Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development

This week's article summary is Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development.

As early childhood and elementary educators, we all know how critical the early years of schooling are.

The article highlights two gifts (a compass and a violin) Albert Einstein received from his parents when he was 5 years old. Both items piqued Einstein’s interest and curiosity during a critical time in his life when his brain—just like everyone’s--is the most open to learning.

The article lists 4 ways teachers and parents can support and stimulate these foundational years:

• Give kids the freedom to explore, imagine, tinker, create
• Provide them with a wide breadth of experiences
• Help them begin to understand and harness both their inter and intrapersonal skills—what we at Trinity refer to as developing a sense of self and care for others
• Embrace that these critical years aren’t a precursor to ‘real learning’ but an essential building block for subsequent learning

At Trinity, we appropriately guide our students while making sure that they have ample opportunities to direct and manage their learning in imaginative and creative ways. Rather than having our students be sedentary at their desks filling out worksheets with proscribes answers, our kids are truly active, engaged learners.

When I read articles that affirm how we teach and why early childhood/elementary school years are so important, I wish that America as a whole would accept the science of learning, applaud child-centered pedagogy, and recognize how critical the first years of schooling are.

Joe 

------

When Albert Einstein was a child, few people—if any—anticipated the remarkable contributions he would make to science. His language development was delayed, worrying his parents to the point of consulting a doctor. His sister once confessed that Einstein “had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn.” How did this child go from potential developmental delays to becoming, well, Einstein?

Part of the answer to that question is symbolized in two gifts that Einstein received from each of his parents when he was 5 years old. When Einstein was in bed all day from an illness, his father gave him a compass. For Einstein, it was a mysterious device that sparked his curiosity in science. Soon after, Einstein’s mother, who was a talented pianist, gave Einstein a violin. These two gifts challenged Einstein’s brain in distinctive ways at just the right time.

Children’s brains develop in spurts called critical periods. The first occurs around age 2, with a second one occurring during adolescence. At the start of these periods, the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles. Two-year-olds have twice as many synapses as adults. Because these connections between brain cells are where learning occurs, twice as many synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life. Therefore, children’s experiences in this phase have lasting effects on their development.

This first critical period of brain development begins around age 2 and concludes around age 7. It provides a prime opportunity to lay the foundation for a holistic education for children. Four ways to maximize this critical period include encouraging a love of learning, focusing on breadth instead of depth, paying attention to emotional intelligence, and not treating young children’s education as merely a precursor to “real” learning. 

ENCOURAGE A LOVE OF LEARNING: Young children need to enjoy the process of learning instead of focusing on performance. Educators and parents can emphasize the joys of trying new activities and learning something novel. We need to help children understand that mistakes are a welcome, normal part of learning. This period is also the time to establish a growth mindset--the belief that talents and abilities are developed through effort instead of being innately fixed. Educators should avoid labeling children or making universal statements about their ability.. Instead, emphasize persistence and create safe spaces for learning. Children will learn to love learning if we show enthusiasm over the process rather than fixating on results. 

FOCUS ON BREADTH, NOT DEPTH: One way to avoid focusing on results during this phase of development is to emphasize the breadth of skill development over depth. Exposing children to a wide variety of activities lays a foundation for developing skills in a range of fields. This is the time to engage children in music, reading, sports, math, art, science, and languages. In his book Range, David Epstein argues that breadth of experience is often overlooked and underappreciated. Focusing on excellence in a single activity may be appropriate at some point in life. But the people who thrive in our rapidly changing world are those who first learn how to draw from multiple fields and think creatively and abstractly. In other words, our society needs well-rounded individuals. Well-roundedness is especially important for children from ages 2 to 7. Their developing brains are ready to soak in a wide range of skill sets. This “sampling period,” as Epstein calls it, is integral. This is the window during which to develop children’s range. There is plenty of time for them to specialize later.

DON’T OVERLOOK EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Yes, we want children to read well and learn the fundamentals of math. But we should not disregard emotional intelligence. The advantages of learning during this first critical period of brain development should extend to interpersonal skills such as kindness, empathy, and teamwork. Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explain the importance of developing children’s empathy in their book The Whole-Brain Child. Empathy begins with acknowledging one’s feelings. Therefore, they suggest helping children in this age group to first label their emotions (“I feel sad”) and then tell the story about what made them feel that way (“I feel sad because I wanted ice cream and you said no”). Once children practice labeling emotions, educators can start asking questions that encourage them to consider others’ feelings. One way to encourage care for others is to include children in what adults do for others. Even allowing young children to help with chores can make them more helpful and considerate people.

DON’T TREAT YOUNG CHILDREN’S EDUCATION AS MERELY A PRECURSOR TO “REAL” LEARNING: Children’s brains can uniquely absorb information during this critical phase. If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, children between the ages of 2 and 7 may be the most intelligent humans on the planet. Research suggests that some skills cannot be learned nearly as well after this first critical period of brain development. For example, children in this age range are best suited to learn the patterns of language development, enabling them to master a second language to the same level as a native language. However, once children reach age 8, their language learning proficiency decreases, and second languages are not spoken as well as native ones. The same age effect is found when learning musical abilities such as perfect pitch. 

It is noteworthy that Einstein’s parents did not enroll him in physics lessons—the field that would lead him to a Nobel Prize. Instead, Einstein’s father included him in his work as an engineer. His mother signed him up for violin lessons because she wanted him to love and appreciate music. Both activities worked to develop his young mind holistically. It is tempting to think of early childhood education as a precursor to “real” education. But these may be the years that matter most. 

Supporting Executive Functioning Skills By Asking Questions

This week's article summary is Supporting Executive Functioning Skills By Asking Questions, and it's an apt follow-up to last week's summary on the top educational research studies of 2021.

Last week’s summary explained why schools need to directly connect social-emotional development to academic achievement. This week’s highlights how student executive functioning development and its practice and use in the classroom buoy academic success. In fact, the article specifically states that executive function development (planning, organizing, and self-regulation including managing attention and emotions), “boosts academic performance, since grades and assessments rely on executive function as a baseline for demonstrating mastery.”

For parents who are skeptical of social-emotional development in schools unless it supports academic achievement, educational research consistently illustrates that success within and beyond the classroom results from a combination of intelligence and character, i.e., both IQ and EQ. 

The article recommends that we can stimulate our students to be more active in their learning by asking them questions rather than always providing directions. By getting students to think about what and how they can do to prepare, focus, review, and demonstrate, teachers are helping them to be more responsible and to think metacognitively, another research result from last year.

Joe  

--------

Executive function (EF) skills are brain-based management abilities that encompass a wide range of future skills like planning, organizing, self-regulation (including managing attention and emotions), learning, and memory. These skills are also learned at home when children do things like household chores. 

Reinforcing executive function at school helps students’ brains understand the cueing system that activates the use of a particular skill. For example, a student needs to understand environmental cues in order to engage with self-regulation tools, and these cues will differ at home and at school.

Self-management skills are often the secret sauce of school success. Kids who soar at school are often those who have the most honed EF skill set. Being an excellent writer, for example, isn’t enough. It’s important for students to demonstrate that they can manage time to write, chunk writing tasks into parts, manage attention to see an essay through, and remember editing strategies. Empowering students with these skills can boost academic performance, since grades and assessments rely on executive function as a baseline for demonstrating mastery.

REPLACE DIRECTIONS WITH THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTIONS: If you’ve ever heard one student coach another, you’ve probably realized that they’re parroting you. As teachers, we give lots of the same directions. Replacing these directions with mid- and then low-level supportive questions can help pass the onus of navigating the day to students, developing their future-skills executive functions. For example, the directive “Please take out your book” could be replaced with mid-level support questions like “What do you need to be ready for reading?” or “What do you picture on your desk during this time?”. There’s no single right way to do this; the idea is that you’re planning and adjusting the levels of support you offer so that students are gradually assuming the responsibility (similar to gradual release strategy for academic skills and tasks).

TEACH STUDENTS TO QUESTION AND COACH THEMSELVES: Whenever I design a lesson, I hear the voice of my mentor teacher coaching me to consider, “What’s the biggest takeaway you want every student to learn?” It’s an automatic audio track that plays whenever I’m planning a lesson. Like coaches and mentor teachers, classroom teachers can coach students to prompt themselves with questions or reminders for repeating tasks. For example, in planning a longer project or essay, a teacher can show students how to do the following:

• Question what the steps will be, by either visualizing or noting each “scene” as a step
• Consider what materials are needed
• Identify when to do each step
• Offer tips for how to remember what to do

Students who need deeper support can have a written list of these questions to access in times of planning. The idea is to create a format to make the student invisible and thinking skills visible. In this way, teachers can augment students’ developing executive function skills.

USE 6 PROBLEM-SOLVING ‘MAGIC’ QUESTIONS: There are some great go-to questions for teachers who want to help develop learners’ executive functioning skills but aren’t yet automatic in their questioning techniques. These magic questions include:

• What do you notice?
• What parts do you understand?
• What do you think you might need right now?
• How can you tell?
• Where could you look for that information?
• How will you remember to use that strategy or take that action?

When teachers ask these questions regularly, students get used to hearing them, and they can be applied automatically as students solve problems throughout their day. Teachers can also reply with these questions when students ask things like “Where is that assignment?” or “What do I need to do?” Think of how many times the students’ questions for us are related to processing the task, rather than the task or its content. What a gift for students to be able to tackle that type of thinking on their own.

This isn’t one more thing on your ever-growing list. These skills can be supported and extended by making small shifts, not additions, to your instruction. Replacing directions with questions can help increase students’ awareness of patterns and routines, releasing the onus of self-management to the students. Coaching students to notice the executive function demands of assignments can empower them to independently seek strategies when approaching their work. If all else fails, you can lean on those function magic questions, which are sure to get students’ brain “muscles” flexing. Empowering our kids with multiple tools for executive functioning will reduce their barriers to growth and smooth out some of the bumps of getting through the school day, for students and teachers.

The Most Important Education Studies of 2021

This week's article summary is The Most Important Education Studies of 2021.

As you read the summaries of the top studies from last year, you’ll see much validation of what and how we teach at Trinity. A significant attribute of our school is how open we are to research on how children best learn. 

Some commonalities among the studies:

• Metacognition techniques help students learn better: Whether it’s through project-based learning where kids discover skills and concepts from trial and error or students taking a pretest before a unit, learning is aided when students are cognitively active and aware of what and why they are learning something.
• A trusting, safe, relationship-based classroom precedes academic performance: Be it classroom management consistency or a classroom culture of effort and persistence, a classroom needs to be a warm, supportive, predictable environment for students in order to optimize learning.
• Parents, by and large, do not respond favorably to the term ‘social-emotional development’ or to other similarly non-academic terms like ‘soft skills’, including ‘growth mindset’:  As teachers, we recognize the critical importance of helping students develop executive functioning skills like self-evaluation, resilience, planning, and, self-regulation; yet a number of studies below concluded that parents still want schools to develop their children academically.  Hence they need to hear how social-emotional skills support academic achievement. The more schools can directly link social-emotional learning to academic success, the more parents will support it.

 Joe

 --

WHAT PARENTS FEAR ABOUT SEL (AND HOW TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS): When researchers at the Fordham Institute asked parents to rank phrases with social emotional learning, nothing seemed to add up. The term “social-emotional learning” was very unpopular; parents wanted to steer their kids clear of it. But when the researchers added a simple clause, forming a new phrase—”social-emotional & academic learning”—the program shot all the way up to No. 2 in the rankings. Parents were picking up subtle cues in the list of SEL-related terms that irked or worried them, the researchers suggest. Phrases like “soft skills” and “growth mindset” felt “nebulous” and devoid of academic content. For some, the language felt suspiciously like “code for liberal indoctrination.” But the study suggests that parents might need the simplest of reassurances to break through the political noise. Removing the jargon, focusing on productive phrases like “life skills,” and relentlessly connecting SEL to academic progress puts parents at ease—and seems to save social and emotional learning in the process.

THE SECRET MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES OF EXPERT TEACHERS: In the hands of experienced teachers, classroom management can seem almost invisible: Subtle techniques are quietly at work behind the scenes, with students falling into orderly routines and engaging in rigorous academic tasks almost as if by magic. That’s no accident, according to new research. While outbursts are inevitable in school settings, expert teachers seed their classrooms with proactive, relationship-building strategies that often prevent misbehavior before it erupts. They also approach discipline more holistically than their less-experienced counterparts, consistently reframing misbehavior in the broader context of how lessons can be more engaging, or how clearly they communicate expectations. Focusing on the underlying dynamics of classroom behavior—and not on surface-level disruptions—means that expert teachers often look the other way at all the right times, too. Rather than rise to the bait of a minor breach in etiquette, a common mistake of new teachers, they tend to play the long game, asking questions about the origins of misbehavior, deftly navigating the terrain between discipline and student autonomy, and opting to confront misconduct privately when possible.

THE SURPRISING POWER OF PRETESTING: Asking students to take a practice test before they’ve even encountered the material may seem like a waste of time—after all, they’d just be guessing. But new research concludes that the approach, called pretesting, is actually more effective than other typical study strategies. In the study, students who took a practice test before learning the material outperformed their peers who studied more traditionally by 50% on a follow-up test. The researchers hypothesize that the “generation of errors” was a key to the strategy’s success, spurring student curiosity and priming them to “search for the correct answers” when they finally explored the new material. Learning is more durable when students do the hard work of correcting misconceptions, the research suggests, reminding us yet again that being wrong is an important milestone on the road to being right.

A FULLER PICTURE OF WHAT A ‘GOOD’ SCHOOL IS: It’s time to rethink our definition of what a “good school” is, researchers assert in a study published in late 2020. That’s because typical measures of school quality like test scores often provide an incomplete and misleading picture, the researchers found. The study looked at over 150,000 ninth-grade students who attended Chicago public schools and concluded that emphasizing the social and emotional dimensions of learning—relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and resilience, for example—improves high school graduation and college matriculation rates for both high- and low-income students, beating out schools that focus primarily on improving test scores. The findings reinforce the importance of a holistic approach to measuring student progress and are a reminder that schools—and teachers—can influence students in ways that are difficult to measure and may only materialize well into the future.

TEACHING IS LEARNING: One of the best ways to learn a concept is to teach it to someone else. But do you actually have to step into the shoes of a teacher, or does the mere expectation of teaching do the trick? In a  2021 study, researchers split students into two groups and gave them each a science passage about the Doppler effect—a phenomenon associated with sound and light waves that explains the gradual change in tone and pitch as a car races off into the distance, for example. One group studied the text as preparation for a test; the other was told that they’d be teaching the material to another student. The researchers never carried out the second half of the activity—students read the passages but never taught the lesson. All of the participants were then tested on their factual recall of the Doppler effect, and their ability to draw deeper conclusions from the reading. The upshot? Students who prepared to teach outperformed their counterparts in both duration and depth of learning, scoring 9% higher on factual recall a week after the lessons concluded, and 24% higher on their ability to make inferences. The research suggests that asking students to prepare to teach something—or encouraging them to think “could I teach this to someone else?”—can significantly alter their learning trajectories.

A DISTURBING STRAIN OF BIAS IN KIDS’ BOOKS: Some of the most popular and well-regarded children’s books—Caldecott and Newbery honorees among them—persistently depict Black, Asian, and Hispanic characters with lighter skin, according to new research. Using artificial intelligence, researchers combed through 1,130 children’s books written in the last century, comparing two sets of diverse children’s books—one a collection of popular books that garnered major literary awards, the other favored by identity-based awards. The software analyzed data on skin tone, race, age, and gender. Among the findings: While more characters with darker skin color begin to appear over time, the most popular books—those most frequently checked out of libraries and lining classroom bookshelves—continue to depict people of color in lighter skin tones. When adult characters are “moral or upstanding,” their skin color tends to appear lighter. Female characters, meanwhile, are often seen but not heard. Cultural representations are a reflection of our values, the researchers conclude: “Inequality in representation, therefore, constitutes an explicit statement of inequality of value.”

THE NEVER-ENDING ‘PAPER VERSUS DIGITAL’ WAR: The argument goes like this: Digital screens turn reading into a cold and impersonal task; they’re good for information foraging, and not much more. “Real” books, meanwhile, have a heft and tactility that make them intimate, enchanting—and irreplaceable. But researchers have often found weak or equivocal evidence for the superiority of reading on paper. While a recent study concluded that paper books yielded better comprehension than e-books when many of the digital tools had been removed, the effect sizes were small. A 2021 meta-analysis further muddies the water: When digital and paper books are “mostly similar,” kids comprehend the print version more readily—but when enhancements like motion and sound “target the story content,” e-books generally have the edge. Nostalgia is a force that every new technology must eventually confront. There’s plenty of evidence that writing with pen and paper encodes learning more deeply than typing. But new digital book formats come preloaded with powerful tools that allow readers to annotate, look up words, answer embedded questions, and share their thinking with other readers. We may not be ready to admit it, but these are precisely the kinds of activities that drive deeper engagement, enhance comprehension, and leave us with a lasting memory of what we’ve read. The future of e-reading, despite the naysayers, remains promising.

NEW RESEARCH MAKES A POWERFUL CASE FOR PBL: Many classrooms today still look like they did 100 years ago, when students were preparing for factory jobs. But the world’s moved on: Modern careers demand a more sophisticated set of skills—collaboration, advanced problem-solving, and creativity, for example—and those can be difficult to teach in classrooms that rarely give students the time and space to develop those competencies. Project-based learning (PBL) would seem like an ideal solution. But critics say PBL places too much responsibility on novice learners, ignoring the evidence about the effectiveness of direct instruction and ultimately undermining subject fluency. Advocates counter that student-centered learning and direct instruction can and should coexist in classrooms. Now two new large-scale studies provide evidence that a well-structured, project-based approach boosts learning for a wide range of students. In the studies, elementary and high school students engaged in challenging projects that had them designing water systems for local farms or creating toys using simple household objects to learn about gravity, friction, and force. Subsequent testing revealed notable learning gains—well above those experienced by students in traditional classrooms—and those gains seemed to raise all boats, persisting across socioeconomic class, race, and reading levels.

Simon Sinek's Advice for 2022

 The first summary of 2022 is Simon Sinek Tweeted a Simple Truth About Success We All Need to Hear Before 2022.

Many of us are familiar with ideas and advice of Simon Sinek, including books such as  Together is Better, Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last.

Sinek has a knack for reducing the complex into simple words.

As we head into the second half of the school year, we can use his advice to support our own goals and our students’ as well.

We all have goals. Often we use as inspiration those who have reached the highest levels, yet we can neglect to reflect on their drive, effort, sacrifice, and resilience on their rise to the top.

We glorify Tom Brady, Wayne Gretsky, LeBron James (or Michael Jordan), Jack Nicklaus (or Tiger Woods) as the GOATS of their respective sports. Although we know they worked hard to reach their pinnacles, we focus on their talent as the primary reason for their success.

As we head into a new year and set or re-set goals for ourselves, Simon Sinek reminds us that for an aspirational goal to be accomplished it needs to be preceded by ‘planning, commitment, and ultimately, action’. 

There’s a reason so many New Year’s resolutions flame out a few weeks into January: we set lofty goals without developing feasible, incremental plans. Whether it’s to drop a few pounds, eat better, or find more ‘me time’, we can get caught up in the destination without establishing a systematic way to get there and an accompanying mindset that keeps up positive through the inevitable ups and downs.

The longer I’m in education the more strongly I believe the agency (strong, confident sense of self) we help build in our students is our greatest gift to them.

We need to remind our kids that whatever ambitious goals they set for themselves, they need to take smaller steps and measure gradual progress over time. Most of us know Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and Tom Brady was a backup quarterback in college; they ultimately accomplished great things in their careers but we need to think about how they responded to significant setbacks in their lives.

Thank you for such a smooth start to the second half of the school year under continued uncertain conditions!

Joe

---------

Simon Sinek’s messages are worth pause and reflection, but what beguiles me most is their cut-through-the-confusion simplicity.  No obfuscation, no over-complication. This is how it is.

No surprise, then, that I was struck but a recent tweet from him that reminded me of a core truth of success we so often forget. He wrote: "While dreams of greatness are great, we must remember to appreciate the joy of the start."

There are three things I want to call out here that, in my mind, underscore this message:

First, as much attention as we give achievement, no achievement is possible without an idea that becomes a goal that leads to planning, commitment, and ultimately, action. Too often, achievements hang in thin air like some magically suspended bauble. Let's celebrate the achievement at all its points -- because every step was required to get there.

Second, while Sinek doesn't directly address this in his tweet, I'm also reminded that we're sometimes too goal focused. In other words, we lose the joy and impact of the journey when all we care about is the destination. Tennis great Arthur Ashe has an apt quote in this vein: "The doing is often more important than the outcome." Why? Because the doing is where we experience life, where we learn, where we overcome challenges. The achievement -- the end point -- is merely a marker that signifies how much we've grown along the way.

Third, appreciation does not play second fiddle to hustle. We hear a lot about hustle in the entrepreneurial and business spaces. It's the secret sauce to true success, some would say. But if you don't appreciate the journey -- however difficult -- how long can you last? And how strong will your relationships be? What sort of impact can someone have who hates the journey and pushes forward simply to say they made it? Appreciation of opportunity, capacity, and experience are all key to making the sort of impact we dream of making. So yes, let's "dream of greatness," but embrace the start, the journey, and the love of the game.

 

Helping Kids Learn to Ask For Help

 This week's article summary is How Kids Can Overcome the Awkwardness of Asking for Help.

Try to think back to when you were in middle and high school: How often did you seek out a teach for extra help? 

 

In my teens there were a few times I had to meet with a teacher for a private one-on-one session, mostly if a teacher had written ‘See Me’ on a test or paper or if my parents and the teacher had decided I needed some extra help due to a low grade. In these cases I was basically forced into extra help. I can’t recall ever in middle or high school initiating extra help with a teacher. 

 

It wasn’t until I was a college junior that I took advantage of professors’ office hours.

 

The difference between me in my teens and me as a college junior was being more aware of what I knew and didn’t know and consciously accepting responsibility for my learning. In middle and high school, I left it to the teacher to assess my work and assign me a grade. I was in essence a passive participant in my learning.

 

At Trinity, one of our outcomes is for our students is to develop a strong sense of self, including self-assurance, and to me this extends to being confident enough to seek extra help when needed.

 

So much of what we do at Trinity helps shape our students’ agency. For example, we when we ask our students to self-reflect/evaluate they are beginning to see their role in their learning.  Through student-led conferences, they learn to articulate how they learn, the steps they need to take to learn, and where they need help and support. 

 

Our work as early childhood/elementary teachers is so vital and impactful because it helps develop in our students the assertiveness and metacognition to seek extra help during the challenging middle school years, not to wait like me until college years.

 

Joe

 

-------

 

Office hours, as many middle and high school teachers can attest, are often a frustratingly underutilized block of time during the school day—an unstructured period earmarked for student check-ins and lesson support that very few kids take advantage of, even when they understand the benefits.

 

Students’ tendency to avoid seeking help is an area Vanessa Bohns, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, focuses her research on, perhaps partly inspired by her own experience with students at the college level. “The quietest part of my day used to be my office hours, when students could meet with me without an appointment. Why? Because no one would show up for them.”

 

Bohn’s office hours experience largely mirrors what happens in middle and high school, compounded for teenagers by a potent mix of peer pressure—the urgent need to appear competent in front of friends and classmates is a driving force at this age—and a lack of metacognitive skills when it comes to assessing their own learning and knowledge gaps. 

 

Middle schoolers have a harder time asking for help because they’re transitioning from the cut-and-dry thinking of elementary school. Add to that the self-consciousness and insecurity that puberty brings, and no one dares to ask for help for fear of being ‘found out’ or ‘exposed’.

 

We also tend to underestimate just how much discomfort kids feel about asking for help. That can cause parents or educators to “sit back waiting for those in need to ask for help, engage in misguided attempts to encourage help-seeking without directly addressing help-seekers’ discomfort, or mistakenly attribute underutilization of available help to a lack of need rather than a lack of confidence,” writes Bohns.

 

Yet the answer, Bohns notes, isn’t about getting students to grasp the benefits of asking for help, convincing them, for example, of the upside of office hours. Instead, it’s much more productive, she says, to lower the temperature on the process generally so that identifying where they need help, and then asking for it, becomes a low-stakes, normal part of being a good learner, something students feel comfortable and empowered to do regularly.

 

Here are a number of educator-sourced strategies designed to normalize seeking help in middle and high school, making it a natural, easy choice for students.

 

Teach Metacognitive Skills: It’s not uncommon for students to sit in silence or confusion, instead of raising their hand to ask for help. Students must first recognize that they’re struggling. This requires honesty and self-awareness—some students don’t think they need help even when formal or informal assessments indicate otherwise. So encourage self-reflection in students, help them develop the metacognitive skills to take on at least some of the responsibility for monitoring their learning, rather than keeping that task the sole purview of teachers, or parents. As they learn, students should regularly check in with themselves, asking themselves basic questions like: “Do I need to ask for help?” and “Are there areas that are unclear to me?” As they prepare for a test, they can ask themselves open-ended questions like:

• Can I teach this concept to a friend or family member?

• Can I identify one strategy I’ve been using during this lesson that’s helped me be successful?

• Can I identify one strategy I want to try using more often?

• How do I think I’m doing in this class, in this unit, on this project? How do I know?

 

Normalize It: Part of lowering the stakes for students involves demonstrating how commonplace needing and asking for help can be. So talk about it in class and provide examples, read aloud about it, and share your own stories about seeking support or assistance from others. Share with your students what you were good at and what you struggled with when you were their age. It’s important to remember what it was like to be the age of your students. What were your strengths and weaknesses in the subject matter that you teach, or in other subjects? How did you overcome those obstacles? What embarrassed you? Sharing your own very human learning experiences with students serves not just to illustrate how you sought help, it can also provide a valuable glimpse of the teacher not as an untouchable authority, but as a relatable human who has grown and changed throughout the years.

 

Model Assertiveness: Assertive communication is a hard but valuable skill for students to learn. In the classroom, students who lack assertiveness skills may hesitate to share their thinking openly or ask clarifying questions when they’re confused. But when people behave assertively, they stand up for themselves without diminishing or hurting others. In other words, they’re strong, not mean. After clarifying the definition of assertive communication—you might explain that it “represents the middle ground between the extremes of aggression and passivity. Students can role-play solving various conflicts or problems. Try a “Stating Your Needs” exercise where students practice responding assertively to a misunderstanding—a student can’t keep up with her notes, asks the teacher to slow down, but the teacher doesn’t see her quietly raising her hand and keeps going.

 

Offer Conversation Starters and Role-Play: For students who are introverted or shy, or who—for any number of reasons—struggle to speak up in class or initiate a conversation with a teacher, practice and role-play can help build confidence and skills. Ask students to brainstorm ways to initiate a conversation asking a teacher, or peer, for help, and then have them role-play in small groups or one-on-one with an adult how the conversation might unfold. To help get things moving, provide a few sentence starters such as:

• I’m struggling with... . Can we talk about it later?

• I’m working hard, but I’m still not understanding… . Can you help me?

• I’m not sure what I need. Can you please talk to me?

• Can you give me advice about … ?

 

Provide Non-Public Options: When sign-ups for an SAT prep class at three high schools were public—allowing students to see who would be taking the class—53 percent of students expressed interest in the class. But when sign-ups were offered in private settings, participation in the prep class rose to 80 percent, according to a recent study, underscoring the powerful pressure kids feel about how they’re perceived by peers. It’s important that students know they can also reach out privately to seek help and support—by email, for example. While most teachers share their email address with students, go one step further and make a point of clarifying with students that it’s another way for them to reach out to you for help or support. Consider establishing ground rules around your response time and other details that protect your non-school hours--and then be sure to check your inbox daily.

 

Busting the Learning Style Myth

 This week's article summary is Busting the Learning Style Myth.

Most of us are familiar with the idea that we all have a preferred learning style, the four most common being visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic.

The belief is that once we identify our preferred learning style, we can  optimize our learning through that style.

The problem with this belief is there is no evidence it works and in fact often hampers the learning process. 

So why does the belief in learning styles remain so popular?  

Because it seems so logical.

But unfortunately some things that make sense aren’t actually true.

I prefer reading and writing more than kinesthetic, hands-on activities. But that doesn’t mean I learn best only by reading and writing. There are many things I learned that I couldn’t have by simply reading about them: throwing a curveball, riding a bike, making bread from scratch.

Learning styles are different from Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences: kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, naturalist, logical mathematical, spatial. We typically have some talents we’re naturally better at than others. I have always been good with logical, mathematical thinking yet I have zero musical talent.

Still, as you’ll see in the article while we all have different and unique talents, we all ultimately learn the same way not through a particular learning style!

Joe

----- 

A prevalent neuromyth is that of “learning styles.” 

According to this belief, people can be classified by how they learn best and should concentrate their educational efforts in that mode. If someone is an auditory learner, she’ll master a subject or skill faster and more effectively by listening to lectures than reading books or through first-hand experiences.

The idea of learning styles has sadly infected our education systems and people’s understanding of themselves. And psychologists worry this can have long-term consequences. 

There is a grain of truth to the myth of learning styles. Namely, people do differ in their abilities and preferences. The VARK learning model, for example, classifies people as either visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic (hands-on) learners. Each method is part of the learning process, and people will have their favorites.

Many proponents believe learning styles are inheritable, emerge early in childhood, have a physiological basis, predict learning outcomes, and are immutable. For such people, saying “I’m a visual learner” isn’t merely stating preference; it’s stating something fundamental about themselves.

According to a recent study, half of the people who subscribe to the myth hold this view. More worryingly, the study noted, educators who work with younger children are more likely to believe that learning styles are hardwired. And that belief can lead educators to support learning style-based curricula.

Another study found that 71 percent of educators believed the learning styles myth and that 88 percent of the general public accepted the concept, too.

Giving students the message that ‘It’s OK if you’re not good at--insert ‘intelligence’ or ‘learning style’ here--you can still be good at--insert whatever here--can lead students to give up on cultivating key learning skills that can be developed, to an extent, in everyone. By promoting a dominant learning styles mentality, we are actually limiting students with self-fulfilling prophecies despite the best intentions.

A short thought experiment reveals the fundamental problem with the learning styles myth. Imagine a young surgeon being told he’s a reading/writing learner. Taking the idea to heart, she skips lectures, shuns anatomy charts, and doesn’t bother practicing on cadavers. But don’t worry, she says as the anesthesiologist puts you under, they were excellent books.

A seminal analysis reviewed the literature on learning styles and found a wide array of papers discussing the theory but few studies testing the idea through experimentation. Those that did found no supporting evidence that learning was enhanced by a slavish dedication to a student’s learning style.

Why then does the learning styles myth survive despite the evidence? Like all neuromyths, it tells us something we want to believe. The learning styles myth serves a function similar to personality tests, horoscopes, and Cosmo quizzes. That is, it provides a sense of identity, allows us to simplify complexities, and tells us something about our favorite subject (ourselves!). People prefer brain-based accounts of behavior, and they like to categorize people into types. Learning styles allow people to do both of those things.”

It may also tie into common misconceptions of success.

Success is complicated. It requires the right mixture of education, resources, skill, and luck. But as David Epstein notes in his book Range, we tend to streamline this equation into specialization equals success.

The earlier we learn who we are and dedicate ourselves to that path, the thought goes, the greater our chances to succeed. Our cultural obsession with the likes of Tiger Woods, Mark Zuckerberg, and legions of chess prodigies bears this out. To get a head start on success, specialize early and to the exclusion of all else.

But while specialization has its place, Epstein argues, that obsession pollutes the principles that research shows help us learn. Those being: Engage with subjects in as many material ways as possible. Read, converse, seek out examples, get hands-on, and experiment. While we may have preferences, we should also challenge ourselves to try new methods and re-engage with less-favored ones. 

The Importance of Curiosity and Persistence

This week's article summary is The SEL Skills That Matter Most for Academic Success: Curiosity and Persistence.

Teachers who work in elementary and middle school have always known that social-emotional skills support academic development. High school teachers, on the other hand, are often so focused on the content of their discipline that student social-emotional concerns take a back seat in their classrooms. 

I’m not sure this recent international survey that finds strong correlation between classroom emphasis on social-emotional skill and habit development and academic achievement and success will lead to curricular and pedagogical change in high schools, which historically have been so slow to change. Yet one positive result of the Covid pandemic is high schools have started to recognize that many teens today struggle emotionally and psychologically and need the support and guidance from their teachers.

Elementary teachers  have always known that attention to social-emotional health and safety precedes academic focus and development. 

I like to talk about student outcomes of a Trinity education as the 4 Cs: Cognition (academics), Character, Curiosity, Confidence. 3 of the 4 focus on the social-emotional domain. The international survey referenced in the article categorized social-emotional qualities into 5 areas: Task Performance, Emotional Regulation, Collaboration, Open-Mindedness, Engagement with Others. All these areas are central to what we do in shaping our students foundation needed for future success.

I am hopeful that through our efforts, Trinity alums have the secure sense of self to weather the uncertainties of the past year and a half and to thrive not just survive in high school.

Joe

 -----

Want students to succeed in math and reading? Nurture their curiosity and persistence.

Across 11 countries, those two skills are the most closely linked to better academic performance for both 10- and 15-year-olds, according to the first international survey of social-emotional skills. The study analyzed the way social-emotional skills affected students’ performance. Students in a wide array of educational systems and learning contexts showed that the development of social skills ranging from trust and creativity to assertiveness could boost students’ performance in core academic subjects.

“Some people still see this as opposing ends of the spectrum, you have the academic development and the social-emotional development. And some even think if you focus too much on social-emotional skills, you take something away, [such as] mathematics academic time,” said Andreas Schleicher, the director for education at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which conducted the study. “Actually what our research shows is that they are two sides of the same coin, and actually quite closely connected.”

The OECD, which administers the global Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), analyzed the social-emotional development of more than 3,000 students from different countries.

The group looked at five key areas:

• Task performance (such as persistence, and self-control)
• Emotional regulation (such as optimism and reaction to stress)
• Collaboration (like empathy and trust)
• Open-mindedness (such as tolerance, curiosity, and creativity)
• Engagement with others (such as assertiveness and sociability)

The OECD found curiosity and persistence were the strongest predictors of academic success in both math and reading for both children and teenagers.

One of the most surprising findings to the OECD was that across countries and socioeconomic backgrounds, 15-year-olds showed lower social-emotional skills than 10-year-olds did. 

Surveys from students, teachers, and parents all showed lower social skills among teenagers beyond normal adolescent self-consciousness. The skills gap was particularly large for things like optimism, trust, energy and sociability, and the OECD found girls had bigger drops than boys across most of the skills.

“Ask yourself, what are we doing as parents, as schools, as education systems to help young people through this difficult period of adolescence. It’s something that I think we should take to heart, that there is a period in their lives where we should redouble our efforts,” Schleicher said.

That is particularly crucial at a time when many teenagers have faced social isolation and anxiety from the ongoing pandemic. “We know that the experience of trauma impacts development and learning and a host of other outcomes,” Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, a psychology chair of social and emotional learning at the University of Chicago. “I don’t think we can really think about outcomes for young people without a trauma lens ... and how we as a society nurture and work to reduce the impact of trauma on young people.”

Yet educators point out that social-emotional learning programs, which in the US are often targeted for younger students, can be a poor fit for more world-weary adolescents.