a "stop and study" approach, asking what's being argued, by whom, using what rationale. 

Mathematical reasoning gives us a core, common set of facts that we can interpret together. By building math skills—in the classroom and in adulthood—we can be part of an American public that prides itself in mathematical exceptionalism, not mathematical avoidance.

 

Explicitly Teaching Reading Comprehension

This week's article summary is Reading Comprehension Loses Out in the Classroom, and it's a follow up to last week's summary.

When I taught middle school humanities (language arts and history/social), one of my principal academic objective was to get my students to form, substantiate, and express (orally and in writing) their opinions.

For most humanities teachers the vehicles used to accomplish the above goals are reading novels, short stories, textbooks, and primary sources. Usually teachers ask their students to complete their reading assignments at home, and then the classroom is used to assess, deepen, and expand their understanding of the material they read.

I always thought that through class discussions I could assess if my students were successfully comprehending their reading assignments. But, as you’ll see in the article below, I should have included more direct reading in my classroom.

Reading comprehension has remained an elusive goal in education. We know how important it is but struggle teaching and assessing it.

It’s critical to learn to decode words, develop an extensive vocabulary, and possess extensive background knowledge. Yet these skills don’t necessarily mean a student is effective at reading comprehension.

The article below recommends more direct reading in class – both by students themselves and from read alouds from their teachers. Thid should be followed from a class discussion of open-ended questions.

As I read the article, I kept thinking of two questions to repeatedly ask students about what they’re reading: What is the reading selection telling you? How do you know this?

Classroom reading is a staple of most elementary school teachers’ pedagogy. Yet, in addition to being entertaining for children, classroom reading is also a great opportunity to see if they are developing reading comprehension skills.

Joe

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Nearly a half century ago, a landmark study showed that teachers weren’t explicitly teaching reading comprehension. Once children learned how to read words, no one taught them how to make sense of the sentences and paragraphs. Some kids naturally got it. Some didn’t.

Since then, reading researchers have come up with many ideas to foster comprehension. Although the research on reading comprehension continues, there’s evidence for a collection of teaching approaches, from building vocabulary and background knowledge to leading classroom discussions and encouraging children to check for understanding as they read. 

This should mean substantial progress toward fixing a problem that was identified decades ago. But hardly any of these evidence-based practices have filtered into the classroom.

“It’s a little bit discouraging,” said Philip Capin of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. “What we often see in classrooms is devoid of high-quality strategy instruction or knowledge-building instruction.

Capin is referring to a host of comprehension strategies, such as checking yourself for understanding after reading a paragraph, identifying the author’s main point, or summarizing what you have just read.

Teachers spend limited time reading texts with children. The dearth of reading is especially pronounced in science classes where teachers tended to prefer PowerPoint slides over texts. More time is spent on reading comprehension instruction in reading or English class, but it was still just 23 percent of instructional time. Still, that is a big improvement over the original 1978 study, which documented that only 1 percent of instructional time was spent on reading comprehension.

A survey of middle school teachers published in 2021 echoes these observational findings that very little reading is taking place in classrooms. Seventy percent of science teachers said they spent less than 6 minutes on texts a day, or less than 30 minutes a week. Only 50 percent of social studies teachers said they spent more time reading in classrooms.

Capin said his team found that reading instruction was more focused on word reading skills, what educators call “decoding.” Researchers noticed that teachers were also building students’ knowledge, especially in science and social studies classes. But this knowledge building was mostly divorced from engaging students in text comprehension. 

Classroom researchers observed “low-level” reading instruction in which a teacher asks a question and students respond with a one-word answer. Teachers tended to confirm whether student responses were “right” or “wrong.” Capin said that only 18 percent of teacher responses elaborated on or developed students’ ideas. 

Capin said teachers tended to lecture rather than encourage students to talk about what they understand or think. Teachers often read the text aloud, asked a question and then answered the question themselves when students didn’t answer it correctly. He said that leading a discussion might help students better understand the text. 

Capin said teachers also often ask generic comprehension questions, such as “What is the main point?” without considering whether the questions are appropriate for the reading passage at hand. For example, in fiction, the author’s main point is not nearly as important as identifying the main characters and their goals.

Some teachers are leading reading discussions in their classrooms. Capin said he visited one such classroom a few weeks ago. But he thinks good comprehension instruction isn’t commonplace because it’s much harder than teaching foundational reading skills. Teachers have to fill in gaps in students’ skills and background knowledge so that everyone can engage. Teacher training programs don’t put enough emphasis on evidence-based methods, and researchers aren’t good at telling educators about these methods.

Interest in the science of reading has been exploding around the country over the past five years, especially since a podcast, “Sold a Story,” highlighted the need for more phonics instruction. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another 50 years for comprehension to get better.

 

Rethinking Reading

This week's article summary is Rethinking Reading.

As you’ll see, more and more elementary schools are implementing Science of Reading curricula, e.g., Fundations, with their specific focus on strengthening word reading.

As we all know intuitively and through experience, strengthening student reading comprehension goes far beyond the ability to break down and read individual words. Quoting the article, ‘reading comprehension is one of the most complex activities, and our ability to do so is dependent upon a wide range of knowledge and skills.’

A recent research study from an earlier summary notes that ‘phonics is just one crucial piece of the reading puzzle—which must eventually be applied to authentic reading materials, such as books and short stories, as a regular part of the reading diet that involves more advanced skills like comprehension, prediction, vocabulary, and sustained attention.’

The five components of reading (phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension) can erroneously be considered and taught as independent skills rather than in an integrated fashion befitting the complexity and gamut of reading comprehension. 

I am thankful that under the guidance of Marsha Harris we have made available this school year more content-rich reading materials to support student development of content-specific vocabulary and knowledge, as word reading is but one aspect of being a strong reader.

Joe

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How can this be?” This was the response of principal Jane Avery when she saw her school’s most recent third-grade reading scores. Three years ago, she worked with her primary grade teachers to adopt and implement a new reading curriculum based on the “science of reading” with systematic and explicit instruction in phonics. Ms. Avery expected that the curriculum would lead to greatly improved scores on the state reading exam. She was shocked to see only a small improvement.

Ms. Avery is not alone in her expectations. Many others have seen the recent emphasis on the science of reading as the answer to America’s “reading crisis.”

Researchers have made significant progress in our understanding of how children learn to read, and this work is having an impact on classroom instruction. Much of the emphasis has been on developing word reading accuracy and fluency through explicit instruction in phonics. Word reading is critical to reading achievement, but reading involves much more than recognizing the words on the page. Students must also comprehend what they read. 

Research within the science of reading has investigated what is involved in comprehension and how children learn to understand what they read. Some of the findings from this research have been incorporated into educational practice, but not all that is known from research has been implemented in the classroom. 

Many educators view comprehension as a component of reading and one of the pillars of reading instruction. This view is an outgrowth of the report from the National Reading Panel (NRP) that separates reading into alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. In the report, alphabetics was further divided into phonological awareness and phonics, and comprehension was divided into vocabulary and text comprehension. Over time, these components, along with fluency, became known as the big five or the five pillars of reading instruction. 

Today, much of reading instruction in the United States is guided by this component model of reading.

One limitation is that it can give the impression that the five components are independent and can be taught individually. In practice, the components are generally best taught together in an integrated fashion. That is, phonological awareness is best taught in the context of phonics, and vocabulary in the context of comprehending a text.

A more significant limitation is that including comprehension (and vocabulary) along with other components gives the impression that comprehension is skill based and similar in complexity and malleability to the other components. The model also implies that like phonics, comprehension can be explicitly taught, and once acquired, can be applied to all texts. 

In recent years there have been significant advancements in the science of how to teach and assess comprehension that are beginning to impact educational practices. At the forefront is the movement toward providing integrated comprehension and knowledge instruction within content-rich literacy curricula.

The focus on knowledge is important because of the critical role it plays in comprehension. Knowledge lays the foundation for building our understanding of text and provides an anchor for holding new information in memory. But despite the importance of knowledge, it has typically been neglected in comprehension instruction, which has focused primarily on teaching domain-general reading strategies and general vocabulary. 

Researchers who have recognized the importance of knowledge have begun to examine the effectiveness of content-rich literacy instruction in the classroom. Systematic reviews of this research show that content-rich literacy programs successfully increase vocabulary and content knowledge, as well as performance on standardized tests of reading comprehension.