Is Any Feedback Effective

This week's article summary is The Danger With Giving Students Feedback.

In the course of my career in education one area that has grown exponentially is feedback—to students, to/from colleagues, to presenters, to/from direct reports. (Back when I began teaching there was very little feedback. I still remember the words of my middle school principal the year I started teaching: “Joe, if the next time we meet is in June, you’ve had a successful first year.” Nothing formative, just summative.)

As a kid, I never really felt much benefit from feedback. If I had to get it, I obviously preferred positive to negative. Yet, I found the positive didn’t help me get better beyond feeling good and the negative didn’t motivate me to try harder.

As you’ll see in the article below from Alfie Kohn (who’s the ultimate intrinsic motivation, anti-authoritarian gadfly of education, hence I only heed the spirit of what he writes) that there’s little research that shows feedback helps us grow and learn.

So if feedback from an expert (and we teachers are experts) doesn’t lead to greater learning, what does

The most important motivator is our own desire to learn. When we’re motivated to learn something, almost nothing will stop us. Especially today with YouTube, the basics of everything are a click away—from how to throw a sinker in baseball, to re-tiling a bathroom floor, to learning how to play guitar.

How do we know if we are getting better? Through self-evaluation. We are great at assessing progress (personal improvement) and achievement (how we fare against an objective standard). 

Do we need the advice and guidance of experts? Yes, but it’s really only effective when we seek it. Being assessed constantly by a superior does little to motivate or improve. However, when we ask an expert for advice—often a specific question about how to do something—we are more likely to utilize the tip.

Ultimately the key to learning, improving, mastering is self-reflection, evaluation, and ongoing trial and error. As the earlier article stated, teachers need to empower our students to be the most important contributor to their learning. 

I know it’s ingrained in us as teachers to be assessing at all times, and I do believe that the increase in formative assessment has been a plus in schools. Yet Kohn’s article is a reminder about how critical to learning our relationship to and support of our students is to their learning than telling them how well or poorly they’re doing. Or as the article’s last sentence says: “I was concentrating so hard on perfecting my feedback that I forgot to focus on my kids!”

 Joe

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A lot of people make a living by offering advice about how teachers should give feedback to students—or how administrators should give feedback to teachers. 

Unfortunately, a body of compelling theory and research raises troubling questions about much of that advice. It turns out that hearing how well we’ve done (typically from someone in a position of power) often doesn’t lead us to improve.

When feedback is contaminated with evaluation (“Here’s what I think about what you did. ... "), it tends to become not only less effective but often downright damaging—both to future performance and to recipients’ interest in whatever they were doing.

For decades, studies have shown that praising people when they succeed can be just as counterproductive as criticizing them when they fail. Nor does it help to tweak the phrasing or to praise one thing rather than another (for example, effort rather than ability) because the problem rests with the experience of being judged. 

In the 1980s, researcher Ruth Butler found that students often became more intrigued by a task when they received simple comments about what they had done, whereas praise “did not even maintain initial interest at its baseline level.” More recently, two Vanderbilt University researchers reported that students, particularly those who were reasonably proficient, did worse at math if they had previously received praise for succeeding.

What is true of the judgment inherent in praise is also true of the judgment inherent in grades. A series of meta-analyses published in 2020 by Duke University researchers showed that substantive feedback without any grade attached was preferable for promoting both motivation and achievement. In fact, getting a grade was more damaging to motivation than receiving no feedback at all, particularly for struggling students.

If good grades are just as destructive as bad grades, incidentally, it may be because the most striking feature of a positive evaluation isn’t that it’s positive but that it’s an evaluation. (One psychologist remarked that kids would come to find it unpleasant even to watch TV if they were regularly evaluated for how well they did it.) 

But the central point here applies to adults as well as children, which is why teachers often bristle at having an administrator sit in judgment of them. What’s remarkable is that some of these teachers may not think twice about subjecting their students to a constant stream of evaluations.

Why do evaluations backfire? First, because they, like other rewards, are typically experienced as controlling—and people don’t like to be controlled. Second, to receive a pat on the head (an A or a “Good job!”) for doing a task well serves to devalue that task; it’s been reframed as just a prerequisite for receiving a reward. Finally, evaluation creates pressure to keep up the good work, which, in turn, leads to risk avoidance. If the point is to perform well, better to stick with what one is likely to succeed at—a posture not exactly conducive to learning or growth.

Feedback is better than evaluation, but that doesn’t mean it’s always constructive. In fact, the most comprehensive review of the research, comprising more than 600 experimental comparisons, found that even pure feedback often has a negative effect on performance. And even when the effect is positive, its impact may be small, and any learning that results may be shallow.

So what determines whether, and to what extent, feedback will help?

• Hearing that you succeeded at a task, not surprisingly, is more apt to strengthen interest than hearing that you didn’t. (The supposed benefits of failure are wildly overrated.)
• Sometimes it’s obvious whether your efforts paid off: Either the seed you planted sprouted, or it didn’t; either readers are surprised by your ending, or they aren’t. Such feedback is less likely to reduce interest than when someone tells you how well you did, which pulls you out of the learning experience. Students are then less engaged with what they’re doing and more concerned with how well someone thinks they’re doing it.
• Feedback is most likely to backfire when it’s given publicly or in comparison with other people. Contrary to a widespread American myth, competition tends to undermine intrinsic motivation and achievement—for winners as well as losers.
• Feedback works best when it’s just one step in a learning process rather than a final judgment, although even the formative kind isn’t always beneficial (particularly if it’s based on a test).
• It matters not only how but why feedback is given. If the rationale is experienced as manipulative (to meet someone else’s standards), it may be damaging. The ideal scenario is for information to be offered at the recipient’s request. In general, effective teachers and managers do a lot more asking than telling: “How can I help?” “What do you need to know?

A final caveat: Even research suggesting that certain feedback can be useful turns out to be less reassuring than it appears because of dubious assumptions about what “useful” means. As Lorrie Shepard at the University of Colorado noticed, most studies of feedback “are based on behaviorist assumptions. Typically the outcome measures are narrowly defined [and] feedback consists of reporting right and wrong answers.” Thus, even if feedback “works,” it may do so only on tasks of questionable value, such as cramming forgettable facts into short-term memory.

With feedback, then, as with so much else in education, paying too much attention to perfecting a method distracts us from reflecting on our goal. And the goal should concern not only the quality of learning but the experience of the learner. Hence, educator Cris Tovani’s evocative confession: “I was concentrating so hard on ... trying to perfect the feedback ... [that] I forgot to focus on the kids.”

The Five Virtues of a Good Writer

This week's article summary is The Five Virtues of a Good Writer, and it is a follow-up to last week's summary in which I reminisced about my high school years learning—or more accurately not learning—how to write well.

This article identifies five components of good writing. For me, these components are more applicable to us as adults than our students, as the most important goals we should have for our elementary school students are to foster their enthusiasm and confidence as writers. Yes, we begin to introduce these components to our students, particularly in our upper elementary grades, yet true understanding and application of them doesn’t begin to coalesce until our students are in middle, high school, or even later.

Hence, as all of us at Trinity have writing responsibilities from progress reports to written communication to students, colleagues, and parents, keeping these components at the forefront of the writing process can be very helpful.

As I read the article, what impacted me the most was the need for a clear purpose before writing. I wrote progress reports for over 30 years, and I often struggled writing about the students who fell within the meaty part of the bell curve. The all-star performers and chronic strugglers were easy for me to write about because I knew where they shined or needed to improve. It was the middle kids whose description (strengths, challenges, needs/next steps) eluded me. But as the summary below points out, I didn’t have a clear purpose of what I wanted to write about them because I hadn’t thought carefully and deeply enough about them before I started to write about them. Instead, I would just begin writing and hoped the right words would follow. Those progress reports were often uninspired and ineffective because they didn’t capture the uniqueness of the child.

Stephen King is his book On Writing, advises to “write with the door closed (for you), then rewrite with the door open (for others).” Once you have your purpose, writing–at least the rough draft—becomes much easier.

The other four components of writing (although I also like the article’s sixth one: rhythm) come into play during the editing and revising processes. It’s through revision that our ideas are reorganized and more clearly expressed so others can easily follow and understand.

Like any skill—and writing ultimately is a skill—writing requires constant practice. Even as we write simple emails to colleagues, we should keep these five components in mind and strive to further hone our writing.

Joe

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The great journalist and author Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) offered the following excellent advice to writers:

“The reader who seeks to write well and think well should aim first at the essential qualities—coherence, clarity, precision, simplicity, and brevity. Euphony (pleasant to the ears) and rhythm are of course also desirable, but they are like the final rubbing on a fine piece of furniture—finishing touches justified only if the piece has been soundly made. The apprentice writer should try to acquire these Five Virtues by vigilant abstention from the Five Vices of Incoherence, Obscurity, Vagueness, Pedantry, and Circumlocution.”

Here are a few of my own thoughts on these writing virtues and corresponding vices.

Coherence (as opposed to Incoherence) is the quality of forming a unified, integrated whole. For a writing piece to have coherence, it must have a clear purpose, and every constituent part of it must contribute toward that purpose. Long digressions and non sequiturs can make a piece incoherent.

Clarity (as opposed to Obscurity) in writing is about being easily understood by the reader. A writer who wants to be understood must think in terms, not only of expression (sharing one’s thoughts) but exposition (sharing ideas intelligibly). Often attaining greater clarity in exposition goes hand-in-hand with attaining greater clarity in your own understanding of the topic. For a piece to be clear, it must flow well: both narratively and logically. Each passage must advance the story and/or argument of the piece in a way that naturally follows what came before it. A piece that is disjointed and “jumps around” too much will confuse the reader. Clear writing must also be complete. It must not omit any points that are necessary for the reader to understand what you’re saying. Missing context will obscure your message. Unfamiliar, un-introduced jargon will also make your presentation opaque to the reader. Remember that the reader does not share all your knowledge. Be wary of presuming that a necessary connection will “go without saying.”

Precision (as opposed to Vagueness) in writing is about being exact and specific in conveying your meaning. Attaining precision is often a matter of “playing around” with a sentence to find just the right wording and phrasing to accurately get your meaning across.

Simplicity (as opposed to Pedantry) in writing is about limiting your exposition only to the essential. Writers with extensive knowledge of their subject are often tempted to over-share arcane details that would overload the reader. Don’t try to cram a comprehensive education of your subject into one piece. Shoot for the realistic aim of providing your reader an important lesson that is simple enough to be fully digested in one sitting.

Brevity (as opposed to Circumlocution) in writing is about getting your meaning across in as few words as necessary. (But no fewer. Brevity in excess can result in vagueness and obscurity.) Often one’s first stab at a sentence will be needlessly wordy and thus unwieldy to the reader. See what you can do to cut, compress, and recombine your wording to make your sentence more concise and elegant. Prune any sentences that don’t “carry their weight”: that don’t contribute enough value to your presentation to justify the additional work they demand from the reader. Sometimes this can mean cutting whole sections. You have to be willing to “kill your darlings” as William Faulkner put it.

Feedback That Empowers Students

This week's article summary is Feedback That Empowers Students.

Think back to when you were in high school nervously awaiting your English teacher to hand back the essay you wrote. 

Once the teacher returned the graded paper to you, you probably flipped to the end--skipping over the teacher’s corrections and comments, usually written in blood red ink--and jumped right to the grade he/she wrote. 

If the grade was B or better, you then might have looked at the teacher’s written comments, expecting there’d be more praise than suggestions for improvement (which to most of us means criticism)—after all, only a masochist prefers criticism to praise.

However, if the grade was below a B--if you were like me--you crumbled the essay into a tight wad and threw it in the classroom waste basket when the teacher wasn’t looking. As someone who received a lot of grades below B on essays, my defense rationale was that the teacher didn’t like or understand me. (Every student knows the story that Einstein failed  a math in middle school.)

Similarly, when I was an English teacher, I was discouraged when my students did the same thing to me when they got back their papers that I had critiqued so diligently. For them, it was basically an either/or dichotomy where good writers got praise and satisfaction while poor writers sunk deeper and deeper into the belief that they would never get my approval and were destined to never write well.

Schools and English classes have gotten better with tools that help students write like laptop computers (which make revising and editing much less painful) and rubrics (where students have a better understanding of the components of their assignment like a persuasive essay).

Still, as an adult whose job involves a lot of writing, I wish I had begun to hone my writing skills back when I was in school rather than learning on the job what good writing entails. As a student, I was loath to revise my rough drafts; today, I embrace that my initial draft is nothing more than a rough sketch or outline that will take much thought and revision on my part.

What you’ll see in the article below is how important it is for teachers to guide their students to be more empowered and to understand how much influence they have in their own learning. I sought my teacher’s approval in the grade he/she gave me when I should have focused more on his/her comments to further my development as a writer. I just didn’t feel empowered as a student, and most students struggle with their confidence throughout the inevitable ups and downs of their school years. 

Another article I read over the summer on ‘resilience in the classroom’ stated that the purpose of school is to help students learn, practice, and reflect. 

When I was a kid, I only thought school was for learning,  yet now I know that it’s through practice and reflection that we learn.

Joe

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Feedback can be a powerful process that greatly impacts student learning when it affirms students’ identities as learners, is clear and direct, and considers the individual attributes of each student.

Here’s an example. A student receives the following feedback from her teacher:

• Strength: You clearly state your claim, The women’s rights movement began with the suffrage movement but it’s not over yet, and provided a list of recent events, such as the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team’s court case, to support your thinking.
• Need: Include the counterclaim and how you would respond. What would someone say if they disagreed with you? Where would they find fault with your supporting evidence?
• Next Steps: Work with your writing partner to talk through the Claim, Support, Question protocol. Do some more research to address the questions that you and your partner generate, and add this information to your essay.

This feedback moves beyond what students often receive in response to their work—statements such as “Great job!” “Shows improvement.” “Add evidence.” The more comprehensive feedback can empower students because it’s individualized to the student; leverages students’ assets, interests, and learning preferences; and builds students’ confidence in themselves. Let’s unpack the above example to see how to accomplish this.

Strengths: Identify what students can do in relation to the learning target, regardless of whether they’ve achieved mastery. The feedback in our example is based on the following learning target and success criteria for the student: I can write an argument by doing the following: stating a claim, providing supporting reasons and relevant evidence, addressing counterclaims

When a teacher identifies what students can do, it communicates the belief that all students are learners and can achieve high expectations. Students know what to repeat in future assignments and, most important, develop confidence in themselves.

Needs: Identify where a student is in relationship to the learning target. The language the teacher uses in identifying needs can affect how students receive the feedback. In our feedback example, the teacher states the need—Include the counterclaim and how you would respond—and then provides some questions to prompt student thinking. 

Direct and honest feedback helps students understand that feedback is affirmation that the student can reach the goal. When feedback is cushioned or vague, a student may interpret it to mean that the teacher doesn’t believe in the student’s capability.

Next Steps: These directly correlate with the identified needs and provide suggestions on how students can move forward. Too often, students are given feedback but don’t know how to address it. The teacher supports student independence and self-regulation by describing actions that the student can take on their own to strengthen their work. In our example of feedback, the teacher reminds the student to use a thinking routine that has been repeatedly used in class—to identify possible counterclaims and provide stronger evidence to support their reasoning.

Next steps should also consider the individual attributes of the student. For example, if the teacher knows a student is an artist, suggesting that the student use sketch noting before writing might be a good next step. Students who use oral language to process information might benefit from peer discussion, as mentioned in the example, before writing.

The Amount, Timing, and Format: These can influence how a student receives the feedback and their willingness to act on it. Some students need less feedback more often, while other students prefer to have the time to process and apply the feedback. Feedback can be verbal or written and offered privately or in small groups. The same process for providing feedback will not work for everyone. If a teacher is unsure as to what strategy might work best for the student, the teacher can conference with the student and discuss different strategies. This builds the trust that underlies the successful feedback relationship.

The feedback that students receive from their teachers serves as models for students to engage in peer feedback and self-assessment. When students use the same process with their peers and then apply it to themselves, they’re truly empowered. Students, like their teachers, must have clearly articulated learning targets and a protocol, such as the strengths, needs, and next steps. They must also reflect on the feedback process. Questions such as “How did feedback from your classmate help you revise your work?” “What did you learn from examining your classmate’s work that will help you in revising your own?” and “How did you revise your work after completing your self-assessment?” all help students see the value of the feedback process.

Empowering students through feedback begins with teacher feedback that identifies what the student can do, clearly states areas of needs, and considers the individual attributes of each student in providing next steps. When students receive quality feedback from their teachers, they are primed to engage in peer feedback and self-assessment, and empowered to be self-regulated, independent learners.

The Importance of Recess

This week's article summary is What Recess Looks Like Around the World.

‘Recess’ is the most typical response from kids when asked what their favorite class in school is. The reason for this is recess time is one of the few less structured times during the school day: it’s when kids get to be social, creative, innovative, exploratory, imaginative, and collaborative.

Take a few moments to see the photos of recesses around the world in the link below. The settings are different but the takeaway for me is kids are clearly kids regardless of where they live, what school they attend, and what resources they have.

Similar to last week’s summary about kids wanting calmness, clarity, and compassion from their teachers, this week’s reminds us that kids want teachers at recess to watch over their physical and emotional safety. They want the latitude to work out their squabbles with peers at recess, yet they recognize that sometimes they need teachers to, as the article states, ‘coach them through social conflicts.’

Last week a number of us chaperoned the sixth graders on their fall outdoor education trip--in many ways an extended recess where kids get a lot of free, down time to just be kids and savor a little freedom while also honing their evolving social-emotional skill development, or as Trinity says, shaping their sense of self and sincere care and concern for others. I recently reviewed another school’s website for SAIS accreditation and was struck by how the school combined these two critical aspects of human development: ‘our students learn about self within the context of others.’ While we are all individuals, we all must get along with others.

Helping our students learn about self in the context of others is what the sixth grade teachers did last week and what we all do every day in our classrooms, at school, and at recess!

Joe

 

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Children may play in fundamentally similar ways everywhere but recess unfolds very differently around the globe.

In elementary school classrooms around the world, kids strain to contain their energy until recess. When the bell rings, they burst onto rooftop playgrounds in Tokyo, hopscotch courts in Los Angeles, and concrete yards in the West Bank to race, fight, joke, bounce, sing, tease, and squeal. 

Their experience on the playground — joyful or vicious — will impact their development much as any math or science class. Kids aren’t just returning to school this month; they’re returning to the wilds of recess: spontaneous, unpredictable, and an essential respite from the strictures of in-class learning. 

And out of all that unstructured play comes some of the richest social-emotional learning — provided the recess is well run. That’s harder to do than it sounds.

“There’s a mismatch between what kids and adults expect supervision to look like at recess,” says William Massey, who studies the intersection of play and child development at Oregon State University. “Adults think they should ensure kids don’t get hurt; kids want to be free to jump off high structures and risk physical injury — but they want adults to ensure they don’t get picked on or beat up.” It turns out that, in this case, what kids want is what’s best for them. They need the freedom to take physical risks during activities of their choice, while caring and supportive teachers stand by to coach them through social conflicts.

One of the most compelling studies on recess globally is James Mollison’s photo collection entitled Playgrounds. Mollison’s images of school kids playing during breaks — whether on a mountainside in Bhutan, on train tracks in Mexico City, in a refugee camp in Jordan, or on a schoolyard playground in Massachusetts — contain familiar vignettes: school children cheering in groups, playing ball, sitting alone, tumbling on the ground, or pointing and teasing.

The photos show us that regardless of the backdrop, given the freedom, kids are boundlessly energetic and creative; for thousands of years, they have invented their games using stones, marbles, and drawings in the dirt as well as chants, songs, riddles, and handshakes

The games kids play and songs they sing — from kickball and kick the can to double Dutch— give kids the chance to work through tough feelings when they lose, deal with a cheater, and negotiate rules. They also preserve culture — many have been passed from big kids to little kids for hundreds of years.

Around the world, nations are committed to giving children space to play. The U.N’s Child’s Rights Treaty, which lists play as a right, is one of the most ratified human rights treaties in history. Just three U.N. nations have yet to ratify it: Somalia, South Sudan, and the United States. Here, we offer up an argument for this right through images and tales of play around the world that show play to be both infectious and essential — something we all should advocate for in our children’s schools.

While some of us may take recess for granted in the United States, there are no national guidelines requiring breaks during the school day. Only 10 states have signed laws that require schools to provide recess to elementary school children. Georgia is the latest state to guarantee recess, with a bill signed into law this summer that not only demands recess but prohibits teachers from withholding recess as punishment. “It’s still about time and minutes, not about quality,” says Massey of the new state standards, “but it’s a step forward.” In most states, there are no set requirements, and recess is in constant peril of being cut from the school day wholesale — or cut as punishment. 

As a result, some schools do recess well, and others don’t do it at all.

Calm, Clear, and Kind

This week's article summary is Calm, Clear, and Kind: What Students Want From Their Teachers.

The past two summaries have centered on the importance of teachers developing a strong, supportive, trusting relationship with their students.

This week’s summary asked students exactly what they want and need from their teachers: Calmness (specifically their teachers always appropriately regulating their emotions regardless of the stress of the moment), Clarity (with instructions and explanations), and Kindness (being fair, understanding, and compassionate).

I particularly enjoyed the actual words students used to provide examples of calmness, clarity, and kindness.

We all know that kids are always watching adults and learn much from observing adults in action—in and out of school. As such, “remaining calm, being clear in our communications, and treating others with kindness and consideration” is a simple but effective mantra for all of us to guide our lives, not only our classrooms.

Joe

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Years of research in the field of social-emotional learning (SEL) has demonstrated that when students have supportive relationships with their teachers, they experience better well-being and success in school. 

What does it mean to be a caring, supportive teacher? 

I recently published a study in the Journal of Adolescent Research in which I asked students what makes a caring teacher. Their responses aligned with education research: that the most authentic, wholehearted educators are calm, clear, and kind. 

Be calm: This refers to a teacher’s ability to remain calm and regulate their own stress in the face of the challenges inherent in teaching. In doing so, teachers are less reactive and better able to support students with their own emotion regulation. Students describe a caring teacher as one who “does stuff calmly like not yelling” and “takes time to explain the work” and “creates a calming environment to work in.” Some other comments from students were “be patient when someone doesn’t understand the material,” “they don’t yell,” and “they help you calm down.”

Be clear: This is a teacher’s capacity to remain present with their students and to stay curious and in tune with their needs. It also emphasizes the importance of teachers listening and maintaining clear, democratic communication with their students. For students being clear means “They explain the work well”, “They listen to your ideas”, “They listen with their eyes”, “Notice your feelings even if other people don’t”, and “Resolve a problem before it gets big”. 

Be kind:  This encompasses more than just having a nice personality. It includes practicing non-judgment and expressing warmth and connection, cultivating trust and respect, and attending to the needs of students. Student responses:  “They say hi to you in the morning”, “They understand how you are feeling”, “They help you when you’re sad”, “Helps me when it looks like I don’t understand”, “Helps with friends”.

It is not always easy to be calm, clear, and kind in every moment. Particularly when we ourselves are stressed or busy. Fortunately for teachers, there is an inextricable link between being calm, clear, and kind and your own well-being.

In essence, what students say they need from their teachers may in fact be exactly what teachers need, as well. So, what can teachers do to show they care?

Ask students directly for what they need. Much can be learned by listening to students’ own voices—in research and practice.

Feel empowered in what you are already doing. So many teachers naturally show up in the ways their students need, in part by knowing the importance of truly listening to them. Students did not identify complicated teaching strategies or skills. Instead, they admit to needing their teachers to be present, warm, kind, and helpful, and to listen to them. So many teachers already put this at the forefront of their teaching and should feel empowered that they are already doing exactly what their students need.

Be kind to yourself. It is not easy to be calm, clear, or kind all the time. It is OK to not get it right all the time.

In the end…try to do your best to be calm, clear, and kind with your students and yourself. For many, this may just mean committing to be more intentional about trying to be mindful throughout the day. Or it could mean seeking out additional training or resources to help you build and strengthen your mindfulness muscles!

Perspective Taking in the Classroom

This week's article summary is article summary, a follow up on last week’s summary about classroom management, is about how teachers can use ‘perspective taking’ in dealing with students who act up in class.

Similar to a recent article summary in which I contrasted the teaching styles of my 6th grade and junior history teachers, classroom management systems similarly run the gamut from strict, no nonsense discipline to more collaborative, flexible classroom practices.

As with most things, effective classroom management involves bits and pieces of different techniques and strategies with the ‘firm-but-fair’ style being the most effective.

The recent study from Johns Hopkins discussed below grounds classroom management in classroom relationships, specifically between the teacher and his/her students. When this relationship is strong and trusting, classroom management and student behavior are better. 

Perspective taking is an additional tool where the teacher empathetically thinks about why a misbehaving child acts up and how he/she may feel about the way in which the teacher dealt with him/her. Viewing misbehavior and consequences/punishments through the eyes of the child can help a teacher better understand a wayward student, further enhance that relationship, and ideally improve the child’s behavior.

I have always subscribed to the Positive Discipline tenet that everyone wants to behave, fit in, and get along well with others. Yet even though we all want to behave, there are sundry reasons why people act out, push boundaries, throw tantrums, and mistreat others. (I’m currently dealing with this with my 3 and 5 year old granddaughters.) There have certainly been a few students I’ve had through the years that seemed innately obstinate, yet most of the troublesome ones simply needed me to better understand and relate to them. (You like me may have had similar experiences with colleagues.)

It’s not always easy for a teacher to see an incident through a child’s lens, as there are often strong emotions (exasperation, anger, etc.) involved. Still, as the article concludes, perspective taking is one classroom tool we can use to strengthen our relationship with that child, which in turn leads to better classroom management and student behavior.

Joe

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One of the most vexing dilemmas for teachers is finding the best way to respond to students who misbehave. Experts argue over whether the best classroom-management approach is a consistent, strict discipline or a more forgiving response where students discuss their grievances with an adult’s guidance, a process called restorative justice. Who can blame  teachers for feeling confused and ill-prepared to manage classroom disruptions?

In this column, I’m going to explain an idea that steals a page from marriage counseling: perspective taking. Its advocates advise teachers to put themselves in the shoes of their most perplexing, misbehaving students and simply imagine what they are thinking and feeling. 

It might seem far-fetched that a simple, imaginative exercise inside the mind of the person who isn’t misbehaving – the teacher – would make any difference to the classroom atmosphere. But a Johns Hopkins study found that students of teachers who were so trained reported better relationships with their teachers and earned higher grades. “We know, unequivocally, one of the best things that anyone can do for classroom management and for teachers to be effective at their jobs across a whole array of outcomes, is to improve teacher-student relationships.”

The theory is that students’ need or desire to misbehave might be reduced if they feel a positive connection with the teacher at the front of the classroom. 

In the Johns Hopkins study, kindergarten through ninth grade teachers received a 90-minute workshop. The session resembled a theater workshop. Teachers sat in pairs and were instructed to begin by thinking about their most frustrating student with whom they often had conflicts. “There’s some child who takes up like 70, 80, 90 percent of your emotional bandwidth.”

Teachers were then told to think of a particularly puzzling behavior or an incident with the student and tell her workshop partner about it. Then, the teacher was asked to retell the story from the child’s perspective. If I were a teacher in this workshop, playing the role of the student, I might say, “Mrs. Barshay always picks on me. I think it’s because she doesn’t like me. She’s out to get me. I think she’s just mean.”

For many teachers the juxtaposition of the two perspectives got them to internalize. “This is more of a two-way street. And I’ve gotten sort of sucked into my own perspective, a little too much.”

A couple of months later, teachers who had taken the workshop reported more positive relationships with their students than teachers who hadn’t taken it. Students in their classrooms, similarly, reported more positive relationships with their teachers.

A 90-minute session on understanding someone else’s perspective will never be a complete answer to student discipline.  And, more broadly, all of these preventive discipline ideas are not a substitute for the need to react to student disruptions in the moment. But it’s an interesting theory that appears to do no harm, and this thought experiment might be a helpful addition to the teacher’s toolbox.

Gentle Parenting

This week's article summary is What is Gentle Parenting?

As you’ll see in the article, while the term ‘gentle parenting’ is relatively new—and in my opinion poorly named —it advocates the age-old parenting (and classroom management) technique of being ‘firm but fair’.

Whether in regards to parenting or teaching, firmness means being consistent with behavioral expectations/limits and structure/routines. Kids actually crave firmness with clear expectations and guidelines, yet they inevitably will still stumble and misbehave. It’s in their nature to push up against limits and see what happens when they exceed expected boundaries.

As authority figures, parents/teachers often struggle with how to deal with a misbehaving child. 

This is where fairness comes in. 

The article below—like the philosophy of Positive Discipline, Responsive Classroom, etc.—begins with the premise that all kids want to belong and do the right thing. Punishment for misbehavior can temporarily stop the infraction, yet unless the parent/teacher tries to identify the reason behind the misbehavior, it will more than likely continue.

The article, Positive Discipline techniques, and our discussions during preplanning all recommend that supporting children in their social-emotional growth (both their sense of self and care and concern for others) means having them gradually learn to recognize and name the panoply of emotions they feel, and then over time learn not to instinctively react to those feelings and emotions--which often result in exceeding expected rules and boundaries--but to thoughtfully respond in a manner that is within the expected norm.

Re-read that previous paragraph: it’s a tall order, but being able to control emotions and deal with obstacles is the key to a successful life. 

When I taught 8th grade, it seemed all I did was help young adolescents deal with their emotions, frustrations, feelings of inadequacy, etc. Yes, I taught history and coached soccer, basketball, and baseball, yet I was really guiding my students through one of the most tumultuous years of their lives. It took a lot of repeating, modeling, coaching, counseling, and consequence/punishment follow through, but more often than not I developed strong, trusting relationships with them and saw much growth and progress within them.

And as we all know, EQ ultimately is more important than IQ.

Joe

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In the past decade, the concept of “gentle” or “respectful” parenting has gained considerable traction. 

The foundation of the idea is in being a parent who is emotionally attuned to their child, and tries to understand the reasons behind their behavior.

There is great value in this, but it is not the whole story. Children also need their carers to set clear limits.

A common theme of gentle parenting is that parents should not rush in and immediately condemn their children if they don’t like what they’re doing. Instead, they should stop and listen to their child, then validate their feelings. For example, they might say, “So you are shouting because you think your brother was being unfair when he took your toy, and that upset you.”

Gentle parenting suggests that when a parent shows understanding of the child’s emotional state, it will help the child to calm down. Only after doing this should the parent decide what to do. This approach also has the longer-term aim of promoting emotional intelligence. The idea is that as children grow older they will learn to identify their own emotions more thoughtfully and act more appropriately.

But we also know that, when it comes to the parent-child relationship, how the parent responds to their child is crucial. After listening and clarifying what the child is feeling, the parent then needs to build on this to help the child think calmly and positively about the problem and find a good solution.

Parents who do this are, in the language of child development, “responding sensitively” to their children, both when the child is upset and when they are happy. Research shows that children whose parents responded sensitively in their first three years of life had better social skills at age 15 and also performed better academically.

In addition to the warm, close relationship created by sensitive responses to a child, boundaries need to be set as well. Children need to be able to live in the world with other people and get on with other children and adults. They need to learn how to fit in with externally imposed rules and that there are consequences if they do not. Children need both love and limits.

The trick is to set limits calmly and not be angry or explosive as a parent. A frustrated reaction is often unconscious and related to the way the parents themselves were brought up; they may not know any other way.

The good news is that parents can learn calm, effective discipline. If parents pay lots of attention when children are misbehaving, they are more likely to continue to behave badly. The drive for children to feel connected to their parents is so strong that, especially in a background where there is not much attention to go round, they will prefer negative attention to none. They soon learn that they need to play up to connect, so misbehaving becomes more frequent.

The solution is to briefly withdraw attention when children are misbehaving, followed by engaging with them warmly when they are behaving better. At this point, emotional feelings can be aired and an appropriate response should be set. Such an apparently simple regime takes a bit of learning, but usually has a striking effect on improving behavior. 

Also, crucially, if children are encouraged and paid warm attention when they are behaving well, they will do more of it.

There is good evidence that listening to your child and showing that you have understood them can be helpful, so long as the next step is to respond sensitively and if necessary set a calm limit. All this needs to be in the context of a positive relationship where the parent takes the time to have fun with their child