The TEAM Method of Calmer Parenting

 This week's article summary is The TEAM Method of Calmer Parenting.

I am at the point in my life when I reflect on things I did when I was younger. As a grandparent who is now watching my kids parent their kids, I think back on how I parented and what I would/could/should have done differently. 

I have similar reflections on what I did in the classroom.

As such, this article really resonated for me both as a parent and a teacher.

The TEAM acronym—togetherness, encouragement, autonomy, minimal interference—is easy to remember yet provocative yet difficult to follow as it is so different from typical parenting in America.

I am by no means a proponent of children should be seen and not heard but I am just as averse to placing children on a pedestal which, as the author states, can lead to children being “the beneficiaries of others’ good works, with little or no obligation to reciprocate.” 

In hindsight, I think I coddled my kids too much and didn’t give them enough opportunity and autonomy to pitch in and do the right thing for others. I acted as their conscience and disciplined them when they erred.

I also wish I was had followed the author’s advice to walk away from power struggles and arguments with my kids. I still have flashbacks to battles over completing homework and learning how to study a little each night versus cramming for a big test.

Like last week’s last week's article about parenting, this week’s has classroom implications as well.

Joe

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Three years ago, I sat at the Cancun airport in a state of paralysis. I stared outside, trying to figure out if what I had just witnessed could possibly be true. Could parenting be that effective? Could children be that helpful and respectful? 

The day before, I had been visiting with families in a Maya village, nestled in the Yucatan Peninsula. I spent hours, talking to moms about how they raise their children—and watching their skills in action.

What I saw shifted my whole sense of how parenting could work. The moms related to children in a way that parents, all over the world, have turned to for thousands of years. I believe this approach may just be the lifeline parents need right now as we enter the second year of the pandemic.

I call it TEAM parenting, for its four main elements: togetherness, encouragement, autonomy and minimal interference. In combination, these elements minimize conflict and foster cooperation.

What really stood out to me was the children’s helpfulness. One morning, I watched a preteen girl, wake up and immediately begin washing the dishes from breakfast. No one had to ask her. The family didn’t have a chore chart on the kitchen wall. “Does she volunteer help often?” I asked her mother. “If she sees there is something to be done, she doesn’t wait,” her mother told me.”

At the time, I thought perhaps the Maya families had some parenting skills that Western parents, such as myself, didn’t know. But I was wrong. The Maya parents aren’t the exception or even rare.

And yet, Western parents have forgotten key elements of this approach. We’ve forgotten how to motivate kids to do chores without nagging or bribing, how to discipline without yelling or time-outs, and how to relate to children in a way that builds confidence and self-sufficiency.

Many of our cornerstone practices—the practices we think we have to do to be good parents—go directly against TEAM parenting. These practices make our lives harder and our kids anxious because they go against children’s innate instincts to work collaboratively with people they love and to learn through autonomous exploration. Western children are too often provided a lifestyle where they are wholly the beneficiaries of others’ good works, with little or no obligation to reciprocate.

In Maya communities, everyone is expected to pitch in with activities, even toddlers. A Mayan mother told me, “As early as they can walk, you can start asking them to help, for example, to bring you this or that.” As the child grows up, the tasks become more complicated. Instead of just fetching the herbs, they’re making a whole dish. Instead of only setting the plates, they’re clearing the table and washing the dishes.

Over time, the child learns useful life skills, but they also learn something critical to a peaceful home: how to work together with their family. How to collaborate. Cleaning up after dinner is a shared responsibility that everyone one in the home does together. By the time kids are age 9 or 10, they are competent contributors, helping their family on their own initiative. Parents don’t need to nag or bribe them to do it.

And what does the Maya parent do when a child refuses to help. They don’t start a big argument with the child.

Arguing and negotiating with children is so common in my home, that I thought it was a universal practice worldwide. But that idea couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Mayan parents encourage proper behavior, but they never yell, nag, or even negotiate.

Mayan parents see arguing with children as silly and a waste of time. When a parent argues with a child, the parent stoops to the child’s level. The child simply learns to argue and to value arguing.

American toddlers get a lot of attention when they’re angry, or they misbehave. But there are a lot of parents in the world who just completely ignore a child’s anger and misbehavior. Over time, the child learns that anger doesn’t work. And they stop doing it. 

So next time your child misbehaves, simply walk away. Turn your back and walk away. Same goes for arguments and power struggles. If one starts to brew, close your mouth and walk away. You don’t have to go far, maybe just to the other room, or even just a few feet away. Your silence and distancing will calmly communicate to the child that their behavior is unacceptable.

This advice is much harder to implement than it sounds, at least for this Western mom. When my daughter disobeys me, every cell in my body wants to yell or argue. That’s how I was raised. But once I learned this new parenting skill, my 3-year-old’s executive functions quickly improved, and conflict in our home decreased dramatically.

Our lives improved even further, when I stopped executing the third major pitfall of Western parenting. That is, when I stopped being a bossy pants. If we want our kids to be confident—and we want to protect them from anxiety and stress—we need to curb the commands, instructions, and lectures (yes, even the praise), William Stixrud and and Ned Johnson write in their book, The Self-Driven Child.

Parents in other countries value the right to autonomy. And this view extends to children, even toddlers. As a result, parents don’t feel this ubiquitous urgency to “fix” or “manage” a child’s behavior. This restrained style doesn’t mean that parents don’t pay attention, or don’t care what children do. A caretaker is definitely watching to be sure kids are safe. But parents have confidence that children know how to learn and grow, without adults constant meddling. Anything a parent says—the vast majority of the time—will only get in the child’s way and generate conflict. So parents interfere minimally.

Studies have linked autonomy with confidence and better executive function in children. As they grow up, autonomy is connected to better performance in school and increased chance of career success, Stixrud and Johnson write.

On the flipside, when parents constantly manage a child’s behavior and schedule, they can feel powerless over their lives, Stixrud and Johnson write. “Many [American] kids feel that way all the time.” That feeling causes stress, and over time, that stress can turn into anxiety and depression.

Three years ago, sitting at the Cancun airport, I felt lost as a mom. My relationship with my daughter was filled with tension and conflict. I dreaded the time I spent with her. But as I slowly added these universal parenting practices into our lives, Rosy went from being my “enemy” to becoming my teammate—perhaps even my most favorite person in the world.

 

How to Effectively Discipline Children

This week's article summary is Spanking Is Bad, But Most Discipline Is Too.

The older I get, the more it seems to me that my parents parented me better than I parented my kids. 

In terms of discipline, my parents never spanked me and I can’t recall a time when they yelled and screamed at me. They tell me I was an easy child to raise, yet I wonder if it was their parenting style that helped make me an easy-going kid.

What you’ll see in the article below is that the single most important aspect of parenting is your relationship and communication with your child. 

I always knew my parents were the ultimate authorities but they gave me ample latitude to develop my individuality, and they trusted me to make good decisions. When I messed up, there was never a ‘Come to Jesus’ scene or an attempt to put me on a guilt trip. On occasions they provided unprompted lessons but were never preachy. I went to them for advice when needed yet for the most part I was empowered to control and dictate my own life.

While the article below is meant for parents, its applications are clear for the classroom too: a strong, trusting, honest relationship with your students precedes discipline.

Joe

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A global study has found that spanking children is terrible for kids — and that harsh verbal discipline is, too. What gives?

Good communication is crucial to so many aspects of life. Learning how to effectively communicate with your kids in a calm, non-aggressive fashion, especially when they’ve done something wrong or non-agreeable, is vital for kids’ positive developmental outcomes.

Researchers are now suggesting that verbal discipline often doesn’t work the way parents may hope if parents are “loud and abrupt” when they talk to their children. AKA, yelling at your kid doesn’t work. 

A recent study examined different kinds of punishments related to kids’ behaviors in a sample of 216,000 families from 62 countries. The study looked at forms of violent discipline, such as spanking, and nonviolent discipline, including taking away privileges as well as verbal reasoning, i.e. telling kids what they did wrong. 

Research has continually shown that spanking leads to negative child outcomes, such as aggression and distraction, regardless of the context in which children are disciplined, including country, race and ethnicity, and neighborhood.

But, perhaps a bit more surprisingly, nonviolent punishment had mixed results. Some nonviolent punishment led to an increase in distraction and aggression, but could also an increase in prosocial behavior. Additionally, when parents employed verbal reasoning with their kids, it sometimes led to an increase in aggressive behavior, particularly if the parents used harsh and aggressive language. 

According to Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, “Positive discipline doesn’t always seem to have all that many positive benefits. It’s more likely that the long-term investments that parents make in children, such as spending time with them, letting them know they are loved and listening to them, have more positive effects than nonviolent discipline.”

Following this study, it would seem conventional discipline and its supposed efficacy are put into doubt. But how should parents discipline their kids going forward? Grogan-Kaylor suggests that parents find ways to make communication with their kids open and accessible, establish structure and figure out a way to remove kids’ privileges in an appropriate way that’s in line with their age and development. 

This study is a reminder that the tone and language parents take with their kids can be just as important as what parents actually say — and is extra encouragement for parents to stay calm even when kids may sometimes test their patience. 

Kids Are Resilient!

 This week's article summary is Kids Can Survive and Recover From Limited Socialization During This Pandemic.

Trinity students have been fortunate in that the majority of them have been at school for the majority of the year. Other children have not been as fortunate and have spent most of the last year learning via a computer screen.

Still, as an eternal optimist, I like the positivity of the article’s message that kids will overcome the challenges of this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Yes, it’s been a challenge for many kids to distance learn from home and to have little to no physical social time with peers. Yet, as the child psychologist in the article says, kids are resilient, have adapted to the limits of the past thirteen months, and will readjust next year as they begin to return to pre-pandemic habits.

There’s more hope and optimism in the air, even though our forward movement comes in fits and starts.

Enjoy the weekend—five weeks from today is 6th Grade Graduation! 

Joe

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Those days of shooing your children outside to play with the neighborhood kids or letting them invite friends over after school will be on hold for a few more months. The fact that an end is in sight, though, is a relief for parents worried about their youngsters' social development during the pandemic.

We learn a lot from others from a very early age. Things like how to share, how to tolerate different people and how to accomplish something as a group. That’s been missing for children not going to daycare, preschool, or regular classes because of the coronavirus.

“It definitely threw a curve into what kids were used to,’’ says Dr. Mike Vance, a child psychologist. Vance says parents shouldn't worry that kids have been ruined by the pandemic. The most important thing is how parents approach the situation. Avoid the “Gosh, it’s horrible, you aren’t getting any socialization,’’ which magnifies what has been lost. Instead, emphasize the positive, Vance says. The tone for that Zoom play date should be, “This is going to be so cool," rather than making it a poor substitution for how you would have done things pre-virus. 

Interactions with one or two other kids is just enough for your child to reach some developmental milestones. Activities can range from a hike or fishing outing if the weather permits to a cooking class or even a movie night. If a Zoom call is all you feel safe arranging, don’t think it has to be a two-hour session. For toddlers or preschoolers, 20 minutes of show-and-tell is enough. “Think of skills they would get in regular social actions and try to recreate that online,’’ Vance says.

Socialization is key at every age, but the amount and type of it is dependent on the child’s personality and the environment they are in. Kids living in the country might not get as much time with friends as someone going to after-school care. Parents know their kids and can usually tell if they are missing time with their buddies. If they seem different and are moping around, Vance says, talk to them about it. “Ask what is going on. ‘You seem down, what can you tell me about that.’ Then, listen. Don’t start firing out solutions. Ask and then listen and then ask again.’’ Try to come up with solutions together, staying within what you deem to be safe. If their answers worry you, talk to the school counselor, a pediatrician or a psychologist.

Don’t apologize for the situation. You are making decisions to keep them safe as well as grandma and grandpa, Vance says. 

Both kids and parents like predictability. The pandemic has taken away a lot of our normal routines but it has also created some good ones. If your children aren’t rushing from activity to activity, that leaves time for family dinners and game nights.

Use this time to enrich your family life, and your child’s confidence and self-soothing abilities. Family activities are just as important as time with friends, and good to continue when things get back to a more normal time, Vance says. “My bottom line: This year is what it is,’’ he says. “You don’t always have to have friends. It’s OK to sit around and read a book or color or help around the house.’’

How to Raise a Gracious Loser

This week's article summary is How to Raise a Gracious Loser.

When I was 11 years old, three pro sports teams I cheered for won championships: Knicks, Jets, and Mets. It was the first championship for each team (and sadly the one and only thus far for the Jets).

I had a blast that year (in fact, I attended both the Jets Super Bowl win in Miami and the final World Series game for the Mets at Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens). With three championships in one year, I expected my teams to win year after year. 

Much to my shock and dismay the next year the Knicks were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Washington Bullets and the heavily-favored Jets lost to the Chiefs. (I still remember the Sports Illustrated cover that week: Chiefs Paint New York Red!)

In my first year of teaching, I was blessed with an unbelievable 7th-8th boys soccer team. We pummeled every team by 5 or 6 goals. One afternoon as I was bragging to some other coaches about how great my team, the Athletic Director called me into his office where he sternly reprimanded me that while winning was fine, I needed to be a more humble role model for my players as they wouldn’t always win so easily and needed perspective and grace to handle the inevitable defeats they would encounter on and off the field. 

The article below is a helpful guide for how to help kids learn to win and lose graciously.   

I am not averse to competition, but most of us are all going to lose much more than we win. I especially liked the author’s recommendation to guide kids to play the long game and to put a game away for a while if a child just can’t handle losing.

Playing hard and fair then being gracious and humble whether you will or lose is an important life lesson, skill, and habit!

 Enjoy the weekend: Go Jets!

 Joe

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My10-year-old has many wonderful qualities. He’s funny, generous, and curious about the world. He does not, however, like to lose a game. And to be fair, that’s not all that unusual. I think, given the choice, most of us would prefer to win any game we play—otherwise, what is the point of keeping score? But it’s something we’ve had to work on over the years in my home, and I’ve learned a few tricks along the way.

Start with cooperative games: The point of keeping score is to figure out who has won the game, but winning really isn’t the point of playing. Kids don’t start playing soccer when they’re six years old because they want to crush their opponent; they play because it’s fun. So before you start challenging them to a Candy Land duel, introduce them to cooperative games. Preschoolers are a prime age to start playing cooperative games, which don’t pit you against them. Instead, you work together toward a common goal, while still getting all the benefits of practicing things like taking turns, following directions, and honing fine motor skills.

Teach them to play the long game: Something clicked with me recently when my son and I started playing a round of Skip-Bo and he was already bristling before he’d even finished his first turn. Whereas I know fortunes can swing widely and quickly in that game, he was treating every hand, I realized, as its own miniature game. Four bad hands in a row might as well have been four losses to him. No wonder this was no fun. When I put it to him in those words—“try not to think of every turn as its own game, but as one piece of a much bigger puzzle”—it resonated with him in a way that “I don’t understand why you’re already getting upset; we just started playing” never did. If it doesn’t resonate quickly with your kids, point out your own misfortunes as you play, so they can see how the game is playing out from both perspectives. You might say, “Oh wow, I was so far ahead of you before, and now you’re right on my tail!” or “I thought I was going to be able to catch you, but I think you’re too far ahead of me now!” Young kids are often only seeing the game playing out from their perspective, and having you narrate some of your experience (particularly when you’re being a good sport about losing) can help them build empathy for their opponent. The goal is not to make them feel bad about winning, but to remind them that at any given time, if someone is winning, someone else is losing.

Be a gracious loser (and winner) yourself: Once, on a weekend trip with my husband and two good friends to a cabin in northern Arizona, someone accused me of something. The four of us were sitting around the cabin’s dining room table, drinking beers and playing a rousing game of Clue—as adults do—when one of my friends let it drop that he thought I was the most competitive one of our group. Knowing this to be Patently False, I laid out a detailed argument of precisely how I was not the most competitive of the group (which is not at all a competitive thing to do). Since then, I have had to look deep within myself and admit there is a chance I have a slightly competitive nature, which mostly comes out when I play board games or flip cup (but only because I am very good at both). However, really wanting to win and acting in a bratty fashion about winning or losing do not have to go hand, and this is a thing you should model for your kids. Since my son was very young, we have a standing practice that when a game is complete, we shake hands and say, “Good game.” This has been a good way for him to watch me lose with a smile on my face—not necessarily happy to have lost, but happy to have played at all. It’s also a good way to practice and model gracious winning. There is to be no gloating. Kids will, more than anything else, pick up on our cues for how to react when we lose a hand of Uno or, say, when your football team loses a big game (I’m a Browns fan, so...). If you let it ruin your day, they pick up on the fact that winning is important enough that losing means it should negatively affect your mood. Show them how to let the losses, both big and small, roll off your back as much as possible.

Put it away if you need to: Games are supposed to be fun, so if game night is ending in a mess of tears every time, it might be time to take a little break from gaming—or at least from the one game in particular that seems to frustrate them beyond reason (I’m looking at you, Monopoly Gamer). You can always try again once some time has passed, tensions have eased, and they’re ready to give it another shot.

5 Strategies to Demystify the Learning Process for Struggling Students

 This week's article summary is 5 Strategies to Demystify the Learning Process for Students.

Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset research over the past dozen years has influenced teachers to guide their students to become neuroscientists, i.e., to know how their brains function: how knowledge is stored, how it is retrieved, and how new knowledge interlaces with other stored knowledge.

The expression “Name it to Tame it” comes to mind when we ask our students to think metacognitively—literally to think about thinking.

Through my student years I never consciously thought metacognitively. Instead through trial and error and experience I gradually learned what worked and didn’t work for me when I has some sort of assessment that required me to demonstrate my learning and understanding—be it a test, a paper, or even a classroom presentation.

Like most of us, I went through the stage in high school and college of thinking I was being studious by underlining and highlighting textbooks like mad and then reviewing and re-reading my copious notes before big exams. I was working but not efficiently or effectively. During exams I often found myself picturing exactly where the critical information was in the textbook or in my notes yet I just wasn’t able to pull the details to the surface.

By the time I was a junior in college, I had begun to be much more judicious in what I underlined and wrote summary notes and questions to myself as I listened to lectures and class discussions. When I studied, I systematically reduced my notes to the essentials, so I had a fuller grasp of big concepts. Rather than passively re-reading my notes, I used to pretend I was giving a speech on the topic at hand and walked around my bedroom (luckily I didn’t have a roommate) as if I was an esteemed professor.

Without knowing it, I was using more effective, active study techniques, and not surprisingly my grades and confidence as a student rose accordingly.

The article below provides some basic metacognition a-ha’s all students will benefit from knowing, understanding, and using to learn effectively and, most critically, long-lastingly.

Joe

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The field of metacognition offers educators many techniques that are rooted in brain research 

When students do not understand how their brains learn and retain material, they can develop misconceptions about themselves as learners — such as a faulty assumption that they are bad at a subject or that they suffer from performance anxiety. 

Think about the common experience of students who reread their notes and think they know the material —  only to enter a test and find that they cannot retrieve the information. They simply haven’t been taught how to study in a way that allows them to retrieve the information.  

Most teachers are not at all comfortable with or trained in neuroscience.

Below are some key principles teachers can use in the classroom and share with students to help them demystify the learning process.  

The Hiker Brain vs. The Race Car Brain

Start by teaching students the difference between focused and diffused thinking. When the brain is in focused mode, you can get started on the task at hand. But deep understanding is not fully accomplished in this mode. Diffused thinking occurs when you allow your mind to wander, to imagine and to daydream. In this mode, the brain is still working —  consolidating information and making sense of what you are trying to learn. If a concept is easy for you to grasp right off, the focused mode might be sufficient, but if a new skill or concept takes consideration, you have to toggle back and forth between these two modes of thinking as you get to true understanding of the material — and this doesn’t happen quickly. Because toggling is essential to learning, teachers and students need to build downtime into their day — time when learning can “happen on background” as you play a game, go on a walk or color a picture. It’s also one reason why sleep is so vital to healthy cognitive development.

Since students tend to equate speed with smarts, use this metaphor: “There’s a race car brain and a hiker brain. They both get to the finish line, but not at the same time. The race car brain gets there really fast, but everything goes by in a blur. The hiker brain takes time. It hears birds singing, sees the rabbit trails, feels the leaves. It’s a very different experience and, in some ways, much richer and deeper. You don’t need to be a super swift learner. In fact, sometimes you can learn more deeply by going slowly.

Chains and Chunks

In cognitive psychology, “chunking” refers to the well-practiced mental patterns that are essential to developing expertise in a topic. This can also be described as chains. Learning is all about developing strong chains. For example, when you are first learning how to back up a car, you have to consciously think about each step, from how to turn the steering wheel to how to use your mirrors. But once that process is chained, it’s easy — it becomes automatic. Similarly, once solving certain equations becomes automatic in math, students can apply these equations to more complex problems. Teachers can help students identify the procedures in a unit of study that they need to master in order to take their learning to the next level —  from the steps of the scientific method to fundamental drawing techniques. Any type of mastery involves the development of chains of procedural fluency. Then you can get into more complex areas of fluency. Here’s another way to think about it. We all have about four slots of working memory that we can use to problem-solve in the moment. One of those slots can be filled with an entire procedural chain —  and then you can put new information in the other slots.

The Power of Metaphor

Metaphor and analogy are extraordinarily powerful teaching tools. When you are trying to learn something new, the best way to learn it is to connect it with something you already know. The formal term for this is “neural reuse” —  the idea that metaphors use the same neural pathways as the concept a metaphor is describing. So familiar metaphors allow a learner to draw on a concept they have already mastered and apply it to a new situation. Metaphors “rapidly on-board” new ideas. 

The Problem of Procrastination

Procrastination is the number one challenge facing most learners. To train the brain to systematically focus and relax — to toggle — try the “Pomodoro Technique.

Developed by Francesco Cirillo, this strategy uses a timer to help the learner work and break at set intervals. First, choose a task to accomplish. Then, set a timer for 25 minutes and work until the timer goes off.  At that point, take a five-minute break: stand up, walk around, take a drink of water, etc. After three or four 25-minute intervals, take a longer break (15 – 30 minutes) to recharge. This technique trains your ability to focus and reinforces that relaxing at the end is critical to the process of learning.  Teachers can build a similar rhythm into the school day, providing brain breaks and movement time to help students toggle between focused and diffused thinking.

Expanding Possibilities

When we teach children and teenagers how they learn, we can blow open their sense of possibility. Tell your students that they don’t just have to be stuck following their passion. You can broaden your passions enormously. And that can have enormous implications for how your life unfolds. We always say ‘follow your passions’ but sometimes that locks people into focusing on what comes easily or what they are already good at. You can get passionate about — and really good at many things

A Simple Way to Self-Monitor for Bias

 This week's article summary is A Simple Way to Monitor for Self-Bias.

Written by a teacher, the article provides 5 categories teachers can use to assess how fair and equitable we are in dealing with all the kids in our classroom.

As I read the article, I thought back to my years in the classroom. In some ways, I think I fooled myself into thinking by treating all my students equally, I was treating them equitably. We all have biases and the way I liked to learn as a student became the dominant culture of my classroom as a teacher.

As a student, I liked open-ended class discussions. I preferred written assessments that let me form an opinion and draw my own conclusions. I needed to see the big picture of any topic before learning the specifics. I liked doing my work in class and having only a small amount of work to complete at home. I liked the social aspect of group work but didn’t find it helped me learn.

So I created a classroom culture and practice where the above procedures predominated, and it naturally favored students who learned as I did when I was a student. I treated all my students the same (equally) but in doing so I wasn’t acknowledging those who needed to learn differently. Hence, there was little equity in my classroom.

While the article’s title includes the word ‘simple’, DEI work (be it about race, gender, ability, family background, etc.) is anything but. It takes a lot of time, reflection, honesty, and grace. 

Joe

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Let’s say that you, like me, have a renewed commitment this year to ensuring equity in your classes. Perhaps you attended a seminar entitled “Antiracist Education” or “Racism in the Classroom”—and afterward you read books such as How to Be an Antiracist. 

Now you’re ready; you want to do what some people call “the work.” But then you get to your classroom and don’t have any idea where to begin.

One time I found myself in a similar situation. I was in a casual meeting with my principal, a well-respected Black leader at our school. We were discussing test scores, classroom management, and our new crop of teachers. The conversation turned to my own students and he said, “The main problem with you in the classroom is that you don’t know how to handle some of these Black boys.”

We had an excellent working relationship, so even though the comment stung, I knew better than to ignore him. I began to watch myself, to check the spaces in my pedagogy where bias and prejudice were leaking through. I focused on five key areas where I could track my behavior as I made notes about interactions with my students. I wanted to self-monitor for racial bias.

Once the data was staring me in the face, I knew my principal was right: I was treating some of my Black male students differently from other students. It was unconscious but true. Empowered by this knowledge, I was able to make a deliberate decision to change my behavior.

Here are 5 areas to self-monitor for bias.

Discipline: Research finds that Black students are punished in schools at disproportional rates; it is worthwhile to investigate if this is true in our classes. As an important piece of the inquiry, however, don’t just track big acts of discipline—detentions and referrals and calls home. Rather, keep a clipboard close at hand, and every time you find yourself managing a student, mark it down. Out-of-turn phone usage, quasi-innocent time out of seat, medium-level volume issues—sometimes these small things require correction, but how we handle them is worth inspecting for bias.

Calling on Raised Hands: Who do we call on when they raise a hand to participate? There’s little ambiguity here, making this an obvious area for self-reflection. Don’t be too hard on yourself about the classroom Hermione, the one you call on far too often because they are the only one offering. Pay attention instead to moments when you are offered a choice. As a bonus for my fellow male teachers out there, tracking this behavior could also help uncover gender bias in our practice.

Cold Calling: If you’re anything like me, sometimes you call on a student not because they are offering a comment or question but because you think they aren’t paying attention. You’re trying to trap them in a moment of laziness or misbehavior. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this method of classroom management, but it’s important to know if we’re applying it equitably.

The point of the first three trackers is to see what names come out of our mouths at which times. This data can cut across the blur of memory and give better information about actual practice. The next two trackers are more subjective because they will try to tease out a different kind of bias through asking us to monitor our thoughts and feelings.

“This Kid is in the Wrong Class”: Most teachers know that gut-level feeling of excitement or dismay upon being asked to write a letter of recommendation. I tried to capture that feeling midstream by tracking the times I wondered whether a particular student should be in a different level of my class—up to honors or down to regular or even something else entirely. I’m not referring just to official actions to get a student moved but also to the mere thoughts that flashed across my mind. Research supports the conclusion that Black and Brown students are disproportionately tracked into lower-level classes. Whether or not we’re in charge of student placement, do we sometimes feel that same bias? It’s a worthwhile question to explore.

Good Times: Which students get you to joke around and bring out your “more than a teacher” personality? Which students do you swap stories with about activity in the outside world? Who pulls us into their orbit when we overhear an interesting conversation? Which students end up most often in the funny or charming classroom anecdotes that we share with our partners and friends? What kind of student gets marked down here?

If you keep track of these aspects of classroom management and conversation for a month, you may discover something surprising about the way you interact with students. I know I did. But it gave me something to work on, a plan to make, and an action item to fix. I know it’s only scratching the surface of the work, but it gave me a place to begin. I don’t doubt that it will do the same for you.

Teaching History in Polarized Times

This week's article summary is New National Civics Guidelines Carve a Middle Path.

Historically (pun intended) history teachers have gotten a bad rap. The common joke is history teacher is the job the football coach has to make him a full-time employee—sit at your desk drinking your coffee, let the kids read the textbook on their own, and use the teacher’s edition for activities, assignments, and test questions.

What once was a quaint, low-stress job is a minefield today as the article below attests. 

I like the premise of the new history guidelines below: history should be viewed through the lens of ‘reflective patriotism’ as we compare our country’s ideals with its reality.

While the polarized times we live in seem as if we will never be able to find common ground, we need to remember that there have been many times in our country’s history where bitter partisanship dominated, the Civil War and the 1960s being two prime examples.

I agree with the article’s hope that we as teachers, even in the younger grades of Trinity, can guide our students to be thinkers who practice open inquiry, can see the grayness and ambiguity of life, and can avoid the zero-sum, right-wrong, win-lose paradigm many favor today.

To me, our country, like all of us, are works in progress--imperfect but striving to get better every day.  

Joe

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 Is America a land of freedom and opportunity, a shining civic example of government by and for the people? 

Or is it a system built on oppression and disenfranchisement that’s forced marginalized peoples to fight for full participation?

A new set of K-12 history and civics guidelines tries to find a middle ground between the competing narratives by posing the question: What if it’s both?

The “Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy” guidelines are part of an ambitious project to reverse decades of neglect of the social studies. But they also come in perhaps the most difficult era the discipline has ever faced and will likely face intense scrutiny as a result.

Unprecedented levels of polarization and the seismic political and social events of 2020 have turned the social studies field into the most explosive curriculum area in K-12 education.

Debates rage over provocative new retellings of the American story, like The New York Times’ 1619 Project, and more familiar, idealistic, even sanitized narratives like those favored by former President Trump’s now-disbanded 1776 Commission.

The new guidelines center on the idea of “reflective patriotism”: that students should learn to feel committed to this country and the ideals it purports to represent, while also questioning, critiquing, and holding the powerful to account when it fails to live up to those ideals.

Students should learn about the importance of civic participation, the founding of American democracy, and the notion that civil disagreement is baked into the U.S. Constitution and is part of the American experiment, they state.

The guidelines stress that a lack of civics knowledge is a problem for our education system at all levels. 

The guidelines prioritize inquiry into the nation’s complicated and contested founding and evolution.

The 40-page draft outlines key concepts, thematic “driving questions” for student inquiry, and more-specific sample guiding questions.

While the draft does reference some contentious issues, including the forced removal of Indigenous people and the institution of enslavement, many of the driving questions are conceptual. 

Throughout students’ K-12 education, the guidelines say, they should be using critical inquiry skills to engage with all the rich conceptual questions kicked up by the founding of America. For example, how does the idea of “We the People” change over time? Which moments of change have most defined the country’s evolution and that of its political institutions? What kinds of stories tell us who we are and where we’re from?

As for who is part of that civic life, the roadmap uses two definitions of the word citizen. The guidelines discuss the rights granted to those considered legal citizens of the United States, but also engage with the idea of a citizen as someone who contributes to a community, whatever their age or legal status. 

All of these choices make room to teach both traditional civics topics like voting and government structure, while also engaging with “action civics,” an approach that explores how people can identify issues that are important to them and make change.