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I respect my self and others, too! I'll expect the best in all I do. I'm here to learn all I can to try my best and be all I am."

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Social And Emotional Skills: Everybody Loves Them, But Still Can't Define Them

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Social And Emotional Skills: Everybody Loves Them, But Still Can't Define Them

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More and more, people in education agree on the importance of schools' paying attention to stuff other than academics.

But still, no one agrees on what to call that "stuff."

I originally published a story on this topic two years ago.

As I reported back then, there were a bunch of overlapping terms in play, from "character" to "grit" to "noncognitive skills."

This bagginess bugged me, as a member of the education media. It bugged researchers and policymakers too. It still does.

If anything, the case for nonacademics has gotten even stronger since then. In fact, it has been enshrined in federal law. The Every Student Succeeds Act mandates that states measure at least one nonacademic indicator of school success.

There is also new research indicating that school-based interventions to promote social and emotional skills have large, and long-term, positive impacts: an average of $11 for every dollar invested, according to an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR).

But despite all the hoopla there is still - still! - no consensus on how to define these indicators, or even on what to call them.

"Basically, we're trying to explain student success educationally or in the labor market with skills not directly measured by standardized tests," Martin West, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, originally told me.

"The problem is, you go to meetings and everyone spends the first two hours complaining and arguing about semantics."

West studies what he calls "noncognitive skills," although he is not completely happy with that term.

This isn't just a semantic issue, argues Laura Bornfreund at the New America Foundation. She wrote a paper on what she called "Skills for Success" because she didn't like any of these other terms.

"There's a lot of different terms floating around but also a lack of agreement on what really is most important to students."

As Noah Webster, the great American lexicographer and educator, put it back in 1788: "The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."

Yet he didn't come up with a good catchall, either.

So, in Webster's tradition, here is a short glossary of terms that are being used to talk about that cultivation of the heart.

According to the Partnership for 21st Century Learning,, a research and advocacy group, these include the "4Cs of critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity," as well as "life and career skills" and "information, media and technology skills."

The problem, says West, is that "if anything, all the evidence would suggest that in the closing decades of the 20th and 21st centuries, cognitive skills became more important than ever." So this term, although it's often heard in business and technology circles, doesn't necessarily signal the shift in focus that some researchers want.

Character education has a long history in the U.S., with a major vogue in the 1930s and a revival in the 1980s and 1990s. The KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of charter schools, for example has a curriculum of seven "character strengths": grit, zest, optimism, self-control, gratitude, social intelligence and curiosity.

"We're not religious, we're not talking about ethics, we're not going to give any kind of doctrine about what is right from wrong," says Leyla Bravo-Willey of KIPP Infinity in Harlem. "But there are some fundamental things that make people really great citizens, which usually include being kind."

West argues that the use of "character" is inappropriate in research and policymaking because of its moral and religious connotations.

He notes that many of the qualities on the KIPP list - grit and self-control, for example - are designed to prepare students for success. "That's in tension with a traditional understanding of character, which often implies something being good in and of itself - which often includes some notion of self sacrifice," says West.

That distinction doesn't bother Bravo-Willey. She says that the school is responding to parents' own wishes that their children be happy and good as well as successful.

See also: These days you might hear educators talk about the importance of empathy or perspective-taking.

Grit is a pioneer virtue with a long American history - think of the classic Western True Grit. When Angela Duckworth was working on her dissertation in the mid-2000s, she chose the term to encapsulate the measures of self-control, persistence and conscientiousness that she was finding to be powerful determinants of success. It quickly caught on - maybe too quickly, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist told me.

"I'm grateful for the attention, but that gratitude and amazement was quickly replaced by anxiety about people thinking that we had figured things out already." She is worried that grit is being overemphasized: In a 2015 paper, she argued that grit measures aren't ready to be incorporated into high-stakes accountability systems. "I'm also concerned that people interpret my position to be that grit's the only thing that matters."

Grit has attracted a lot of attention, and naturally, that comes with criticism.

In the past two years, some researchers have argued that grit effects have been overblown. Others have argued for more attention to the social context of the trait. A child growing up in the lap of luxury simply faces fewer obstacles. "Grit" may be seen as a way of blaming kids who are struggling for the impact of poor neighborhoods or underresourced schools.

See also: Agency. Anindya Kundu, a doctoral student at New York University who counts Duckworth as a mentor and Pedro Noguera, an eminent scholar of the achievement gap, as an adviser, is investigating a concept called agency. It's like grit, but different.

"Agency is one of sociology's oldest concepts," he says. Basically, it's "the amount of power that a person has to influence their own life."

Agency brings in social context, structural inequality and cultural difference. People who manage to succeed despite growing up in poverty, Kundu has found, guard their own mental health and happiness, taking an optimistic view. They learn how to cultivate networks, both trusted intimates and new mentors. And they form goals and are dissatisfied until they reach them.

Kundu sees his work as being "in dialogue with" grit research, taking in people's social circumstances as well as their inner abilities.

Carol Dweck, the Stanford University psychologist, chose the term "mindset" in 2007 for the title of her bestselling book.

"Growth mindset" is the belief that positive traits, including intelligence, can be developed with practice. "Fixed mindset" refers to the idea that intelligence and other talents are set at birth.

"In my research papers, I had some very, very clunky scientific-sounding term for the fixed and the growth mindset," she says. "When I went to write the book I thought, these will not do at all."

Mindset has caught on tremendously in both the business and education worlds. But Dweck's concern is that it's being used willy-nilly to justify any old intuition that people might have about positive thinking in the classroom.

"When people start thinking, 'I'll make the kids feel good and they'll learn,' that's how something like the self-esteem movement gains traction." That 1980s trend led to lots of trophies but little improvement in achievement.
See also:
Resilience. Pamela Cantor, of Turnaround for Children, began her medical practice in mental health care in poor communities in the Bronx.

"What has been called social and emotional learning is now being expanded to be thought of as: How do children become learners?" she says. Children who struggle with impulse control or attention, she says, very often have faced adversity and trauma.

At the same time, she says, children's brains are especially malleable. In a safe environment and with trusting relationships, they can improve their readiness to learn. This is resilience.

Cantor's organization addresses a lot of the qualities under the social-emotional umbrella, like mindfulness, growth mindset, self-regulation, attachment, executive function and social awareness. But in many ways, resilience is at the heart of what they do.

"Once children have a success behaviorally and they come to recognize that they actually do have control over their behavior and can make better choices, and you acknowledge it, then they make better choices." And then they can learn.

This term is most strongly associated with the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman. He really got this whole field rolling, by analyzing large data sets to show that attributes such as self-discipline and persistence - not just academic achievement - affected education, labor market and life outcomes.

This term is "ugly, broad, nonspecific," argues Carol Dweck - and she is a fan. "I'm the only person who likes the term," she says. "And I'll tell you why: It is a very diverse group of factors and the reason it's been hard to come up with a name is that they don't necessarily belong together."

Martin West at Harvard uses this term himself, but he says he is always careful to acknowledge that it can be "misleading."

"Every skill or trait is cognitive in the sense that it involves and reflects the processing of information of some kind in our brains," he says. And West adds that traditional academic skills more often than not are complements, not substitutes, for the attitudes and personality traits captured by the term "non-cognitive skills."

Social & Emotional Learning. Nobody I spoke with hates this term. And in the past two years, it seems to have gained currency.

"Increasingly teachers who are on the front line say that it's very important to teach kids to be more socially and emotionally competent," says Roger P. Weissberg, chief knowledge officer of the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning, which promotes the concept and the term nationwide. "Teachers feel, and growing research supports, that it helps them academically, it improves school climate, it improves discipline, and it's going to help them to be college and career - and life - ready."

Harvard has a lab called Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning, or EASEL. Stephanie Jones, who directs the lab, says, "when you get into definition and terminology there are many overlaps" between fields. EASEL is a big taxonomy project to sort out these overlaps and the evidence-based approaches that go with them, for about a dozen skills.

The only problem is that the "learning" part may not be seen as encompassing things that are more like attitudes or beliefs, like growth mindset. And the "social and emotional" part, again, may be seen as excluding skills that are really cognitive in nature.
SEL Stalemate?
Reached this month, two years later, Martin West says we may be ready to declare a winner by default.

"The semantic debates have died down a bit, but more from exhaustion than from progress toward consensus. Most people seem to be using social and emotional (or social-emotional/socioemotional) learning as a catchall."

But Bornfreund is sticking to her guns. "I still refer to them as Skills for Success for short; skills, habits and mindsets for success would be the full descriptor. Because they are both cognitive and academic, and more than character traits, those labels don't fit. I haven't heard any new terms that fit better."

Have you? Reach out to us on Twitter at @npr_ed.

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Social And Emotional Skills: Everybody Loves Them, But Still Can't Define Them

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More and more, people in education agree on the importance of schools' paying attention to stuff other than academics. But still, no one agrees on what to call that "stuff." I originally published a story on this topic two years ago.

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Attuned Communication instead of Classroom Management? #19

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Attuned Communication instead of Classroom Management? #19

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Want to try attuned communication with your kids so you don't have to rely so much on traditional classroom management techniques? Listen to this interview with Laura Fish, it's got tons of great advice for building up our kids, giving them confidence and strengthening executive function through conversation!

You can listen to this episode above, listen to it on iTunes or Stitcher, or read the transcript below.

Laura Fish

Today's interview is with Laura Fish. Laura has a Bachelors degree in psychology and a Masters degree in Counseling. You can find out more about her and her coaching and counselling services, based in San Marcos, California, at Laura Fish Therapy.

Laura's background

Laura started out 20 years ago as a preschool teacher, then became a mental health consultant for public, private and Head Start early education centres. This included partnering with child welfare and special education departments on behaviour support services for special needs or at-risk children. For the past 7 years Laura has been training early childhood teachers and coaches on the evidence-based framework called The Teaching Pyramid. Laura looks at education and child development through the lens of interpersonal neurobiology, which in simpler terms means, looking at health and well-being through the connection between mind, brain and relationships.

What's wrong with the term classroom management?
Laura, it's wonderful to have you on the podcast today, thanks so much for chatting with me!
Thanks for having me, Liz! I'm a big fan of your podcast, so it's exciting to be on!
The term 'classroom management' is widely used in education but I know you're not a fan of that phrase. Can you explain what it is about the term 'classroom management' that concerns you and what you think is a better alternative, and why?
Oh sure! The way we speak about something, the words we use, impact how we think, feel and behave.

So, if teachers are focusing on "managing" the classroom, they tend to be in a reactive frame of mind. They're scanning for what is going wrong and trying to fix it or manage it. If you're always scanning for danger, looking to manage, looking to fix, you are vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed, helpless, and burned out because it's where you're casting the spotlight of your attention, on problems.

So, I encourage teachers and parents alike to continue to scan for safety. We do want to keep our kids safe, of course, but we remember to balance that out with also looking for what's going well when you are scanning.

Moving on from management to child development

This requires adults to reframe their role from one of "managing behaviour" to that of developing the child's skills: which skills can we teach children to promote social, emotional, and academic growth, as well as prevent challenging behaviour.

In this way, adults may remain in more of an open, receptive frame of mind, seeking to teach versus manage. The focus is on the child's development versus classroom management or home management.

And the funny thing is when teachers and parents do shift in this way, the classrooms end up being managed because they are teaching children the skills they need to prevent the teachers from having to manage them so much in the first place.

And the other big benefit for this is teachers' stress or parents' stress decrease over time because you don't feel like you're constantly putting out fires.

Changing our mindset
So, what you're saying is that when we think about it as classroom management, it puts us in a negative framework of thinking instead of the positive?
You got it exactly, Liz.

The way we start to frame things, either in the classroom or in the home, absolutely sets up what we are going to see, how we are going to see or how are we going to behave.

It's a trick to get you into a more open, receptive mindset. It doesn't mean you're not looking for safety, it doesn't mean that your classroom won't be managed, but it means that that's not what you're going to set yourself up for. It's child development versus classroom management. It's amazing how that seems to shift for teachers and parents alike.

What is attuned communication?
In your role as an educational consultant you talk a lot about attunement, that teachers need to be attuned to their kids. What does this mean exactly? And what are the long-term benefits of being attuned?
When I encourage teachers or parents to engage in attuned communication with their children, it can simply mean that the adults look to tune into the child's perspective as they engage with them.

That's a new concept for some people, perspective taking. So, what is the child thinking, feeling, sensing, imagining in this moment? Be curious, slow down, tune in.

It goes beyond just paying attention to a child. It's more than that. It's engaging fully with openness, receptivity, and focal attention, so we're not time-splitting.

We can't be attuned through devices

So, in the classroom it's not so much a problem with devices, that's more of a parent thing where they're splitting their time with the computer, or the phone or all our devices. We do have to use our devices, but we're not attuned to children when we're communicating with them or connecting with them and splitting our time, time sharing.

More difficult with larger numbers

But in the classroom, it can be very difficult because there's typically one teacher or three teachers maybe here in the States, with 24 kids. Or if you're in K through... whatever, it's one teacher, so it's really hard to have that attuned communication. The more we have attuned communication, the less challenging behaviour we have.

Long term benefits of attuned communication

Children have the opportunity to feel seen, heard and understood.

Helps them develop the sense of belonging and significance, which is tantamount to well-being in children and adults.

Fosters a trusted connection which...

will allow adults to guide children and scaffold their learning.

In this way, attunement is at the core of secure attachment and it's a framework for communication between adults and children.

1. We help kids tune in to themselves

One of my mentors, Daniel Siegel, uses a beautiful phrase to describe adults' role with children. He says we help them "enter the world of knowing the mind," which is a beautiful, elegant way of describing children becoming intrapersonally attuned or tuning into their own thoughts, feelings, sensations, images. This ability to tune in to one's self really begins and develops from interpersonal attunement or having adults engage with you in this manner.

How can it work in larger groups?
That's quite interesting. You have one teacher in a class and sometimes it's very difficult because it's quite time-consuming, isn't it? It's really difficult sometimes to get those one-to-one relationships.
And so what's really great in the coaching work that I do in the classroom is encouraging teachers that you don't even need to have the one-to-one time.

Peer-to-peer connection

And in fact, especially for the pre-school children, one of the big things we're trying to teach is peer-to-peer connection.

So how can you build and be attuned with children in groups, in small groups? In large groups, it's harder, so say it's a teacher, one teacher with 25 kids at circle time. It's really difficult to have attuned communication. It's still possible, but it can happen in just a small group.

Small group time

So, considering the perspective of the three or four kids with you, being curious about what's going on with them, asking the open-ended questions, reflecting, narrating, it doesn't have to be one-on-one.

2. A child's internal narrative
So, you're saying that if teachers practice attuned communication with their kids, if they're really getting to know who their children are, that that actually helps the children understand themselves?
Absolutely. So, one of the things that I focus on is the internal narrative of the child. What's the story children are learning about themselves?

Because there's a lot of research out there that shows that children lose focus if they're not making gains in school, and the worst-case scenario is that they get in trouble and then end up in some sort of adolescent, juvenile delinquency situation.

A lot of times you can track back that the story they have about themselves is very negative and so when we're actually helping children tune into their strengths, tune into their likes, their dislikes, even tuning in to:

You know what? It's really hard for me, this math, but I'm working on it, I try, I do my best.

So, it's not that we never focus on struggles, it's just that we are tuning in with openness and receptivity to all they're asking about it.

It puts children in a position of casting their gaze inwards, and then it helps them when they have that sense to themselves to also connect with others.

3. Improved executive function

Another long-term benefit of attuned communication that comes from the field of interpersonal neurobiology, which is also a field that Daniel Siegel created, is that attuned communication is one of the functions of the pre-frontal cortex.

Pre-frontal cortex

This is believed to be the executive function centre of the brain

responsible for myriad functions in the mind, brain and the body.

most notably the ability to

plan

initiate

organize

carry out tasks...

while managing emotions, resolving conflicts and shifting gears when necessary.

These are executive functions.

Attuned communication develops the pre-frontal cortex

So when adults are engaging in attuned communication children are given the opportunity to develop this important area, the brain, by exploring their mind, what they think and feel, deciding as they play, as they come up against challenges, as they try to carry out their plans.

So, activating their pre-frontal cortex through attuned communication will help the child build the integrative fibers in the brain to assist with these skills.

Back to our internal narrative
I really like this concept of helping a child have a positive mental view of themselves. So many of us look at the negative within our own selves, I know that within myself, I'm sure a lot of adults feel that as well, and the thought that as a teacher, we can help change that self-discussion that a child has about themselves, that's a really powerful message.
Absolutely! Lev Vygotsky was quoted as saying, "thought is language turned inward." It's really galvanized me to be circumspect about how I can support teachers and parents and taking a look at how they're communicating with children.

A lot of times I get push back on that by saying, "You're just spoiling the child. All you want to do is validate the child." That's not true.

We do want to help children look at all aspects of their behaviour, their strength, the things that they're not good at, but foundationally, we want children to feel good about themselves.

Jane Nelsen, author of "Positive Discipline," also said, "where do we get the crazy idea that children need to feel bad in order to do good?"

It's just not true, she's brilliant. She said it years ago, and she's written over twenty books about that and neuroscience is backing her up.

We do better when we feel better. So that internal narrative comes from the adults that we have in our lives and then later on, also from ourselves, what we cultivate, what we grow, what we think about ourselves and then from our peers.

What is contingent communication?
You also put a great emphasis on contingent communication. What does that mean?
Contingent communication is one aspect that's being attuned. There's a lot of ways to engage in attuned communication, but contingent communication is one aspect.

I describe it simply that communication is directly related to, or tied to, the child's experience in the moment.

So, what you say is contingent upon what the child is saying, feeling, or conveying to you.

Contingent communication is an umbrella term for many communication strategies that adults use every day. For eg:

I'll give you an example from an observation recently in a pre-school classroom, and it's kind of a pedestrian example but it's fun.

A little girl came in, she was super excited to be, it's a pre-school program, and she was super excited to be there. She runs up to her teacher and she says:

Girl: I had pizza for dinner last night.

Teacher: Pizza for dinner? You look excited about that!

Girl: Yes, it was pepperoni and cheese and I didn't give any to my sister!

Teacher: You love pepperoni and cheese. What happened when your sister didn't get any?

Girl: Well, my mum gave her some and we ate the whole pizza."

Teacher: You ate the whole pizza? How did you feel after?

Girl: Good. I played with my toys then.

So, very, very pedestrians about pizza but it's a beautiful, rich example of the teacher being attuned to the child using contingent communication such as reflection.

She just said back what the child said to her:

Validating emotion: You look excited!

Open-ended questions: What happened? How did you feel?

and then she just captured communication with the child contingent upon the child's perspective the whole time, which encouraged the child to tell the story of her experience.

Why extend our conversations with kids?
That's interesting to me because when you're in early childhood, they are often the most common kind of conversations. The kids come in, and they just randomly go off on a tangent, and as the teacher, we have to make the choice. Do I just cut off at that sentence and go back to what we're learning or what we're doing, or do I extend that conversation?
Sometimes it can feel like you have to be careful not to rob Peter to pay Paul.

We do want to help children with focal attention and to engage in meaningful learning by going deeper with what is at hand.

But this example, this very piece of conversation:

IS building the integrative fibers in the brain and so much more.

She's feeling felt

she's feeling seen

she's feeling hurt

she's feeling her story matters

SHE MATTERS.

And then she is also building the integrative fibers because she's building intrapersonal attunement:

she's learning more about herself

she's integrating that story that happened the previous day

and interpersonal attunement with an adult

There's so much happening in the brain in just that simple communication.

And the other thing that reminds me of is, we always have children in our class who are quieter, who are shy or who don't like to talk much, and if we're really thinking about this kind of communication, we're going to be even more on the lookout for any chance we can take to develop any kind of conversation with these children.
You got it, Liz.

Academics versus chit chat!

I don't know about this in Australia or other parts of the world you can tell me, but here in the States, we're very focused of school readiness, getting kids ready.

Many times for teachers the first thing they're thinking of is the academic piece.

It's so important to write letters, numbers, concepts, Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, STEM learning - all important.

But we know that the social and emotional is the HOW of learning THAT SUPPORTS the WHAT.

Chit chat enhances academics

So that these types of attuned communication interaction using contingent communication can help build the parts of the brain that the children need to learn that science, technology, engineering, math, shapes, letters, numbers.

It's a both / and situation. Everyone always says it's a throw off comment.

It's all about relationships.

It's about attuned relationships.

It's really important.

There's a lot of pressure from on top for teachers to do all that academic stuff so finding that balance is difficult. But with attuned communication, I suppose you are taking every moment that you can to get that relationship time with the children.
It's really just foundational.

Children learn through experiences and relationships

It's the core of learning, development, growth. I just really love what neuroscience has given to our field because a lot of times, and I know I felt this as a preschool teacher, I felt that pressure even from parents. "Where's the homework? Where's the worksheets that you're doing?"

And we were play-based! I knew intuitively, I mean this was 20 years ago, I knew intuitively this was good and we had researched the support, but now there's just a plethora of research.

Children learn through this play, they learn through the richness of their experience, their stories, the connection with adults, and those are the building blocks, you'll build the parts of the brain that will later help them go deeper with numbers and letters and patterns.

Children learn through trust and security
If they don't feel secure, if they don't feel like they're in a place where people care for them, they're going to block off those learning centres, aren't they?
Absolutely. The trust and the connection opens children up to be in the learning stance. Just like I was saying earlier that if teachers are scanning for what's going wrong, if teachers are trying to manage, they're not in an open receptive stance themselves.

We want everybody to kind of be in this place. We can't be there all the time. We go in and out, but best practice is what we're hoping for for children and for the adults.

How hard is it to re-frame our thinking?
Most teachers have their own mental toolkit for managing kids... methods we've used over the years that we stick to because they're familiar, or because they seem to generally work OK. In your experience, how flexible are teachers to adapting their management approach? How difficult is it to re-frame how we think about the kids in our class and how we intentionally alter our daily interactions?
Change can be challenging for adults, even when they think what they're doing isn't working.

Teachers would come to me and say "Help me Laura, this isn't working." So, you would think, Ok great, they're prime, they're ready to open up and change.

It's still challenging.

When they feel the strategies they're using ARE working, it can be even harder to scaffold their growth and encourage them to try on new approaches.

Life is about habits and teachers have some habits just like everybody for:

how they engage with kids

what they believe is working

what they're comfortable with

They don't want to let go of this.

Shame and blame is not the best option

A lot of teachers are using strategies that I like to call shame and blame strategies or punishment strategies to manage children.

They might find it really hard to reframe their approach into developing the child, switching from management to developing.

And by shame and blame, it doesn't have to be what people might consider really harsh language.

What I mean by shame and blame is language I constantly hear in the classroom such as:

So, over time this type of narrative, this type of language, may be internalized by the child, and you can see how such messaging would deflate a child's sense of self.

All the messages about how "I'm doing it wrong" and "I'm not good."

Adults think this is helping the child sometimes because they feel it manages the classroom or the home.

The work I've done for the past decade with an approach called The Teaching Pyramid really builds upon this idea that we want to avoid harping on the child for what they're NOT doing well and instead focus on teaching the child what to do instead.

So, it takes a really knowledgeable coach, who's tapped into the latest findings in the field, who also has good interpersonal skills to work with teachers or therapists with parents, to really help them explore brain development in children and help them understand the brain and mind reasons why attunement and communication are important approaches.

And why directions, corrections, reminders and punishment may actually impede or slow down the development of children and the management of classrooms.

Are our management techniques building child up?
Are there traditional classroom management practices that we should keep in our toolkit? I'm assuming you're not suggesting that we throw everything away?
No, definitely not. Classroom practices in general that are focused on child development, which includes discipline, can stay, absolutely.

The important piece is, for teachers and parents, they may need to consult with someone to vet those practices in order to make sure they actually are not relying just on habit, what they've always done, because that might not be in alignment with what neuroscience tells us is in the best interest of the child's brain and mind.

Formal assessment tools

In the States we have assessment tools such as the ITERS or the ECERS or the CLASS Tool that are intended to help early childhood education staff design their classroom to promote socio-emotional development, academic learning and prevent challenging behaviour.

Try to avoid

I'm not suggesting to throw it all the way, but things like telling a child:

They're actually reactive versus proactive, or managing versus teaching, and over time, all of these can actually be deleterious to the child's developing sense of self.

They don't teach the child what to do, instead they just simply point out what they're doing wrong.

I typically tell teachers when they bristle at that, that I was taught all of those things. Teachers are not bad people, they're doing what they know.

So it's just guiding them to learn something different and make that shift, which could be difficult because it's not a habit yet. I ask them to go into a different place from themselves sometimes, but I use the parallel processes.

What if we were on the stoplight system?

So if I came into your classroom and I just pointed out all the things you were doing wrong - if I said:

How would they learn what to do instead?

The downside of the stoplight system
I remember reading once, I think she was a blogger and her child was in a class where they did that, and her child came back feeling really bad about herself, and that was when it hit her - "Oh my gosh, I shouldn't be using this in my classroom because look what it's done to my own child."
I think that's a beautiful example. I think when it hits home like that, it's really powerful.

If people are doubting, they should do some research about it. I've had children in my private practice with trichotillomania, pulling out their eyelashes and eyebrows over the stress of those systems.

I've read the research about the anxiety that it can promote, and one of the problems with the system, there are multiple, but one of the things that you just go into a classroom that has that, watch the teacher.

The teacher is not able to use the system how it's intended. I still don't like them even if you could, but you can't. You can't possibly be monitoring 24, 27, 35 kids sometimes. If they're on yellow, you're not able to see every single thing they do to bring them back own to green, or to put them up to red.

What typically happens, the child who's on the red or on the yellow stays there for a really long time, and the teachers miss many, many times that they could be brought down to green.

It isn't even really clear what to do, is that a green behaviour? Or is that a yellowish-green behaviour?

They're just super-problematic, but the lived experience for the child is that it can really promote anxiety, and it gets them to focus on "I have to be perfect," so there's not a growth mindset, it's not the "I am trying, I'm not there yet", it's a "Be there now!" and that's not fair to kids.

Can all children be successful with the stoplight system?
One issue I have with that is that it's much easier for some children to be in green, and for other kids it's almost an impossibility, and so you're making things much more difficult for the children that actually need a bit more flexibility. It's just like with academics, some kids find it easy and some kids find it really, really difficult. So are we really seeing our children for who they are? Because they can't all fit into one way of doing things.
You got it. It's punitive, its shame and blame, it's punishment, it's not child development, its child management, and I don't even think it's effective as a management tool. It's not just me, it's the research that shows that.
Yes, because I'm sure that a lot of teachers try to do it in a way that's positive, but unless you're in the mind of that child who's nearly always on orange or red, do we really see that it's upsetting them so much, or are they just pretending they're fine with it, or perhaps they start acting out.
Absolutely, no question. A real-life example is my nephew's teacher uses that. I can't remember if he was in kindergarten or first grade, but everyone was really excited that he was on green, but then asking him what he did to be on green, "I don't know". You know, I don't even know, they don't even know. It's not really relevant to the child They just know there's this thing out there that they're trying to achieve and they can't even describe to you what it means.
So we're not even using the tool the way it should be used.
And there's much better tools. We want to teach children to be "on green". Let's teach them what those behaviours are and let's give them a path to get there.

Like I said, if we're practicing full inclusion, if we're saying everybody is in our classroom, the path for one child's going to look different from the path of another child, so we have to be very circumspect about that.

How can I stay attuned to my kids over the long-term?
If I want to be more attuned to my kids but I'm worried that I'll only keep it up for a week, what actions can I take to try and keep myself accountable to keep at it for the long term? To keep moving forward with this approach
My suggestion is always for teachers or parents to have lasting change is you have to really focus on first versus second order change.

First order change

First order change is you do something because someone told you it's a good idea, you listened to a podcast or you went to a training or someone seemed to know what they were talking about, and you say "I'm going to try that!"

But you don't really understand the how or the why. You don't really understand exactly the meaning behind it, or you think you might just try. You can try, get it out there, start trying, but keep in mind you really want to marinate in it

You want to figure out what it is, why it's important.

In the case of attunement and contingent communication, how do those concepts promote socio-emotional development and prevent challenging behaviour?

See where it may bump up against your values, perceptions and beliefs, because in my experience as the coach to teachers, therapists and parents. Change is thwarted or stops completely if an adult tries on a new strategy and does not believe in it.

It simply won't last. He or she will revert to habit, whatever's comfortable, what's believed to be effective.

Second order change

An easy example in the field of early childhood is visual schedules. Many teachers put up visual schedules because they're taught, right? They think they should do it. So, this is first order change, great, get it up there.

But when I go to classrooms, the teachers typically don't either use them consistently, or they can't tell me how using them promotes socio-emotional development and prevents challenging behaviour.

In other words, they don't know the WHY behind using them, and often they know only one way or one reason to use them. When visual schedules can help promote a range of skills, there's a range of ways to use them.

So, they haven't made a second order change. But this takes time for reflection and time is something I hear over and over again is a challenge. It really is.

How can I measure my level of attunement?
Is there any way to measure whether what we're doing in the classroom is having an effect?
Absolutely, myriad ways, formal and informal measurements. An informal way that I do it is when I go into a classroom, I literally close my eyes, I take away the visual stimulus and I listen.

What kinds of words am I using?

I'll hear a lot of directions, corrections and reminders. It sounds like:

It's the tone, the sound, the actual language in the classroom.

The child is living in a world of directions and corrections or reminders, or worse, in a world of NO, DON'T, STOP.

So, in classrooms where the teachers are shifting towards "Teach me what to do instead," it will sound different, so you can just informally just stop and listen.

Ask open-ended questions

One simple strategy I recommend to teachers for increasing this attuned communication for measuring it is tune into, anytime you're compelled to give a direction, a correction, or a reminder, try asking open-ended questions instead.

If you want the child to wash her hands before meals, whether at home or at school, and saying "Go wash your hands," which is a direction, try asking them "What do we need to do before we eat?"

Or instead of "put all the toys away before we go outside," switch to "it's almost time to go outside, what do we do before we go?"

When you do this, not only will you salvage the relationship with the child because you aren't just the director/ corrector, but you're activating the parts of their brain that require the child to think. That's what open-ended questions do. That's the way they can monitor how many directions and corrections they give, versus open-ended questions and that's the way to measure contingent communication.
That's a good idea because we don't realize just how many directions are coming out of our mouth.
I know I mentioned before, here in the States we have the ITERS and ECERS and the CLASS, other assessments that measure the quality of the early childhood education classroom and those don't often use the actual term "contingent communication" or "attuned communication."

The strategies they recommend are strategies to promote those concepts.

Attuned communication: making the effort
Sometimes in the classroom, when we're in a situation of high stress, for example you have a child who's biting, screaming, and throwing things around the room, or even if we're just trying to get our group from one place to another, it all seems much easier to issue orders and try to force compliance. How can we reframe our thinking so that we're more likely to stop and consider the specific children that are in front of us?
It's so important, you know? I think people who have never been in a classroom can't even imagine how stressful it can get for teachers and there's so much at stake.

We want to keep the kids safe, we have licensing issues, there's so much pressure on teachers. There's so much compassion for that.

In reframing thinking, first of all, getting someone to validate that is really important. I think teachers really, really need that respect.

And then helping them reframe thinking is indeed the first step and perhaps the hardest because our beliefs may be entrenched.

We're tied to them and reframing can feel to adults like you are telling them what they are thinking, what they are seeing and what they're feeling and doing is wrong.

This really has occurred to me in the last 5-6 years of my work when I'm thinking, "I'm trying to help, I'm just trying to help you to reframe," but implicit is that suggestion. I'm not saying it overtly, but it's implied. So, we really have to have compassion for teachers and parents about that. I'm always mindful of this when I'm working with them.

We're working with humans, not Hondas so there's no step-by-step manual. We have to be open and receptive to constantly updating our thinking, individualizing our approach based on the unique developmental trajectory of the child in front of us.

Reframing is simply looking at the situation from another perspective as the first step. Again, it's another challenging piece because teachers don't get a lot of this thinking reflection time, and they are under pressure.

But when you do engage, when you do DO this, when you take the time to do this, you are considering the child more from a humanistic contextualized stance which opens you up to so many more possibilities.

Collegial support
What do you think about teachers feeling like they can't speak openly to their colleagues about struggles they're having in this area? I feel like if your colleagues can support you and help you to think through these issues, say you have a particular child in your class that is really difficult and you feel like you're struggling to have that attuned communication, how important is it to try and develop those collegial relationships to feel like we're not alone in our classroom?
It's a lifeline for teachers, isn't it? I mean we talk a lot about the parallel process.

Everything that we're giving out and doing for children, we really want staff to do that.

Do we have attuned communication with each other?

Are we working on the relationships with each other

Are we creating that sense of safety, of trust, of connection?

We're in this together. This is hard for all of us. It's really important, and it's also nurturing the nurturer, that's an important aspect of it.

To do this work, we need to be really integrated. We need to be intact. It's incredibly challenging, so I often do trainings that are parallel process trainings. How can we do this with each other?
Laura, it' been really fantastic talking to you today, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience with us at The Early Childhood Research Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much, Liz, it was my pleasure.

iTunes review

That's it for our chat with Laura about the importance of really tuning in to each of our children individually. If you enjoyed this episode please go to iTunes to leave a rating and review, it helps others find the podcast.

The Education Podcast Network

This podcast is part of The Education Podcast Network. Podcasts by educators. Podcasts for educators. To check out more in education, including other early childhood focused podcasts, go to edupodcastnetwork.com.

Interested in a related podcast?

This interview with Dr Clodie Tal about MANAGING CLASSROOMS ETHICALLY will interest you.

Previous Episodes

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Attuned Communication instead of Classroom Management? #19 | Liz's Early Learning Spot

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Want to try attuned communication with your kids so you don't have to rely so much on traditional classroom management techniques? Listen to this interview with Laura Fish, it's got tons of great advice for building up our kids, giving them confidence and strengthening executive function through conversation!

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Not only are you showing the students that you care about them, but it provides an opportunity to connect with the parents and or siblings to talk about the student as child who has interest outside the school (which shows the parents that you care for their child) Build trust between all those involved.

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How Design Thinking Became a Buzzword at School

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How Design Thinking Became a Buzzword at School

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The trendy concept is in high demand among educators, but its specifics are vague.

Amy Sussman / AP Images for LEGO Systems

At a recent teaching conference in Richmond, Virginia, a session on "design thinking" in education drew a capacity crowd. Two middle-school teachers demonstrated how they had used the concept to plan and execute an urban-design project in which students were asked to develop a hypothetical city or town given factors such as population, geography, the environment, and financial resources.

The teachers in the audience were enchanted by the details of the project; and if the photographs in the presentation were any indication, the students who participated in the lesson enjoyed it, too. The presenting teachers were bubbling over with enthusiasm for what they saw as the potential inherent in teaching design thinking.

Many of the teachers in attendance were flummoxed, however. As we filed out of the room and headed toward our next sessions, I overheard one woman remark to another that while the urban-design project looked like something she'd like to try in her own classroom, "I think I missed something. I still don't understand what design thinking is. Do you?" The other teacher shook her head and said, "I think it's a curriculum, but I'm not really sure."

Confusion around the precise definition of design thinking is understandable, said Neil Stevenson, the executive portfolio director at IDEO Chicago, one of the best-known purveyors of design thinking. "Design thinking isn't one thing," he told me in a phone interview, "but a bundle of mindsets and philosophies all wrapped up in one term, which obviously has the potential to lead to ambiguity and misunderstanding."

While Stevenson spent plenty of time talking around a definition-explaining mindsets, the nature of creativity, and the evolution of design-even convincing him to offer a brief definition proved difficult. Finally, Stevenson outlined what he sees as the foundational aspects of design thinking as it relates to educators:

First, he emphasized, design thinking starts with empathy. When designing anything meant to be used by another person-whether that's a lesson, curriculum, classroom layout, or an imaginary city-the designer must understand what that person (an "end-user," in design lingo) needs. In the case of the urban-design project, for example, the students can't just design a pretty building; they must think about the needs of the people who will live there, as well as the available resources, the budget, and the impact that building will have on the surrounding landscape. "The design-thinking philosophy requires the designer to put his or her ego to the side and seek to meet the unmet needs, both rational and emotional, of the user," Stevenson explained.

Once the student designers have gathered all their research together, they must organize and make sense of it all. Again, in the case of the urban-planning project, after the students have gathered interviews and research about the needs of their city's future residents, students must figure out what to do with all that information. If, for example, the future residents' top priorities include affordability and opulence, the student designer is going to have to find a way to integrate the residents' conflicting needs.

Finally, design thinking requires designers to generate ideas-lots of ideas-and prototype them. In order for this part of the process to work, students and teachers must be comfortable with failure. For many students, particularly those who want to look smart, this phase can be frustrating. "People tend to come up with an idea early on, and know that this idea is it, the perfect idea, and get emotionally invested in that one thing. Then, when their perfect idea fails, they fall apart," Stevenson said. Design thinking forces students to keep their minds open, to try out lots of ideas early in the process before they let their egos or emotions get too invested in just one.

There will be a time to put spitballing aside, of course. Once ideas have been prototyped and tested, students begin to work toward one effective, final solution-an end product that can be assessed, presented, displayed, or put to work in their classroom or community. The beauty of the design process, proponents say, is that the value of the experience does not lie solely in the end product. Learning happens throughout the process, from the early research phase to the final presentation. This allows students and teachers to focus on what's most important in learning: the process, rather than the product.

One scene from the film Apollo 13 provides a great illustration of the design-thinking process. After Apollo 13 is crippled by an explosion, the astronauts are stranded in the lunar module. The air filters in the lunar module are failing, so the engineers at NASA must find a way to make a square filter fit into a round hole using only the materials available to the astronauts. The engineers find a solution through design thinking: by understanding the needs and resources of the astronauts, organizing the resources available on the lunar module, then working together to develop and prototype many ideas. The ultimate solution may not have been pretty, but it was creative and it was effective. Their design saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts.

This sort of step-by-step, formulaic approach to creative problem-solving was revolutionary and counterintuitive when it was first developed in reaction to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. When Russia leapfrogged ahead of the rest of the world in the space race, the U.S. needed to respond with a rapid and radical acceleration in technological innovation. The process of design thinking emerged as an effort to encourage all scientists-even the least creative, most inflexible thinkers-to be novel, brave, and innovative in their problem-solving.

Historically, creativity has been portrayed as a mysterious, elusive force-a gift from the gods or the muses. Creativity can't be summoned, the thinking goes, let alone taught to the mentally inflexible, unimaginative, muse-less masses. Design thinking upends that perception and assumes that anyone can be a creative problem-solver.

At its best, design thinking incorporates proven-effective teaching techniques such as self-directed inquiry and collaborative problem-solving, and dovetails nicely with social-emotional learning curricula that emphasize interpersonal skills such as collaboration and empathy. And the end result of a design-thinking project is often a tangible product, such as a model city, a robot, or a better mousetrap. It's no surprise, then, that many educators are eager to adopt design thinking as a way to plan their own teaching and as a strategy for helping their students learn through solving real-world problems.

The popularity of design thinking, however, might be precisely what's contributing to the confusion I witnessed in Virginia, says Stevenson:

It's been extremely gratifying for all of us practicing design to see the ideas taken on by so many people. There's a downside, though, which is that when something becomes popular, now suddenly everyone wants to learn it and lots and lots of people will spring up and teach it. For the sake of communication, we tend to define design thinking as A followed by B followed by C, but in doing this, we are guilty of oversimplifying.

As teachers seek to learn more about design thinking and its application in their classrooms, conference sessions and certificate programs have emerged to accommodate demand. Stanford's D-School and IDEO offer two popular courses, but there are many flavors, colors, and brands of design thinking for educators to choose from.

In other words, the lack of a clear definition makes explaining, evaluating, and studying design thinking a challenge. And some teachers at that conference in Virginia-myself included-were skeptical, and attended the design-thinking session to better understand whether the concept is actually an effective learning strategy or simply another education trend gone viral despite scant objective data regarding its effectiveness for learning.

When executed with a clear understanding of its purpose as a method for fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation, design thinking can be a powerful tool for learning and change. If it is hastily and inexpertly implemented by educators with a weak or incomplete understanding of its principles, however, it is likely to be a waste of energy and precious classroom time.

Design thinking, like Carol Dweck's work on fixed and growth mindsets and Angela Duckworth's research on grit, are best understood in context, as a complex and nuanced approach to learning rather than a checklist of executable tasks. Dweck was so alarmed by the rampant oversimplification of fixed and growth mindsets that she wrote an article for Edutopia to clear up common misconceptions about her work. Just as Dweck's work can't be conveyed adequately in a Life Hack infographic, and Duckworth's research is apt to be misunderstood when reduced to a listicle, design thinking seems likely to fail as an educational tool when communicated in terms of " Five Simple Steps."

Mindsets, grit, and design thinking are all victims of their own massive popularity, and in the rush to incorporate these concepts into existing lesson plans, have sometimes been reduced to checklist items on teachers' overcrowded to-do lists. When treated as a classroom culture, however, rather than an action, design thinking (as well as mindset and grit) may revolutionize the way teachers and students think about failure, creative problem-solving, and teamwork.

Ultimately, design thinking is not a curriculum, advocates like Stevenson say, but a process for problem-solving, a strategy to elicit creativity rooted in empathy and comfort with failure. Teachers can use design thinking to create a classroom layout that conforms to the needs of their students, they say, or to plan lessons that will work best for the students in a given school or classroom. Entire school districts are embracing design thinking to create spaces and curricula around the intellectual and emotional needs of their students. Teachers are also helping students use design thinking to apply what they've learned to real-world problems, such as the urban-design project described by those middle-school teachers in Virginia.

While there is not a lot of data to support any particular brand of design thinking as an effective teaching or learning strategy, the key elements of design thinking will be familiar to any teacher well-versed in the basics of effective teaching: start with empathy, move ego to the side, and support students in the process of failing often and early on their way to learning.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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How Design Thinking Became a Buzzword at School

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The trendy concept is in high demand among educators, but its specifics are vague. At a recent teaching conference in Richmond, Virginia, a session on "design thinking" in education drew a capacity crowd.

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Can “playful assessments” tell us whether maker education works?

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Can “playful assessments” tell us whether maker education works?

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox
PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. - Frame by frame, the simple round face sketched by seventh grader Annabelle Bechtel erupted into laughter in stop-motion animation, as she and her classmate Audrey Chung wove the face into a video they were making to explain satire. Other students were making their own videos, about foreshadowing, metaphor and other literary devices.

The kids worked at tables surrounded by craft supplies, 3-D printers and woodworking tools in the maker space of Corte Madera School, a public school for grades 4 to 8 nestled in the San Mateo County hills. Bechtel could readily recite the definition of satire. But what else was she learning in this maker space? With scarcely a month left in the school year, why was it worth spending time making videos rather than covering the next academic standard?

Backers of project-based learning, and its hands-on relative, maker education, would argue that activities like these not only deepen understanding of academic content but also bolster creativity, persistence, problem-solving and related skills that are critical for success in a rapidly changing world.

But assessing these skills has been a weak link in these efforts, according to the education researchers at the MIT Playful Journey Lab, which hopes to remedy that with "playful assessment" tools. The term describes game-like measures of knowledge and abilities, but also the tracking of skill development in playful learning activities, which was piloted over the past year by middle school teachers at Corte Madera and at Community Public Charter School in Charlottesville, Va., also known as Community Middle, part of the Albemarle County district. The goal is to blend mini-evaluations into learning activities, collecting evidence about student choices and behaviors throughout the process, rather than focusing on just the final result.

"We want to support teachers who are fighting for these types of activities and future-ready skills and [who] still get lots of questions about why we should care about this," said YJ Kim, the Lab's executive director.

Maker-education advocates have a lot of student success stories to share but, so far, not a lot of data. Measurable results could help convince cautious administrators and skeptical parents that kids should spend more time on open-ended, creative pursuits rather than reading more books or memorizing the formulas and facts that burnish grade-point averages and standardized test scores. Plus, evidence-based assessments could improve the overall quality of project-based learning by helping educators tailor projects to specific skills and vet a lesson's overall effectiveness.

It's a daunting task, as evidenced by this past year's pilot, which was a tale of two schools. MIT's assessment tools were a great fit at Community Middle, which is an experimental "lab school" for its district and already steeped in interdisciplinary, project-based learning. But most schools are more like Corte Madera - governed by schedules, academic standards, report cards and other ties to traditional measures of student achievement - and there, the pilot was a mix of triumph and struggle.

During a break from her stop-motion work, Bechtel rattled off the "maker elements" she had used while creating her video. The Playful Journey Lab team identified seven of these elements, ranging from iterating designs through multiple drafts to trying new ideas and learning from failure (dubbed "productive risk-taking"), as skills to be practiced during maker projects.

"Definitely social scaffolding," said Bechtel, using the pilot's jargon for collaboration, "because I have a partner, and we're working together all the time."

She then pointed to the stapled papers of her video's detailed storyboard. "There's the whole design process, too, because there were so many drafts of this," she said, adding that she and Chung did lots of trouble-shooting - another element - to fix technical glitches with the video editing software.
Related: A rural Montana district goes all in for maker spaces
Individually, none of these elements are new to the world of maker education. But the MIT team; its collaborators, including the Berkeley nonprofit Maker Ed, and the pilot teachers all put considerable time into assembling, debating and refining the final list. (The pilot is backed by the National Science Foundation.)

Throughout 2018, members of the Playful Journey Lab met three times with three Corte Madera teachers - Sarrie Paguirigan, the maker-space coach, ELA teacher Donna Kasprowicz, and Teresa Richard, who teaches science and math - looking for places in their lesson plans that could accommodate hands-on collaboration.

The researchers also created activities to help the teachers and students better understand what the maker elements meant, and what they might look like in action.

"These aren't just for the maker space. I look at these as life skills. I want them to be intuitive."

For example, first, the students read true stories about inventors, engineers and scientists that featured a number of these same skills. They were then asked to imagine each of the elements they'd identified in the biographies as super powers, and to design a cape that the profiled person might wear as a superhero showing off his or her particular powers.

"I said to the kids, we're going to think differently and try this," said Kasprowicz. "We spent a long time defining and talking about the maker elements. I said, 'There will be no grades on this, but you will be assessed as best I can with the maker elements, and then you will use them, as well."

The seven maker elements were prominently featured on a poster in the maker space, where Kasprowicz moved from table to table, answering questions and helping students get unstuck. At one point, she showed off the wooden puppet stage that another class had built and skeletal puppet prototypes made of dry ziti and wires, which the students would use to perform the "fractured fairy tale" scripts they wrote in class.

The writing had been priority number one, she explained, and the kids had to get their scripts right before any making began. Indeed, "content knowledge" is the final maker element on the poster, and it was controversial among the Playful Journey team. Some researchers felt that schools already paid too much attention to learning facts, dates and formulas, and that existing tests and quizzes amply covered that knowledge.

The fact remains, however, that while teachers may care a lot about creativity, collaboration and problem-solving, they are primarily accountable for content.

"If you ignore content, then the assessment is never going get used in the classroom," said Kim.

When Kasprowicz introduced the collaboration on a back-to-school night last fall, one parent accused her of abandoning reading and writing instruction. "She was appalled," recalled Kasprowicz, who tried to reassure the parent that students would never set foot in the maker space until they had fully covered the academic concepts at a project's core.

Kasprowicz collaborated with Paguirigan on several maker projects throughout the year, but Richard made only two maker-space forays. Her science classes are lab-focused, she explained, and lab work is sufficiently hands-on and full of maker elements. "The kids are definitely iterating and problem solving," she said. "We do a lot of collaboration, too. That's basic science."

"More important than filling out a slip saying you did a great job iterating your design is making sure the kids aren't burning themselves."

By contrast, at Community Middle, the other school in the pilot, classrooms aren't divided into science or math or ELA, and neither are student schedules. Instead, the school day revolves around two large chunks of interdisciplinary project time.

"We've long had maker-infused learning, and the students loved that time," said Stephanie Passman, the lead teacher. "They knew they were learning something," she said, but before learning the maker elements, "they couldn't put into words why it mattered."

Over a lunch of vegetable pizza and iced tea served in her classroom at Corte Madera, Kasprowicz shared a little note that a student had dashed off about a classmate's collaboration during a recent project. These notes, written by teachers or students whenever they see someone exhibit a maker element, are called "sparkle sleuths."
Related: Project-based learning and standardized tests don't mix
They were one of two assessment tools in the pilot. The other, called "maker moments," is essentially a paper scorecard featuring two or three maker elements coded by color. Every time a student demonstrated one of the targeted skills, a teacher, a classmate or even the student in question would fill in a little circle with the corresponding color.

Both tools are meant to be used quickly and repeatedly throughout a project, Kim explained.

"As researchers, we didn't know how much these tools could be embedded without disrupting the flow of making," Kim said.

At Corte Madera, that was a challenge. Neither Richard nor Kasprowicz had much time to use the tools themselves in addition to answering questions from students and keeping them on task.

"I'm just one teacher trying to monitor a science lab with 20 or more kids," Richard explained. "More important than filling out a slip saying you did a great job iterating your design is making sure the kids aren't burning themselves."

As a result, outside of her two maker-space collaborations, for which she had the help of other teachers and teacher aides, Richard did not use the playful assessment tools with her students.

And Kasprowicz found the huge stacks of paper designated for sparkle sleuths and maker moments overwhelming.

"I couldn't teach," she said. "I couldn't get on my knees to see what my kids are doing, because I'm too busy trying to fill out all these things."

So she delegated the playful assessment duties to students, at one point giving a student from each project group the sole task of sparkle sleuth writing, and she switched from paper to a digital format to make it easier to collect and distribute them.

Even then, the task was difficult. Sometimes students made incisive observations of maker elements in action, but often enough, Kasprowicz said, "when I looked at their comments, they were really boring." One sparkle sleuth, for instance, described a fellow student's troubleshooting episode simply as "working to fix a mistake by figuring out what to do next."

At Community Middle, teachers and students had a much easier time adapting to this. They readily folded evidence from the playful assessments into existing weekly goal-setting meetings, advisory sessions and student self-reflections. "That reflection piece is really valuable," Passman said.

Yet to be resolved is the final and most difficult piece of the puzzle: How should playful assessment data be interpreted?

Traditional testing is simple - a percentage of correct answers equals a letter grade. But how should teachers interpret a stack of sparkle sleuths and maker moments in order to guide instruction, communicate goals to students and parents and indicate a student's progress? Separately from the pilot, the MIT researchers have proposed organizing the data into "field guides" that can show a student's growth in the maker elements over time. But how to gauge that progress is still an open question for the researchers and their classroom collaborators.
Related: How to unlock students' internal drive for learning
Before that question can be answered, they need to convince more educators, students and communities that there's value in the kind of learning represented by the maker elements, and a need to track its progress.

Such a case seemed to be building in the Corte Madera maker space when another class - eighth graders this time - got to work on their literary device videos.

While assembling an irony video, Evan Demas and Connor Engel recalled a recent class discussion about what had and had not worked with the maker elements that year.

"For some of the projects, it seemed like maybe the only reason we did them was for the maker elements, and they didn't necessarily have anything to do with what we'd learned in class," said Engel. "They seemed a little bit far-fetched."

But this video project was different, Demas offered. Not only did he and his classmates have to collaborate a bunch, and trouble shoot, and bridge their knowledge - another maker element - from previous experience with the video software, he said, "but we're weaving these maker elements into an actual English project."

Meanwhile, all three of the pilot teachers at Corte Madera agreed with the importance of the maker elements. And Paguirigan, who also leads maker projects at the district's K-3 school, intentionally uses the same language to talk about the skills she wants the children there to learn and practice.

"These aren't just for the maker space. I look at these as life skills," said Paguirigan. "I want them to be intuitive."
This story about maker education testing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Can "playful assessments" tell us whether maker education works?

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. - Frame by frame, the simple round face sketched by seventh grader Annabelle Bechtel erupted into laughter in stop-motion animation, as she and her classmate Audrey Chung wove the face into a video they were making to explain satire.

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1) Seating arrangments: Ask yourself: Where in the classroom can students be less distracted? Keep in mind that all students with ADHD benefit from being sat close to the teacher.
2) Fidgets: seat cushion or hand fidgets should take take too much of the students' attention. If they are constantly looking at the figet or it leaves their hand, then the fidget is not right for them.
3) Organization: Have a routine, use graphic organizers, and write to-do list/homework lists, and chunk down information.

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Be available and offer a time where students can come in and either talk to you or do their own thing in the classroom.

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082: Regulating emotions: What, When, & How

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082: Regulating emotions: What, When, & How

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Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we're going to talk about a topic that's relevant to all of us at some point, and that's emotion regulation. We've already covered this from a few angles; you might recall episodes on how children learn about emotion regulation through direct teaching and through modeling, as well as the more recent episode on Dr. Stuart Shanker's book Self-Reg, which discusses the potential impact of environmental stressors on self-regulation. But I realized we've never done a background episode on what exactly is emotion regulation, when we can expect to see more of it, and what are some resources we can use to support our child in developing this capability, so we're going to do that today.
Surprisingly, there is no single definition of what is an emotion. Most emotion theorists describe emotional behavior in terms of a chain of events, e.g.:
Stimulus in context > cognitive process > experienced feeling > behavior
Different theorists give different weight to physiological and cognitive processes, and the exact order in which the steps appear (e.g. whether the emotion includes the cognitive appraisal or follows it). Despite the fact that their brains aren't as well-developed as ours, children still feel emotions in the same way that we do. Dr. John Gottman, who has studied and written about children's emotion regulation, says that "we have inherited a tradition of discounting children's feelings simply because children are smaller, less rational, less experienced, and less powerful than the adults around them." When adults disregard children's feelings - for example, when we do things like saying "there's nothing to be afraid of" when they wake up with a nightmare or don't want to go into a big loud party, the child begins to believe the adult's judgement and stops trusting their own judgements about their own feelings. They begin to think "well I feel scared, but my trusted caregiver is telling me there's nothing to be scared of so I must have mis-judged the situation," when in fact, even adults can wake up scared from nightmares and can feel some trepidation when walking into a loud, crowded party. And it also turns out that understanding your own emotions and the emotions of those around you is critical to regulating those emotions - which is something we all want for our children!

What is emotion regulation?
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no single definition of Emotion Regulation (ER) either. Some definitions include:
- Reflecting modulating and changing emotional states, managing emotion, responding and modulating behavioral expression of emotions, particularly the expression of emotions in socially acceptable ways;
- Monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially how intense they are and when they occur, to accomplish one's goal (as such, impulse control is a component of emotion regulation);
- At school, children are considered to be self-regulated to the degree that they are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning process, although we should note that children of school age are now being required to spend many hours a day learning things that they did not choose and may not be interested in, so to me there's a big difference in regulating emotions in self-chosen situations and those in which the child MUST participate;
- When referring to the parent's emotion regulation, one set of researchers says ER refers to the parent's capacity to influence the experience and expression of their emotions in caregiving contexts.
In spite of the lack of consensus in definition, most conceptions of ER include concepts related to the successful management and modulation of emotional experiences across time and situations to accomplish a specific goal. One of the most respected authors on this topic, Dr. Claire Kopp at the University of California Los Angeles, notes that "success in self-regulation is frequently indexed by how closely the child meets family and social conventions, including a match to expected emotions. Complying with mother's request to wait for a snack until she finishes a telephone conversation is an acceptable form of self-regulation, but wailing bitterly during the waiting period is not. The young child has to learn expectations for appropriate behavior in specified situations (e.g., putting toys away after playing with them) and the arousal level (emotion) that conventionally goes along with standards for conduct (e.g., putting toys away with positive, neutral, or minimally distressed emotional feelings and expressions)." As with so many of the things we discuss on the show, emotion regulation is very much a culturally specific idea. Our old friend Dr. David Lancy reports on a study of the !Kung people in the Kalahari desert which states that "adults are completely tolerant of a child's temper tantrums and of aggression directed by a child at an adult. I have seen a seven-year-old crying and furious, hurling sticks, nutshells, and eventually burning embers at her mother...the mother put up her arm occasionally to ward off the thrown objects but carried on her conversation nonchalantly" - I'm picturing the American mother that Dr. Kopp describes trying to carry on her phone conversation under these conditions!
And while we're talking about culture, I did want to mention that there actually is quite a bit of research on cultural issues related to emotion regulation, although the vast majority of the literature on how emotion regulation develops is on the typical sample of white Americans with tiny proportions of people from other cultures who happen to be included, and the results are then extrapolated to all children everywhere. Then there's a separate line of work on why African American children have deficits in emotion regulation which they do if you're looking at a school environment that was designed for the success of middle class white children, and whose parents and preschools have been preparing them for this environment since they were born. Most of this line of research discusses these deficits among African American children, although one study said that African American parents may anticipate the more severe negative consequences their children will face for openly expressing their negative emotions compared with White children and will use socialization practices that discourage their children from expressing negative emotions. As white parents we, of course, might never have considered that African American parents need to do this, and that they are doing it so we won't be scared of their children and call the police. So I'm just going to leave that right there, and recommend that you listen to the episodes I have coming up on white privilege over the coming months if you'd like to learn more about this.
I also want to briefly acknowledge the relationship between Emotion Regulation and Executive Function, although I have to say that the literature on exactly how these are connected is extremely confusing. Executive Function is the part of the brain that controls certain aspects of information processing, and since emotions are essentially responses to information (or stimuli) we tend to use executive functions as we regulate our emotions. We really don't understand well the mechanisms by which emotion is controlled at the level of this information processing, but we do know that when our emotions are so intense that we become dysregulated, our executive function systems won't work properly. As we discussed in the recent episode on Self-Reg, this is why it's critical that students feel physically and emotionally safe at school: if they feel unsafe then their emotion regulation skills are engaged in the deep emotional center of the brain, and it is physically impossible to learn new facts or take a test.
Why is ER important?
ER is important for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that ER is a critical predictor of school success. We can debate the appropriateness of asking 4-6-year-olds (depending on the country in which you live) to sit still, ignore the next child over who is poking them with a pencil, and focus on answering the teacher's questions - but the reality is that if your child is going to attend school, they're going to need to do this. The research says:
- Maladaptive behaviors become more firmly entrenched from the preschool period onward;
- For children whose disruptive behaviors remain relatively high and stable during the preschool years, their behavior begins to impact other areas of child functioning like early school success (through an inability to use higher order cognitive processes like working memory, attention, and planning, and also through negatively affecting the quality of the student-teacher relationship) and peer relations;
- Difficulties with ER may also be precursors for later mental health problems, antisocial behavior, and problems with substance abuse and other risk-taking behaviors during adolescence;
- Children who have deficits in behavioral control are likely to have co-occurring academic difficulties.

What are "normal" levels of ER at various ages?
It's pretty difficult to state what is "normal" for a given child because there is a great deal of interaction between the child's genetic/biological capabilities and interactions with parents. There is a great deal of evidence in the literature that a successful attachment relationship often precedes successful ER. This is not to say that children who don't have a secure attachment relationship cannot regulate their emotions, but since the child learns a great deal about ER from the parent, a secure attachment facilitates learning about ER. Researchers assess the security of attachment by looking for:
- Separation distress with peak onset commonly seen around 9 months;
- Different patterns of greeting the attached caregiver compared to other caregivers around the same period;
- "Secure base" behavior: confidently exploring when the caregiver is nearby and attentive, and retreating to the caregiver when threatened;
- "Affective sharing": Routine, automatic sharing of pleasurable discoveries with the caregiver, likely including joint visual attention (pointing to draw attention) in Western cultures;
- Through the child's behavior in the Strange Situation procedure, although this is harder to assess outside the lab environment.

Assuming a secure attachment relationship exists, the child is likely to pass through several stages at times that are moderated by the child's genetics/biology and their relationship with the attached caregiver:

- As an infant, innate physiological mechanisms prevent the infant from over-stimulation or arousal - this is why infants turn away from too much stimulation, and self-soothe by sucking. The child's temperament affects how they respond to stimuli (through individual differences in the time it takes to respond to a stimulus and in the level of response), and can in turn impact how the caregiver responds (a parent may respond differently to an easily frustrated infant to one that is not easily frustrated, which could in turn change the child's behaviors since the child relies on the parent to regulate the child's emotions);
- Between 9-12 months, babies become capable of goal-directed action, and can begin to comply with commands. Active guidance from caregivers begins to be relevant in the development of precursors to self-control, and coincidentally the research shows that parents' expectations of children's behavior shifts at this age as well. I had sort of intuited this and it's a big reason why when I tell parents about the show I say that it's relevant to parents of children who are moving by themselves, because it's the age at which parents have to begin saying 'no' rather than just keeping dangerous things out of arm's reach. As the child starts moving around, 69% of parents say the expect their child to stop, listen, and obey when they say 'no.'
- The capacity for control of attention begins to emerge toward the end of the child's first year and continues developing throughout the preschool and school years (choosing what to pay attention to is a key component of ER);
- By the end of the second year, toddlers show "deviation anxiety" when they commit or are about to commit a forbidden behavior, often involving spontaneous self-corrections mediated by language (e.g. saying "No, can't" and getting back down from a place they were told not to be). At this age, standards are primarily driven by the child hearing the caregiver prohibit an activity (or state desired behavior); the child finds it very difficult to hold a prohibition in their mind for longer than a few minutes. It is thus simply not realistic to prohibit a behavior (even repeatedly) and expect that the child refrain from that behavior on an ongoing basis especially when it is emotionally charged (it's something the child really wants to do, or feels compelled to do), or when the child is stressed or fatigued. It's the adult's job to set and maintain the standards for behavior, anticipate difficult or frustrating situations, and help a child who is losing control - while delicately also continuing to allow them to be as self-directed as possible.
- By the end of the third year, typically developing children can sometimes employ impulse control and the ability to switch between thinking about two different things to achieve their goals in new situations. They are also shifting from being more interested in the process of reaching a goal (they start painting a dinosaur and then call it a house if it ends up looking like a house), while preschoolers want to reach specific goals, which requires focused motivation. Their ability to recall an internalized representation of what appropriate behavior looks like is developing, and they are motivated to meet or exceed that standard (even if they aren't always successful); high levels of adult direction reduce children's motivation to succeed with tasks on their own;
- "Effortful control" develops such that by age 4 or 5 children can successfully use a rule to inhibit a dominant response. These same children are described by their parents as more skilled at focusing and shifting attention, less impulsive, and less prone to frustration. Effortful control means that a child can do something that induces distress or discomfort to obtain a desired goal (e.g. approach a dog of which they are slightly afraid because the dog has a fluffy coat they want to pet), and allows children to overcome their desire to engage in a particular behavior and behave according to certain rules or expectations;
- Executive Function emerges at some point in the late preschool or early school years, and is defined as involving the ability to make plans, control behavior, reflect on what strategies were successful and which weren't, and an increase in independence. When the child doesn't know how they achieved success at something they may attribute the success to powerful others or to chance; they may also develop patterns of 'learned helplessness' when they believe they have little control over the events that affect them. The child learns when it is necessary and appropriate to regulate their displays of emotions (e.g. 'we are in a restaurant now and Mama will get mad if I have a tantrum so I'd better whine to let her know I want ice cream"). One study found that about half of the children with behavior problems in preschool, especially boys, continued to have problems at school age whereas half of them showed improvement. So there's a 50-50 chance that if your child is struggling with emotion regulation at age 4 or 5 that things will get better in a couple of years, but there's also an even chance that they won't unless you do something differently to support your child. Researchers hypothesize that parenting interventions to help improve children's executive function are likely to be most effective earlier, rather than later in children's development.
- The infant's brain has far more connections between neurons than it needs and it is the child's experience that determines which connections are retained and which ones die off, or are 'pruned.' Infants who were once very flexible in terms of how they responded to stimuli become less flexible over time, and this flexibility is traded for efficiency. What the child becomes efficient at doing depends on the interactions between their environment, which is you, and their brains. The frontal and prefrontal lobes of the brain, which support activities like deciding what to pay attention to, making decisions, and planning, take longer to develop than other brain functions. The brain has its highest level of neuronal connections between the ages of 12-24 months and around age 7, at which time the majority of synaptic pruning that's going to happen occurs in this part of the brain, which means that the years up until this age help to determine which synapses are pruned, and thus how our child will respond to incidents requiring emotion regulation in the future.

Throughout this period, excessively controlling behavior by the mother was related to child non-compliance. By age 4, negative patterns of interaction between parents and children are clearly established and may be the precursors to the coercive interaction that has been implicated in the emergence of more serious problem behaviors among older children.
The period between age 2 and 4/5 can be a frustrating one for the parent as you see signs that this ER is developing and then the child may appear to 'backslide.' Their ability to use ER may depend on their physical and emotional state at the time: a child who is well-fed, well-rested and calm may be able to resist their sibling deliberately trying to annoy them. A child who is hungry, tired, and whose sibling has been trying to annoy them all day may well not be able to overcome the impulse to lash out. This means that just because the child "did it last week" or knows "hands aren't for hitting," doesn't mean they can necessarily overcome that impulse today. Dr. Claire Kopp has argued that ER begins to arise in situations that are novel and not too distressful, in situations where there are strong social sanctions for incorrect behavior and caregivers are not available to remind the child what behavior is expected, and where the child's ability to achieve a desired outcome is threatened (but not to the point of major discomfort and behavioral disorganization). Her reasoning is that the child's responses to familiar situations are routinized and do not demand that the child make a plan, and situations that overload the child inhibit the child's ability to think in an organized way. Dr Kopp points out that as with much of parenting, there's a dance involved in the development of ER where the leading partners change places often. Sometimes both infant and caregiver work together to regulate the child's emotions. Sometimes the caregiver is unavailable and the child must act by themselves. On other occasions the caregiver struggles to calm an emotionally out-of-control child. There is no recipe for success, but it seems as though generally sensitive caregiving, in which the caregiver attempts to meet the child's physical and emotional needs, combined with normative periods of absence where the child practices self-regulation with the understanding that the caregiver will return, are needed for this capability to develop.
And all of this depends on the biological factors at play, particularly the two subsystems of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which are the sympathetic nervous system (SNS - increases outut to deal with challenges - increases heartbeat, dilated pupils, etc.), and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) which conserves the body's energy, rests vital organs, constricts pupils, and slows the heart rate and is thus thought to play an important role in individuals' ability to regulate their state, activity, and emotion. The ANS' job is to maintain the body's homeostasis by increasing or decreasing activities of certain organs through the vagus nerve, and it is possible to physically measure changes in heart rate which are associated with the frequency of breathing which tells us about the vagus nerve's activity to increase or suppress this activity. Some children are genetically predisposed to engage in this vagal suppression which is associated with using more positive coping strategies on a difficult task, while another study found that children whose parents reported emotion regulation difficulties had lower levels of vagal suppression. When children are unable to physiologically regulate their emotions, they can't use adaptive ER behaviors and require a great deal of parental assistance and support. Children who don't have strong physiological emotion regulation capabilities and who also don't get support from their mothers when they experience negative emotions are both reported and observed to be less emotionally regulated. So while the development of the physiological capabilities are important, researchers think that self-regulation develops through the interaction of multiple factors. It isn't just a question of waiting for higher order control systems to come on-line; it's the interaction between these physiological systems and the environment that the child experiences every day. Different neural systems can become effective on different timelines and interact with each other in unique ways as children develop, and the outcomes of these interactions give children a repertoire of habits they can use to understand their emotions, control their emotions, and generate emotional responses.
Researchers think that small changes in children's early EF can have a very important effect on their later development, so attention paid to this topic now is likely to be beneficial for both parent and child in later years.
The remainder of this Guide will help you to determine what support to provide and how to provide it to guide your child toward being able to engage in ER by themselves. Because the child who isn't yet able to engage in ER looks to you for support in this, quite a bit of this work will involve understanding more about how you perceive emotions and respond to your child.

Understanding your role in your child's developing ER
Infants' brains are primed to organize stimulation from the environment and develop self-regulatory functions over time. Our brains are literally designed to search for, find, and impose order and meaning on experience. It is the interactions between these naturally developing capabilities as children seek out competence and control over their surroundings and caregivers who provide certain kinds of stimuli and help the child to regulate themselves that supports the child in developing their own self-regulation skills.
It is absolutely clear from the literature that the securely attached parent - and particularly the mother (but the father also makes unique contributions) have a high impact on a child's developing ER. In infancy, maternal sensitivity (providing children with successful experiences of changing their environment), using emotion-related words when speaking to children, supporting children's decisions and goals, and having a generally positive disposition are associated with better EF performance at ages 2 and 3.
On the other hand, caregivers who frequently use a negative tone (e.g. being hostile or harsh to the child; using power over the child; belittling or taunting the child, scolding the child, making angry statements, making threats, making derogratory remarks), physically stimulating the child's body (e.g. clapping their hands, making their legs kick when they don't want to do these things; pulling, pushing or picking and older child up) or restricting the child's movements, not responding to the child in an appropriate way (e.g. not providing food when the child is hungry), and asserting verbal control through directing the child's activity, excessive pickiness, escalating irritability, and telling the child what to do are associated with lower levels of EF. The effects seem to be strongest among parents who pay most attention to negative behavior rather than positive behavior.
As the child gets older, harsh disciplinary practices and controlling behavior (e.g. taking over tasks when the child wants to do it themselves) may inhibit the development of child behaviors that support autonomy when the mother is unavailable. There are complex interactions with gender, with boys possibly responding to this overcontrolling through passive non-compliance and girls responding with active non-compliance, although it isn't exactly clear why this is the case. In one study, adults were more likely to attend to girls' less intense communication attempts and to boys' more intense attempts, even though the behaviors of the children were essentially the same at 13 months of age. Eleven months later, though, there were differences in behavior of children of different genders: boys were more assertive and girls talked to teachers more; by responding to children differentially according to their gender, we may perpetuate stereotypes of how children of different genders behave.
Another finding observed throughout the literature is that the mother's positive guiding and reinforcing behavior is helpful, but negative behavior is even more impactful. So (unfortunately) it isn't enough to just shower our child with positive behaviors and expect that these will 'outweigh' the negative ones; we also need to work on minimizing the negative behaviors.

What happens when the relationship between you and your child becomes dysregulated
Dr. John Gottman has written extensively about marital relationship breakdown, and some of these ideas are also relevant to parents' interactions with their children. Specifically, what he calls "flooding" occurs when one person experiences another's negative emotional cues as unexpected, unprovoked, intense, overwhelming, and disorganizing, and disorganizing in this context is very similar to a child's disorganized attachment relationship, which means they experience anxiety or fright without being able to find any solutions. These feelings are assumed to lead to emotional escape conditioning, where the flooded person is hypervigilant to the cues that bring on the flooding and begins to distort cues that are ambiguous - that are similar to the flooding cues, which in turn makes the person more prone to experiencing flooding. Flooding disrupts higher-order cognitive processes like those used in problem-solving, which compromises the person's capacity to respond effectively, and also means the flooded person will do almost anything to stop the interaction.
Bringing this into more concrete language, we might image a parent-child relationship where the child does something like resists getting into the car seat every day when you're trying to get out the door in the morning. Every day without fail, the child refuses to get into the car seat - they cry and scream and say "I'm not going in the car seat ever ever ever ever!" The parent has to get to work - you're stressed and late and your child is screaming and you just want the screaming to stop. You can't leave your child like you can slam the door on your partner; you HAVE to get your child in the car seat and to daycare and then go to work. These are the conditions where you're likely to speak sharply to your child or scream at them or push them into the car seat or potentially even hit them. Then maybe one day your child says "I'm not going in the bath" and it sounds similar enough to "I'm not going in the car seat ever ever ever ever!" that instead of trying to find out why your child doesn't want to go in the bath your brain immediately snaps to car seat mode and you start to get flooded by these ambiguous stimuli as well. And the more that parents are prone to emotional flooding the more likely they are to misclassify ambiguous child emotions as anger and then to respond with flooding. And once you're flooded you physically can't solve problems with your child - you're in this environment of escalating mutual coercion and anger that may actually interfere with your child's ability to develop the skills they need to regulate their own emotions, and it also starts to form a cycle that both of you feel you just can't get out of, which is stressful to both of you and detrimental to both of you because it depletes your emotional resources and causes you to be less patient or less engaged in emotional events.

The importance of the household environment
The degree of household 'chaos' (e.g. noise, crowding, lack of routines) may be particularly important in parents' abilities to regulate their own emotions in challenging situation. Your brain has to perform the same tasks that your child's brain is learning to do, so if your brain is constantly overwhelmed by noise and mess and other environmental conditions that you find chaotic, it can be difficult to divert attention from those things, regulate your own emotions, and focus on supporting your child when they are 'behaving badly.' Just like children, some parents are better at regulating their emotions than others and one study found that mothers with poor executive function responded to children's misbehavior with harsh negative parenting, while mothers with better executive function did not respond to children's misbehavior in a negative way. Even the strongest EF capacity may not be effective at supporting self-regulation in the face of challenging behavior from a child if the broader family context is one of chronic chaos, so the first thing to do to improve your own ER ability is to try to reduce the chaos in your own household.
Keep a diary for a week or two to identify times of the day when you feel stressed and what is the trigger of that stress (both immediate and underlying - perhaps the immediate cause was a fight with your partner about something they bought that you felt they didn't really need, but the underlying cause is a discrepancy in the way in which you manage money more generally). Work with your partner - perhaps using the techniques you learned last month - on ways to resolve these sources of stress to the extent that you can, or agree on how to manage your differences if resolution is not possible.

ER & siblings
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising by now to find that siblings also have interactions related to how their ERs developed, through their relationships with their mothers. One study found that children who were insecurely attached to their mothers at 12 months old were more aggressive in their conflicts with a younger sibling at age six, while another found that securely attached older siblings were more likely to try to soothe a toddler during parental separation than less secure older siblings. Children who had extreme difficulties forming an attachment with their mothers were more likely to seek out comfort from a younger sibling, possibly because they have difficulties distinguishing between their distress and the distress of others. Each person in the family experiences the family in a different way, and attachment security with the mother was much more closely related to sibling jealousy for an older sibling, whereas sibling behaviors were more important for younger siblings.
One study found that younger toddlers had a more difficult time regulating their jealousy when they were not allowed to play with their parent and an exciting new toy before their sibling and when the parents did attend to the younger child first the younger child was then less jealous of the older sibling when the older sibling played with the parent and the new toy, as if being first left them contented and better able to regulate their jealousy. The toddlers who had to wait also displayed more behavioral dysregulation with their mothers and fathers than if their older sibling took a turn playing with the parent and the new toy first.
Some researchers see the sibling relationship as a 'training ground' for childhood aggression, and warn that toddlers who interact with a behaviorally dysregulated, jealous older sibling who is physically stronger and more likely to instigate conflict may be at risk for emotion regulation disorders, while toddlers who have an emotionally regulated, cooperative, caring older sibling may be less likely to experience behavioral dysregulation. One protective factor could be a positive marital relationship and the parents' use of discussion and problem-solving, which could model these skills for children. It is also possible that spouses who create a positive family environment filled with positive emotions, which creates less of a reason for siblings to be jealous because they know there is enough love and joy to go around.
It is possible that parents don't provide enough support to help siblings interact with each other. Parents probably say pretty often "don't snatch the toy" and "don't hit your sibling" but much more rarely anything to help the child know what TO say. One program that trained children on seven competencies (initiating play with a sibling, accepting a sibling's invitation to play, appropriately declining an invitation to play, taking the perspective of another, identifying feelings of self and others, regulating emotions and dealing with angry feelings, and problem-solving and conflict management was successful at improving the sibling relationship according to both parent reports and independent observer reports. This program was used with siblings aged 4-8, so you might be able to help your older sibling interact with your younger one but you're going to have to wait a bit before you can get your 18 month old to stop hitting their sibling.

The father's unique role
The father's typically more playful and physically robust style of play may be important for the child's ability to regulate emotional arousal, possibly by maintaining emotional arousal within a pleasurable range during physical bouts of play (e.g. tickling enough to be fun, but not so much as to feel relentless to the child), which can help the child to read other children's emotions during physical play on the playground. Physically playful fathering in the preschool years is also related to sibling cooperation, children's emotional decoding skills, and children's liking by their peers - but assessments of father-infant attachment and fathering quality in infancy are not related to these things (in other words, it seems to matter less what interactions the father had with the infant than what interactions the father has with the toddler - at least when it comes to emotion regulation). And once the child is old enough to direct the father-child interactions, researchers say we should let the children do this - children who engage in no-directive, non-coercive physical play with their dads get along better with peers than those whose dads were also physical but were very bossy. Another study found that paternal harsh parenting is linked to child aggression. Dr. Gottman says the research strongly supports the involvement of emotionally present fathers, who validate children's feelings and offer comfort in times of distress. (Note that research on two-mother families is highly unusual, and it's possible that one mother could perform more of a roughhousing role typically ascribed to fathers, or both mothers could share this role.)

So what can we do to help support our children in developing emotion regulation? There's a lot of attention being paid to this topic in schools at the moment, and the curriculum that I see being discussed most often in parenting groups is called Zones of Regulation, so I shelled out the $70 to buy it so I could tell you about it. It's essentially a series of lessons designed to help children understand what emotions are, how to recognize them in themselves and in others, and how to control their own emotions. These kinds of curricula are typically designed and tested by professors so I was pretty surprised to find that the author, Leah Kuypers, actually began using the ideas in the curriculum as an occupational therapist, and then extended them into the curriculum for her master's thesis. I also looked around for peer-reviewed research supporting the program, and I'm afraid I didn't find any. A search of "Zones of Regulation" in scholarly databases gets you no hits on anything that evaluates the quality or efficacy of the curriculum. So I was pretty disappointed to see in the acknowledgements section of the book a 'thanks' to teachers in two different school districts, implying that the curriculum had already been widely disseminated by 2011 when the book was published, and given how often I see it mentioned in parenting forums, it's taking off like wildfire. There's a Research Around the Zones of Regulation section on the curriculum's website, which contains the literature review from Leah Kuypers' master's thesis, a description of an implementation of the curriculum in eight kindergarten students, with not enough statistical analysis done to tell us much, a proposal for a study in Brevard Public Schools in Florida, and a poster presentation (which is how academic research is often presented at conferences) which described a study finding NO differences between the 31 students who were taught using the curriculum compared to 15 students who served as a control group, although it's possible that this result occurred due to a poorly-designed study rather than to the effects of the curriculum. Researchers who develop these kinds of programs are often pretty picky about how the implementers of the programs are trained and how they deliver the program - you might recall from the episode on Growth Mindset that Dr. Carol Dweck once explained away the fact that another researcher hadn't been able to find a statistically significant impact of her Growth Mindset program because they hadn't implemented the program correctly, so it is pretty surprising to find a curriculum on a topic as big and nebulous as emotion regulation that teachers can implement with no training beyond reading a book.
So overall I have to say that the evidence supporting the Zones curriculum is not very strong. I didn't see any super red flags in the curriculum itself except for one exercise that involves putting a purple stick in a cup on the student's desk when the teacher observes the student performing behavior that makes the teacher think "I'm having good thoughts about you," and an orange stick in the cup when the student exhibits a "negative" behavior, which sounds pretty much like a behavior management system to me. The aim of the lesson is to help children to learn that our behavior impacts the feelings of those around us, but I think the lesson takes it one step too far by rewarding and punishing certain behaviors. So all this is to say that if Zones is being used in your child's classroom and they seem to be benefitting, then there probably isn't any harm in continuing with it and perhaps your school should volunteer to participate in a research study so we could actually see some objective evidence on it.
The other resource I would recommend is Dr. John Gottman's book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, which has been expanded into a curriculum called Tuning In To Kids which has peer-reviewed evidence of its efficacy. I actually started reading Gottman's book at the beginning of my research for this episode and I have to say I was a bit nervous about it because I haven't been doing anything specifically to raise an emotionally intelligent child and I was worried that I'd been neglecting something big or perhaps even doing things completely wrong. So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find that the principles of respectful parenting align very, very well with this approach and if you've been using RIE or respectful parenting then chances are you're actually probably doing quite a lot to raise an emotionally intelligent child. But if you want to take this to the next level then I'd definitely recommend getting the book because it has some tests you can do to assess your own knowledge about emotions and a lot of concrete suggestions for fine-tuning the interactions you have with your child to better support their developing emotion regulation.
I hope this helps you to better understand your child's progress toward regulating their own emotions, and how you can support them in doing this. You can find the references for the twenty books and academic papers I read in preparation for this episode at yourparentingmojo.com/regulatingemotions

References

Blankson, A.N., O'Brien, M., Leerkes, E.M., Marcovitch, S., Calkins, S.D., & Weaver, J.M. (2013). Developmental dynamics of emotion and cognition processes in preschoolers. Child Development 84(1), 346-360.

Campos, J.J., Kermoian, R., & Zumbahlen, M.R. (1992). Socioemotional transformations in the family system following infant crawling onset. New Directions for Child Development 55.

Cuevas, K., Deater-Deckard, K., Kim-Spoon, J., Watson, A.J., Morasch, K.C., & Bell, M.A. (2014). What's Mom got to do with it? Contributions of maternal executive function and caregiving to the development of executive function across early childhood. Developmental Science 17(2), 224-238.

Deater-Deckard, K., Wang, Z., Chen, N., Bell, M.A. (2012). Maternal executive function, harsh parenting, and child conduct problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 53(10), 1084-1091.

Fagot, B.I., Hagan, R., Leinbach, M.D., & Kronsberg, S. (1985). Differential reactions to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child Development 56(6), 1499-1505.

Fox, N.A., & Calkins, S.D. (2003). The development of self-control of emotion: Intrinsic and extrinsic influences. Motivation and Emotion 27, 7-26. Differential reactions to assertive and communicative acts of toddler boys and girls. Child Development 56(6), 1499-1505.

Gottman, J., & Declaire, J. (1997). Raising an emotionally intelligent child: The heart of parenting. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Graziano, P.A., Reavis, R.D., Keane, S.P., & Calkins, S.F. (2007). The role of emotion regulation and children's early academic success. Journal of School Psychology 45(1), 3-19.

Hendry, A., Jones, E.J.H., & Charman, T. (2016). Executive function in the first three years of life: Precursors, predictors and patterns. Developmental Review 42, 1-33.

Kennedy, D.E., & Kramer L (2008). Improving emotion regulation and sibling relationship quality: The More Fun With Sisters and Brothers program. Family Relations 57, 567-578.

Mence, M., Hawes, D.J., Wedgwood, L., Morgan, S., Barnett, B., Kohlhoff, J., & Hunt, C. (2014). Emotional flooding and hostile discipline in the families of toddlers with disruptive behavior problems. Journal of Family Psychology 28(1), 12-21.

Perry, N.B., Calkins, S.D., Nelson, J.A., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovitch, S. (2012). Mothers' responses to children's negative emotions and child emotion regulation: The moderating role of vagal suppression. Developmental Psychobiology 54, 503-513.

Rutherford, H.J.V., Wallace, N.S., Laurent, H.K., & Mayes, L.C. (2015). Emotion regulation in parenthood. Developmental Review 36, 1-14.
Siegel, D.J., & Bryson, T.P. (2018). The yes brain: How to cultivate courage, curiosity, and resilience in your child. New York, NY: Bantam.

Smith, C.L., Calkins, S.D., Keane, S.P., Anastopoulos, A.D., & Shelton, T.L. (2004). Predicting stability and change in toddler behavior problems: Contributions of maternal behavior and child gender. Developmental Psychology 40, 29-42.

Sroufe, A.L. (1997). Emotion development: The organization of emotional life in the early years. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Sulik, M.J., Blair, C., Mills-Koonce, R., Berry, D., & Greenberg, M. (2015). Early parenting and the development of externalizing behavior problems: Longitudinal mediation through children's executive function. Child Development 86(5), 1588-1603.

Thompson, R.A., Lewis, M.D., & Calkins, S.D. (2008). Reassessing emotion regulation. Child Development Perspectives 2(3), 124-131.

Volling, B.L. (2001). Early attachment relationships as predictors of preschool children's emotion regulation with a distressed sibling. Early Education and Development 12(2), 185-207.

Volling, B.L. (2002). Emotion regulation in context: The jealousy complex between young siblings and its relations with child and family characteristics. Child Development 73(2), 581-600.

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082: Regulating emotions: What, When, & How | Your Parenting Mojo

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We've already covered emotion regulation a few times on the show: there were these older short episodes on Three Reasons Not to Say "You're OK!" and Modeling Emotion Regulation, as well as the more recent one on Dr. Stuart Shanker's book Self-Reg. But I realized I'd never done the episode that should underlie all of...

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1) Ask students how they know.
2) Have students self-evaluate throughout the lesson, not just at the end (you can use a simple 3 dot coloring system, green, yellow, red)
3) Have students keep a live document where they log their progress every day and you can add comments to.

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Have students think about their learning by:
-having them evaluate theselves using rubrics or grading critiria.
-have them think and talk about how they learn best through the following questions
--> What should I learn first?
-->Is anything confusing me?
-->Can I explain what I've learned?
-->Should I ask for extra help?
-->Why did I get this answer wrong?
-->Can I apply this in different contexts?
-->How can I do better next time?

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Metacognition: Nurturing Self-Awareness in the Classroom

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Metacognition: Nurturing Self-Awareness in the Classroom

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When students practice metacognition, the act of thinking about their thinking helps them make greater sense of their life experiences and start achieving at higher levels.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Why We Need to Rethink Recess by Harvard EdCast

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Sociologist Rebecca London knows recess is an afterthought in many schools day. Too often, it's just seen as a break or a way to get some physical exercise for kids. She wants to see educators rethink how to use that time to better support young students. In this episode of the EdCast, London shares ideas from her new book, "Rethinking Recess," how to create a more inclusive recess, and why taking away recess -- especially as punishment -- is a bad idea for kids.

Full transcript: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/10/harvard-edcast-why-we-need-rethink-recess

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We are cognitive psychological scientists interested in research on education. Our main research focus is on the science of learning. (Hence, "The Learning Scientists"!). Our Vision is to make scientific research on learning more accessible to students, teachers, and other educators.

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Retrieval practice is a learning strategy where we focus on getting information out. It's even more powerful when combined with additional research-based strategies including spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition.

Established by nearly 100 years of cognitive science research, our free Practice Guides, our weekly teaching tips, and our book Powerful Teaching empower you to transform teaching - and most importantly - learning.

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Retrieval Practice: Unleash the Science of Learning

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Retrieval practice is a learning strategy where we focus on getting information out. It's even more powerful when combined with additional research-based strategies including spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition. Established by nearly 100 years of cognitive science research, our free Practice Guides, our weekly teaching tips, and our book Powerful Teaching empower you to transform teaching - and most importantly - learning.

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Calm
Neutral
Assertive

This can help regulate the teacher and thus helping students regulate themselves.

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Lessons for learning: How cognitive psychology informs classroom practice

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Lessons for learning: How cognitive psychology informs classroom practice

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Laboratory science and classroom observation reveal four simple strategies that can promote learning.
Because learning is an incredibly complex behavior, the science of learning includes many topics: how we learn and remember information in school, how we learn from the environment around us, how our actions influence what we remember, and so on. With this in mind, it's useful to think of learning science as an umbrella term that spans many research fields including psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. Our own research sits in the field of cognitive science or, more specifically, cognitive psychology. The word cognition comes from the Latin word for "to know," and cognition refers to "behind-the-scenes" behaviors like perceiving, attending, remembering, thinking, and decision making. In cognitive psychology, we typically examine mental operations, or behaviors occurring inside our heads.

Cognitive psychology examines processes we engage in every day without stopping to reflect on the complex series of behaviors that determine our success or failure. For example, have you ever talked on a cell phone while driving a car? Many complex cognitive operations are involved in both of these activities (and there's plenty of research demonstrating it's dangerous to attempt both at once!). Another example: You meet someone at a party and later you remember details about your new friend - where they live, where they work, and so on - but you struggle to remember their name. Strategies informed by cognitive psychology can help you remember names, concepts, and much more, and they have powerful roles to play in the classroom, too.

In contrast to cognitive psychology, research on social-emotional learning (e.g., growth mind-sets and character development) investigates how we interact with the world around us; in other words, what happens outside our heads. This field comprises social and personality psychology, and social psychologists examine behaviors such as how we develop relationships, how we're affected by culture, and why we form stereotypes. Of course, the distinction is a bit artificial because influences from the environment (such as stereotypes) are carried in our heads and so also depend on cognition. In other words, cognition affects how we behave in the outside world, and the environment around us affects the behaviors inside our heads.

While research on learning - arguably the most complex cognitive process - can be based on observations, surveys, or correlations, most of our research in cognitive psychology is experimental. We use experiments to examine how students learn everything from basic facts and vocabulary words to how students apply their knowledge using complex higher-order materials (Agarwal, in press). Or we might compare popular study methods, such as rereading or highlighting, to see which ones lead to longer-lasting learning. (It turns out that both rereading and highlighting are fairly ineffective; Putnam et al., 2016)
What did we used to think about learning, and what have we discovered?
Some old ideas about learning die hard. Consider, for example, the notion that memory can be improved with practice. That is, if students practice memorizing poetry, say, they will become better at memorization in general and will be able to apply that skill to other subject matter. Even today, some teachers remain convinced that this is an important thing for students to do (Roediger, 2013). But while it is tempting to imagine that exercising one's memory will strengthen it, as though memory were a muscle, that theory has been disproved time and again.

Or consider the enduring but flawed theory that scientists refer to as "errorless learning," the idea, popularized in the 1950s, that learning is most effective if students are prevented from making errors. Even today, many of us cringe when we see students struggling with a new concept or skill, and we might have the knee-jerk desire to step in and correct them before they stumble. Yet cognitive psychology has shown that because we learn from our mistakes, errors are in fact good for learning (Hays et al., 2013).

More than 100 years of research, from both laboratory and classroom settings, have revealed a number of powerful strategies for teaching and learning.

Of course, while educators today know much more about learning than they did in previous generations, and while scientific evidence has dismissed many old myths, other myths (such as the myth that children have specific learning styles) will likely remain in circulation for a while yet (Willingham, 2018). But although we still have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring that educators understand scientific findings and can translate them to everyday classroom practice, findings from cognitive psychology hold a lot of promise. More than 100 years of research, from both laboratory and classroom settings, have revealed a number of powerful strategies for teaching and learning.

In particular, four strategies stand out (Dunlosky et al., 2013):

1. Retrieval practice boosts learning by pulling information out of students' heads (by responding to a brief writing prompt, for example), rather than cramming information into their heads (by lecturing at students, for example). In the classroom, retrieval practice can take many forms, including a quick no-stakes quiz. When students are asked to retrieve new information, they don't just show what they know, they solidify and expand it.

2. Feedback boosts learning by revealing to students what they know and what they don't know. At the same time, this increases students' metacognition - their understanding about their own learning progress.

3. Spaced practice boosts learning by spreading lessons and retrieval opportunities out over time so that new knowledge and skills are not crammed in all at once. By returning to content every so often, students' knowledge has time to be consolidated and then refreshed.

4. Interleaving - or practicing a mix of skills (such as doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems all in one sitting) - boosts learning by encouraging connections between and discrimination among closely related topics. Interleaving sometimes slows students' initial learning of a concept, but it leads to greater retention and learning over time.

These strategies have been tested in both the laboratory and the classroom. In typical laboratory experiments on retrieval practice, for example, students study a set of material (e.g., foreign language vocabulary words, passages about science), engage in retrieval practice (e.g., via recall or multiple-
choice quizzes), and complete a final exam immediately or after a delay (e.g., ranging from minutes to hours or days). Consistently, researchers see a dramatic increase in both short-term and long-term learning (Adesope et al., 2017).

Similarly, research we conducted in several K-12 classrooms demonstrated that these four strategies led to consistent and reliable increases in students' grades, confidence, and engagement (Agarwal et al., 2014). Further, we found these strategies to have strong potential to boost learning for diverse students, grade levels, and subject areas (e.g., STEM, social studies, language arts, fine arts, and foreign languages). And other researchers have demonstrated that these strategies improve not just the learning of basic factual knowledge, but also skill learning (including CPR resuscitation) and critical thinking (such as applying knowledge in new situations) (McDaniel, et al., 2013).

In one of our studies (Roediger et al., 2011), students in a 6th-grade social studies class were given three brief, low-stakes quizzes, using clicker remotes (wireless devices) to answer questions. Following a lesson on Ancient Egypt, for example, they were asked to click through a set of questions about the material. Notably, the quizzes touched on only half of information that had been presented. Later, when we gave them an end-of-unit assessment, their performance was significantly better on the material that had been covered in the clicker quizzes than the material that wasn't (94% vs. 81%) - i.e., just by completing a quick end-of-class quiz on that material, students had improved their memory and understanding of it. Even a couple of months later, at the end of the semester, students performed significantly better on the material that had been included in the quizzes, scoring an entire letter grade higher on that portion of the assessment than on the non-quizzed material (79% vs. 61%) (see Figure 1).
What does this mean for educators?
Many teachers already implement these strategies in one form or another. But they may be able to get much more powerful results with a few small tweaks. For example, we often observe teachers using think-pair-share activities in their classrooms - typically, they will give students a few minutes on their own to think about a topic or prompt, then a few more minutes to discuss it with a partner, and then a chance to share their ideas as part of a larger class discussion. But what, exactly, are students doing during the think stage? They could easily be daydreaming, or wondering what to eat for lunch, rather than actively considering the prompt. But if the teacher simply asks them to write down a quick response, rather than just think, it becomes an opportunity for retrieval practice, ensuring that students are drawing an idea out of their heads and onto the paper.

Similarly, rather than assigning students to consider a new topic, the teacher might ask them to do a think-pair-share about content they learned the day or week before - and now it becomes an opportunity for spaced practice; students get to return to material and solidify their understanding of it.

Here's another example: We often observe teachers begin their classes by saying something to the effect of, "Here's what we did yesterday. . . ." and then reviewing the content. Instead, they can pose it as a question, "What did we do yesterday?" and give students a minute to write down what they remember. It's a subtle shift (from a lecture by the teacher to an opportunity for retrieval practice), but it can significantly improve student learning, without requiring additional preparation or classroom time. Even a single question, writing prompt, or quick no-stakes quiz can make a difference, encouraging students to pull information out of their heads rather than cramming it into them via lecturing or telling.

Why do these strategies improve learning? Consider this quick question: Who was the fourth president of the United States? A plausible answer may have jumped instantly to mind, but you probably had to struggle mentally to come up with a response. It's precisely this productive struggle or "desirable difficulty" during retrieval practice and the three additional strategies that improves learning. (By the way, the fourth president was James Madison, but you'll likely remember that much better if you managed to retrieve it from your memory rather than waiting for us to remind you of the name!)

Teachers can use these four strategies (retrieval practice, feedback-driven metacognition, spaced practice, and interleaving) with confidence because they are strongly backed by research both in laboratories and classrooms. The rigor of science gives us confidence that these strategies aren't fads, and successful classroom implementation gives us confidence that they work in the real world, not just in the laboratory.
What are some hesitations when putting this research into practice?
So far, we've presented a few basic principles of learning from cognitive psychology, briefly described the research behind them, and shared some flexible teaching strategies to improve learning (take a moment: Can you retrieve the four strategies?). However, we know it can be daunting to change teaching practices or add yet another approach to an ever-increasing pile of instructional tools. So here are a few responses to common hesitations about implementing strategies like retrieval practice and spacing:

These strategies only apply to memorization. Actually, a growing body of research demonstrates that simply encouraging students to retrieve what they know improves their ability to apply that knowledge, transfer it to new situations, and retain complex ideas in content areas ranging from Advanced Placement social studies to medical school. In one study, for example, college students learned about the structure of bat wings using retrieval practice. On a final test, students were better able to transfer their knowledge to questions about the structure of airplane wings (Butler, 2010). A wealth of both lab and classroom research has demonstrated that retrieval practice improves students' learning beyond rote memorization.

I have to spend more time prepping for class and/or more time grading. As we mentioned earlier, small changes in class (like swapping reviewing for retrieving) can make a large difference for student learning. Many teachers already use these strategies, and cognitive psychology research affirms that teachers should aim to increase the amount of retrieval, feedback, spacing, and interleaving in the classroom. In addition, because these strategies are most effective when they are no- or low-stakes, they don't require any grading at all. When students respond to a quick writing prompt in class, for example, there's no need to collect their paper - it's simply a retrieval opportunity for learning, not for assessment.

I can't cover as much material. When it comes to the trade-off of time vs. content, think about it this way: If students remember more, you save time by reteaching less. If we want to make sure that time spent teaching is time spent learning, then using research-based strategies to boost learning at the outset will make a large difference for you in class and for your students outside of class: They won't need to do so much cramming before an exam.
What's next for the science of learning?
We know much more about learning than we did 100 years ago. But what does this mean for education at large? There are many next steps for fields within the science of learning, including cognitive psychology.

First, we need to continue to demonstrate that these principles of learning apply for diverse students and diverse environments. Recent cognitive psychology research has taken place in urban and rural K-12 classrooms, as well as public and private colleges and universities. In addition, preliminary data demonstrate that brief in-class quizzes boost learning for students in special education (Agarwal et al., 2012) and that college students with lower working memory benefit more from retrieval practice than students with higher working memory (Agarwal et al., 2017). Even so, to truly push the science of learning from the laboratory to the classroom, more research needs to be conducted in partnership with teachers in diverse classrooms.

Second, we need to know more about student motivation. Why are some students inspired and driven to learn in school whereas other students are less motivated (despite some being avid learners for hobbies or sports)? How can we encourage students who have little interest in learning? We've all encountered a few lucky students who find an inspiring teacher with whom they click, increasing their drive to learn. But as far as we can tell, motivation is a complex cognitive process, and there are likely to be no panaceas here, no tried-and-true strategies that always work. Frequent retrieval practice (e.g., weekly mini-quizzes) can improve student engagement and student study habits, and instilling a growth mind-set may help some students, too (Dweck, 2006). Even so, we suspect that motivation is likely to be the next frontier in the science of learning, which will require collective efforts by developmental, social, and cognitive psychologists.

Lastly, we need to get knowledge about effective learning strategies (ones shown to work in both lab experiments and classroom studies) into the hands of teachers and learners. Today, a number of books, websites, and resources provide accurate information and helpful advice for both educators and students. (See, for example, retrievalpractice.org and learningscientists.org.) However, we have much more to do on this score. Research from cognitive psychology has powerful implications for learning, and the best way to make an impact is by disseminating and sharing this research with fellow educators. We hope you will join us in this effort as we continue to explore learning - and the science behind it.
References
Adesope, O.O., Trevisan, D.A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87, 659-701.

Agarwal, P.K. (in press). Retrieval practice and Bloom's taxonomy: Do students need fact knowledge before higher order learning? Journal of Educational Psychology.

Agarwal, P.K., Bain, P.M., & Chamberlain, R.W. (2012). The value of applied research: Retrieval practice improves classroom learning and recommendations from a teacher, a principal, and a scientist. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 437-448.

Agarwal, P.K., D'Antonio, L., Roediger, H.L., McDermott, K.B., & McDaniel, M.A. (2014). Classroom-based programs of retrieval practice reduce middle school and high school students' test anxiety. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3, 131-139.

Agarwal, P.K., Finley, J.R., Rose, N.S., & Roediger, H.L. (2017). Benefits from retrieval practice are greater for students with lower working memory capacity. Memory, 25, 764-771.

Butler, A.C. (2010). Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 1118-1133.

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14, 4-58.

Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.

Hays, M.J., Kornell, N., & Bjork, R.A. (2013). When and why a failed test potentiates the effectiveness of subsequent study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 290-296.

McDaniel, M.A., Thomas, R.C., Agarwal, P.K., McDermott, K.B., & Roediger, H.L. (2013). Quizzing in middle-school science: Successful transfer performance on classroom exams. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27, 360-372.

Putnam, A.L., Sungkhasettee, V.W., & Roediger, H.L. (2016). Optimizing learning in college: Tips from cognitive psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 652-660.

Roediger, H.L. (2013). Applying cognitive psychology to education: Translational educational science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14, 1-3.

Roediger, H.L., Agarwal, P.K., McDaniel, M.A., & McDermott, K.B. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in the classroom: Long-term improvements from quizzing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 17, 382-395.

Willingham, D.T. (2018, Summer). Does tailoring instruction to "learning styles" help students learn? American Educator.

Citation: Agarwal, P.K. & Roediger, H.L. (2018). Lessons for learning: How cognitive psychology informs classroom practice. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (4), 8-12.

For more on cognitive psychology and classroom practice, listen to Pooja Agarwal's interview with Research Minutes.

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Lessons for learning: How cognitive psychology informs classroom practice - kappanonline.org

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Laboratory science and classroom observation reveal four simple strategies that can promote learning. Because learning is an incredibly complex behavior, the science of learning includes many topics: how we learn and remember information in school, how we learn from the environment around us, how our actions influence what we remember, and so on.

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Educating the Whole Child: Improving School Climate to Support Student Success. Key Lessons from the Science of Learning and Development (v – vll)

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Educating the Whole Child: Improving School Climate to Support Student Success. Key Lessons from the Science of Learning and Development (v – vll)

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Must include:
-What?
-How? (will include expectations such as steps, movement, volume level, and behavior)
-Why? (Explains the rationale to the class in a way that is revelent to students.
Example: When we walk in the hallways, we silently walk one person behind the other so that we don't interrupt other classrooms or make a traffic jam.

KEY TIPS:
-If directions are too long, chunk them.
-Think about the best way to deliver the directions are.

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime | Nadine Burke Harris | TED

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I’m a Neuroscientist. Here’s How Teachers Change Kids’ Brains.

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I’m a Neuroscientist. Here’s How Teachers Change Kids’ Brains.

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Teachers change brains. While we often don't think of ourselves as brain changers, when we teach we have an enormous impact on our students' cognitive development. Recent advances in educational neuroscience are helping educators understand the critical role we play in building brain capacities important to students' learning and self-control.

To understand how teachers change the brain, we need to begin with a reasonably new understanding of the biology of learning. The human brain is an experience-dependent organ. Throughout our lives, the cerebrum-the largest portion of our brain-fine-tunes itself to adapt to the world around us. The scientific term used to describe this is "neuroplasticity, " which involves three processes.

Proliferation is associated with brain building, and is highly dependent on childhood experiences like play, socialization and hearing stories read aloud. It involves creating new synaptic connections and fiber tract connections.

Prior to birth, proliferation is largely dependent on our genes, but once a baby is born, experiences in the external world exert their influence. The early years become the "set-up" period in which the brain maps and organizes based on the child's world. For example, the predominant language (or languages) and familiar faces, voices and objects will become the data the brain uses to build new cortical maps and their interconnections.

Pruning is another process involved in setting up the brain. Our efficient brains depend on eliminating connections that are not behaviorally relevant or useful. This competitive elimination process is also based on experience and results in pruning areas not used. This pruning includes reduction in unused synapses (new connections that represent new knowledge) and axonal fiber tracts (the highways that allow newly learned information to integrate with past knowledge and experience).

An example is the elimination of auditory perceptual connections that might be helpful for learning a foreign language, making it more difficult to learn a second language as we age.

Consolidation is the third process occurring during early brain maturation, which helps us respond to things automatically, without thinking. The human brain is a statistical analyzer. After thousands of repetitions of slightly disparate stimuli, it begins to map for commonalities. That allows the brain to develop anticipatory response patterns, or a set of common reactions, which minimize effort and increase speed and efficiency.

It is through these set-up processes that the brain efficiently adapts to each different environment. Scientists used to refer to the early set-up years as a "critical period," but they now recognize that brain building continues throughout life, albeit at a slower pace and less dramatically as we age.

So this early set-up stage-occurring from birth to age five-is now often referred to as an "optimal" or "sensitive" period because the brain can continue to proliferate, prune and consolidate after the period ends, with the right kind stimulation. Hence, the role of teaching.

After the optimal period ends, teachers can maximize this neuroplastic process through content, intensity and methodology.

Content: The "what" of teaching

We start with educational content. Of course, content must be appropriate to students' age and prior knowledge, but students also need supportive cognitive capacities.

For example, attentional skills, working memory and processing skills are essential for learning. When a student has issues with one or more of these skills, it affects academic performance irrespective of the teacher's skill.

This is an area where scientific research guides us to select not only the most effective content, but, when necessary, neuroscience-based interventions to build cognitive capacities.

Finally, as learning proficiency improves, the teacher must continuously adapt and personalize the instruction to match the student's level of knowledge and ability.

Intensity: The "when" of teaching

Repetition is essential for learning. It assures mastery and efficiency with the content. This is why educational neuroscientists often state that "practice makes permanent," in contrast to the more popular "practice makes perfect."

For this reason, instruction and practice must occur with enough frequency and intensity to drive brain reorganization. We might simplify this as the "when" of teaching, although it also includes "how often" and "how long" a given topic is taught. For the most part, content can be incrementally delivered over weeks and years because we are adding to information already stored and organized for efficient processing. For example, vocabulary building continues over a lifetime as long as new vocabulary items represent familiar concepts in our native language.

At the same time, teachers are also driving the brain to reorganize. Good examples are the intensity needed to learn a new language or to address structural differences in the brain associated with poverty. A student who is an English language learner, for example, must be able to perceive the speech units of English and internalize that set of sounds, in addition to learning vocabulary and grammar.

For children of poverty, limited experiences can affect cortical maturation in the language and other areas of the brain important for learning. Because approximately 80 percent of teaching involves the teacher speaking and students listening, that language rich environment can help to build those language areas that are not as mature among children of poverty, as long as the language level the teacher uses matches that of the student with limited language experiences.

Early reading teachers also understand that students need to be able parse words into their component sounds before they can match letters to sounds for decoding. Research suggests that for some students, the inability to perceive those speech sounds may interfere with learning to decode so supplementary interventions that emphasize those skills can be very helpful to "ready" the student to learn.

Methodology: The "how" of teaching

The acronym ReNEW (Reinforcement, Novelty, Enhanced attention and Well-being) summarizes how teaching drives the brain to change after the optimal period. Brain research on the effects of teaching has looked at the impact of naturally occurring chemicals in the brain that are driven by environmental factors leading to neuroplastic change.

Reinforcement and novelty. An important neuromodulator of brain plasticity is dopamine. Dopaminergic systems act as the "save" button in the brain. Dopamine released during carefully timed and structured reinforcement, as well as during novel experiences, increases the likelihood that newly-learned information will be retained permanently.

Attention. A learner will not benefit from our instruction unless they actively attend to us-meaning it pays to shake up your teaching sometimes. Attention is enhanced when neuromodulators like acetylcholine and norephinephrine are stimulated through educational interaction that is engaging with some novelty. We might call this the "wow" factor. Teachers can enhance attention by simply maintaining eye contact, moving around the classroom, interacting with students and assuring that before any instruction the students are engaged.

Well-being. Serotonin is associated with a feeling of well-being and is a powerful modulator of neuroplasticity. As teachers, we are very familiar with the importance of enhancing students' sense of trust and confidence in the educational process, which can help increase serotonin levels in a positive way.

Teachers do not just impart information, although that is certainly part of what we do. Teachers are also drivers of neuroplastic change through the targeted, systematic consideration of the content we include, the intensity of our instruction and assurance of adequate repetition. Effective teaching-and, when necessary for struggling students, neuroscience-based interventions-enable us to reach every student.

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I'm a Neuroscientist. Here's How Teachers Change Kids' Brains. - EdSurge News

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Teachers change brains. While we often don't think of ourselves as brain changers, when we teach we have an enormous impact on our students' cognitive development. Recent advances in educational neuroscience are helping educators understand the critical role we play in building brain capacities important to students' learning and self-control.

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The Parent-Teacher Connection: Nine Strategies for Building Relationships with Your Students’ Parents

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The Parent-Teacher Connection: Nine Strategies for Building Relationships with Your Students’ Parents

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Connecting with parents and creating positive relationships with them is definitely one of the top priorities for ensuring a successful school year. There are many ways to make these connections. When you show parents that you care about their children, they will be more likely to partner with you and support you when needs arise throughout the year. Parents need to know you want the best for their child, not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. Try these strategies to help build your parent-teacher relationships:

A couple of weeks before school starts, send your students a letter in the mail telling them how excited you are to meet them. Include a letter to the parents with important information such as the school supply list, academic calendar, and a survey about their child. This survey could include questions like: How does your child feel about school? What are his or her favorite kinds of books? How would you describe your child's personality/behavior? Does your child have a special hobby or play a sport?

Have both a Meet the Teacher Night and a Parent Night. Meet the Teacher Night is for the students to meet you a day or two before school starts, see the classroom, bring in their supplies, and relieve some of those first-day jitters. Parent Night is for you to introduce yourself to parents and go over classroom expectations, homework, and projects for the year.

Invite parents to come in as often as possible. If students are doing any kind of presentation, invite parents to come and watch. If you are having a class party or field trip, ask for parent volunteers. Parents love to feel included and involved in their child's home away from home. I also ask parents to come in and share about their careers and/or hobbies with our class.

Hold parent conferences at least twice a year. My school holds traditional parent conferences in the winter, and then I have student-led conferences in the spring. Student-led conferences are run by the kids. They talk to their parents about their grades and progress toward goals. I'm there to coach kids and answer any questions.

Communicate consistently. I send home a newsletter every Friday. It may have highlights from our week, upcoming events, and important information for parents. I send the letter through email and provide a hard copy for every student. This ensures that parents receive it! If I'm going to take the time to write a letter every week, I want parents to read it. It helps that I include photos of the kids. Parents like to see those.

Maintain a website and reminder system. Keep a teacher website that parents can visit for information and use a texting system, such as remind.com, to send text reminders for important happenings. If there is a pajama day at school or book orders are due the next day, I send a reminder to all of my students' parents. It is a convenient way to help busy parents stay in the know.

Join and participate in parent-teacher organizations and help out at the events. If there is a special school function, like "Muffins with Moms" or "Donuts with Dads," go in to mingle and say hello.

Create special events or projects that involve parents. For example, I have parents secretly decorate students' lockers midyear. I send home a sealed "Secret Mission" envelope explaining the Locker Love project and give the dimensions and photo examples of the lockers. Most parents come up with inspirational sayings and pictures and decorate their child's name in big letters. I pick a night that parents can come in and help me hang up all the decorations. The kids are so surprised and excited the next day when they see what their parents did to the lockers. They keep the decorations up the rest of the year.

At the end of the year, send a parent feedback survey. It can be scary to put yourself out there, but it is so helpful to learn what your parents liked best about your teaching and classroom management styles, and what they suggest you change. I always grow professionally when I read their ideas, and parents appreciate that you want to be your best.

Parents are valuable partners in your students' education. You can learn a lot about how to meet your students' needs when parents communicate with you. I'm sure there are many other wonderful ideas for connecting with parents. Feel free to suggest any ideas you have in the comments!

Shannon Anderson has her master's degree in education and is a literacy coach, high ability coordinator, adjunct professor, and former first-grade teacher. She loves spending time with her family, playing with words, teaching kids and adults, running very early in the morning, traveling to new places, and eating ice cream. She also enjoys doing author visits and events. Shannon lives in Indiana with her husband Matt and their daughters Emily and Madison.

Free Spirit books by Shannon Anderson:

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The Parent-Teacher Connection: Nine Strategies for Building Relationships with Your Students' Parents

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By Shannon Anderson, author of Coasting Casey Connecting with parents and creating positive relationships with them is definitely one of the top priorities for ensuring a successful school year. There are many ways to make these connections. When you show parents that you care about their children, they will be more likely to partner with...

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The Science and Research on Gratitude and Happiness

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The Science and Research on Gratitude and Happiness

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What is happiness? What is gratitude?

We each have our own definitions of these, and for the most part, they will probably sound pretty similar.

But if we were to take a deeper dive into the two, we would we find out more about ourselves, for instance, our behavioral tendencies and emotional well-being, than just what is a standard definition of each.

The English language has about 550 to 600 words for different emotional experiences, 2 of these "emotional experiences" are gratitude and happiness (Averill, 1997).

Gratitude and happiness are two topics that have been long researched but only recently became hot topics. As more and more people are becoming aware of the benefits of applying Positive Psychology evidence-based theory, science, and methods to their daily life, gratitude and happiness are rising to the top of the 'priority self'-checklist.

If we take a deeper look at gratitude, we find that 'gratia', is the Latin origin for ' gratitude' and means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Gratitude is an appreciation from receipt of something tangible or intangible from an individual (Giving thanks makes you happier).

As stated before, happiness has many definitions, but let's look at the one from Positive Psychology, it's defined as experiencing frequent positive emotions, like joy, pride, and interest with less negative emotions like anger, sadness, and anxiety (Lyubomirsky, 2008). Furthermore, happiness is related to life satisfaction, moments of pleasure, and appreciation of life (Khoda, 2016).

Gratitude and happiness are more than just a state of mind or a gesture. There are some serious science-based theories behind each of these emotional states of being.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Gratitude Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients connect to more positive emotions and enjoy the benefits of gratitude.

The Psychology of Gratitude and Happiness

Researchers in Positive Psychology have found that gratitude and happiness are always strongly correlated. A possible theory is that gratitude moves people to experience more positive emotions, to thoroughly enjoy the good experiences, better their health, face adversity, and develop and maintain relationships of strength, which in turn makes you happier.

Three common ways people can express their gratitude are:

1. By being gracious of their past (i.e., think of positive childhood memories)

2. By being gracious for the present (i.e., taking time to be present and enjoy)

3. By being grateful for what's to come (i.e., hopeful and optimistic of the future) (Giving thanks makes you happier).

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (often known as G.K. Chesterton) is a prolific English writer, poet, philosopher, etc. who coined the quote " I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder " (Sacasas, 2010).

Chesterton takes the attitude that giving thanks or showing gratitude for whatever you are doing is critical in order to be happy. In addition, appreciate anything and everything you have, or don't have anything at all. In short - take nothing for granted (Taylor, 2014).

A Look at Science and Research

Does the happier you are, correlate to the longer you live? Yoichi Chida and Andrew Steptoe (2008) attempted to answer this question.

Chida and Steptoe (2008) conducted a meta-analysis on 35 longitudinal studies; the researchers found that happiness positively effects longevity. These positive effects included: a more positive psychological well being and a lower mortality rate for everyone whether they were healthy or sick (Carr, 2011).

Healthy population studies have found that when participants exhibited a positive affect, like joy, happiness, energy and vigor, life satisfaction, optimism, and a sense of humor - there was a lower mortality rate (Carr, 2011).

Adding to the evidence that happiness correlates with a longer life are researchers Danner, D.D., Snowdon, D.A., & Friesen, W.V. (2001). They completed a large follow-back study with 180 nuns in the US. All of the nuns had a similar lifestyle, diet, and schedule.

Danner et al. (2001) instructed the nun participants to write essays as they entered into their religious order. The nuns wrote about themselves and their life from childhood to present day, and their hopes and dreams for their lives.

The nuns were unaware that their essays would be analyzed for a happiness and longevity study. The researchers found that, about 50 some years later, 90% of the happiest nuns lived past 85 (years old), and only 34% who scored as the least happy lived past 85 (Carr, 2011).

We can see that happiness can increase our longevity. However what are the factors that determine happiness? Sonya Lyumbomirsky (2007), a psychology researcher, theorized that there are three causes of happiness.

1. Genetic happiness set-point: is responsible for 50% of our happiness, determined by our personalities.

2. Intentional activity: accounts for about 40% of our happiness, meaning the activities that we intentionally set out to do throughout our lives, that can better our well-being or increase our happiness.

3. Environmental circumstances: account for 10% of the reason we are happy, usually it depends on the circumstances that which we are surrounded with and how this encourages or inhibits skills and opportunities for us to achieve happiness (Lyumbomirsky, 2007).

While there are different causes of happiness, one way for sure to bring about more happiness is gratitude.

Leaders in Positive Psychology, researchers Dr. Robert A. Emmons and Dr. Michael E. McCullough, studied gratitude and directed participants to write a few sentences weekly on certain topics.

The topics ranged from what they were grateful for to what irritants they had encountered that week. At 10 weeks, the researchers found that the participants who wrote about gratitude were more hopeful about the future and had less medical appointments, and exercised more (Giving thanks can make you happier).

Other Interesting Research and Studies

There are many researchers looking at how to measure and predict positive emotions in order to share with the world the key factors responsible or what are the best tools and skills to practice to be happier.

Gratitude Predicts Hope and Happiness: A Two-Study Assessment of Traits and States (vanOyen Witvliet, 2018).

vanOyen Witvilet and her team of researchers studied and assessed how gratitude could possibly predict hope and happiness, respectively. The researchers assessed gratitude writing in the intervention group.

Their theory of gratitude was inspired by, Roberts (2004), in that they found that " gratitude is about givers, gifts, recipients, and the attitudes of giver and recipients toward one another." Gratitude compared to joy and hope is a much deeper social emotion, whereas joy is a result of a behavior or action, and hope is a thought of a future action or good (p. 65).

Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life, by Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough.

Researchers Emmons and McCullough assessed the effect of having a grateful outlook on a person's psychological and physical wellbeing. A total of 3 studies were conducted, studies 1 and 2, participants were randomized into 1 of 3 groups: 1. Hassles, 2. Gratitude listing, 3. Either neutral life events or social comparison.

For the first two studies, the participants were also asked to keep a record of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals.

For the third study, prior to enrollment, these participants had been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease, and were randomly assigned to either the gratitude intervention or the control group.

Although the researchers were looking to see benefits in both the positive affect and somatic realm, only in the social-emotional aspect did the participants show a higher positive affect (Emmons and McCullough, 2003).

Savoring Walks.

A study conducted at Loyola University Chicago, by Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff (2007); found that a "savoring walk" each day can help with happiness.

How exactly? The participants took a "savoring walk" daily for a week, and reported back that there was an increase in their overall happiness. Their explanation surmises that if you take the time to notice the good things in life you will feel happier.

Deeper conversations provide for a happier life.

Psychological researchers Matthias R. Mehl, Shannon E. Holleran, C. Shelby Clark, and Simine Vazire looked at the difference in happiness for people who were less social and had more superficial conversations versus people that were more social and had deeper conversations.

Their findings showed that those that had more deep conversations and socialized more frequently with others were happier (Association of Psychological Science, 2010).

Is There a Link Between Happiness and Gratitude?

There is a direct link between happiness and gratitude. Expressing gratitude brings about happiness for the one giving thanks. The more someone is thankful or feels gratitude, the less there is time or room for negative thoughts.

Lyubomirsky (2008) provides 8 ways to boost gratitude in her book, " The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life you want," and a brief online version " Eight Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness."

First, she directs the reader that being grateful offers us a moment to savor the joy we are currently experiencing, which in turn lessens the dreariness of any negative going on at the time.

Then her second point, which is pretty interesting and rings true so effectively, is that the more you practice and express gratitude the more self-worth and self-esteem you feel, whether it's thinking about what others do for you, or what you have done (for yourself or others) it adds to your confidence and how effective you are at this thing called life.

For people that have experienced some of the most traumatizing experiences or situations, they have found positive effects from those experiences or from life itself to be thankful for.

These positive effects include adjusting, processing, and moving on from the trauma. Gratitude can also help with building empathy for others, and social bonds whether pre-existing or new.

Gratitude helps us to be less negative overall.

How Does Gratitude Bring Happiness?

Gratitude is a wonderful practice to learn and practice over and over every day.

Gratitude is the most giving state of mind that we can train our thinking to stay in. When we give or receive gratitude we are happier for it.

Gratitude involves and evolved from one of the basic animal interactions, acknowledgment. Obviously, acknowledgment can be much more established and overt than a basic understanding of " I see you" " I feel you" or " I hear you."

But with gratitude it is taking acknowledgment 20 steps forward, in saying, " not only do I see/hear/feel you I thank you for X."

Whatever the X is - doesn't really matter... It's really about that acknowledgment and the .5 seconds to 30 minutes it takes to feel grateful to someone or to something non-living - that brings us back from all of our negative thoughts, grievances, and frustrations, etc.

Tennen and Afflek (2002) found that when people are faced with adversity or traumas if they are able to experience gratitude, they are able to push through the adversity or trauma and be more resilient.

Furthermore, researchers Witvliet, Knoll, Hinman, & DeYoung (2010) found that after an interpersonal offense, if a victim can concentrate or bring to attention the lesson(s) learned, how they were resilient, or how they grew, it provides greater joy, positivity, and overall better cardiovascular health for that temporary moment.

When people are focused on the good and prioritize any of the benefits, they are practicing benefit-focused reappraisal, most similar to the phrase of "finding the silver-lining" (Baker, Williams, Witvliet, & Hill, 2016).

Does Gratitude Multiply Happiness?

Yes. Absolutely it does.

Feeling gratitude or receiving gratitude makes both parties happier or see things from a more positive perspective. How could it not, right? You are literally thanking someone or something for something that is positive.

Positivity rubs off, and when you feel more positive you feel happier. With positive situations and positive thoughts, it's hard to think of negative situations or negative thoughts. But why is that?

Answer: because they are still there even when we feel overly grateful for all of the good.

However, we are able to accept the negative thoughts or situations that we have or are in. When we accept whatever our circumstances are, we waste much less energy on negative emotions such as rejecting or denying the negative. Instead, we are able to everything about our circumstance - taking in both the good and the bad.

8 Ted Talks Worth Watching

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: the secret to happiness

Csikszentmihalyi proposes a theory about "" by first telling the audience about people that he knew as a child, that lived through WWII. He centers his talk about " What makes a life worth living?" and proposes that it isn't about money and things but more so who can find a state of " flow " (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008).

Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

Norton introduces a novel idea about how money can bring you happiness, but it does not include spending the money on yourself. Norton and his colleague did a social experiment, in where they gave people money to spend either on themselves or others. They asked the participants to rate their happiness before and after the social experiment (Norton, 2012).

Malcolm Gladwell: Choice, happiness, and spaghetti sauce

Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "Tipping Point" presents a much lighter take and taste on happiness by giving examples from the food industry's evolution of appealing to different tastes with the same product.

He talks about how there is no average or most common type of happiness or taste in food for everyone, everyone is different and the best way to make everyone happy and buy into a food is to give them their special variety of happiness (Gladwell, 2006).

Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude

Schwartzberg, a cinematographer, discusses the work he does with time-lapse photography and how it can be a form of meditation. Schwartzberg states, "Nature's beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude." He talks about how there is a connection amongst us all, and a universal rhythm (Schwartzberg, 2011).

Shawn Anchor: The Happy Secret to Better work

Anchor, a psychologist researcher looks at what makes people happy and how to create lasting positive change by researching the topic extensively. He and colleagues find 4 behaviors that create lasting positive change.

Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness.

Dan Gilbert, a psychologist and happiness expert, discusses the science of happiness with examples in research and testimonial. Gilbert talks about "impact bias" and how people can greatly misjudge how something will impact their lives. (Gilbert, 2006)

Benjamin Wallace: The price of happiness.

Benjamin Wallace talks about how people can be swept up with how much something costs and how it could possibly be better than the less costly alternatives (Wallace, 2008).

Laura Tice: Remember to say thank you

Short and to the point. Tice reminds the audience to ask for what you need even if it's praise because you aren't the only one benefiting. Both the one being praised and the person praising benefit from this exchange of gratitude (Tice, 2008).

3 Recommended Articles (PDF)

1. Gratitude and Happiness: Development of a measure of gratitude, relationships with subjective well-being, by Watkins, P.C., Woodward, K., Stone, T., Kolts, R.L. (2003).

Valid measure of trait gratitude, and to evaluate the relationship of gratitude to subjective well-being (SWB). Four studies were conducted evaluating the reliability and validity of the Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT), a measure of dispositional gratitude.

It was shown that grateful thinking improved mood, and results also supported the predictive validity of the GRAT.

2. Does gratitude writing improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Wong, Y.J., Owen, J., Gabana, N.T., Brown, J.W., McInnis, S., Toth, P., & Gilman, L. (2016).

Psychotherapy, expressive writing and psychotherapy, and gratitude writing and psychotherapy are compared and studied with 293 adults seeking psychotherapy.

3. Happiness and Longevity in the United States, by Elizabeth M. Lawrence, Richard G. Rogers, and Tim Wadsworth

Let's cut to the chase, happier people live longer. This article is a great read for those that want to get into the relationships of happiness and marriage, age, socioeconomic status, etc. (Lawrence, E.M., Rogers, R.G., & Wadsworth, T., 2015).

23 Quotes on Gratitude & Happiness

Gratitude

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

Melody Beattle

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."

Melody Beattle

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."

William Arthur Ward

"Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for."

Zig Ziglar

"'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humanity, understanding."

Alice Walker

"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts."

Henri Frederic Amiel

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you look back and realize they were the big things."

Robert Brault

"The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement."

Charles Schwab

"When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around."

Willie Nelson

"The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness."

Dalai Lama

'There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Albert Einstein
Happiness

"We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh."

William James

"Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness."

Frank Tyger

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

Joseph Addison

"I am very happy because I have conquered myself and not the world. I am very happy because I have loved the world and not myself."

Sri Chinmoy

"If you want to be happy, be."

Leo Tolstoy

"You can only have bliss if you don't chase it."

Henepola Gunaratana

"Happiness is a direction, not a place."

Sydney J. Harris

"Be happy with what you have. Be excited about what you want."

Alan Cohen

"Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you."

Buddha

"Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest."

Buddha

"Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are. It solely relies on what you think."

Buddha
A Take-Home Message: The key is gratitude

I hope that after reading this piece you see that there is so much to be grateful for in your own life. Even in those moments that seem so big and everything is crashing around you, there are still those around you that are there in support of you that you can be thankful for.

Furthermore, I hope that after reading the research findings on happiness and gratitude you are moved to practice gratitude in order to multiply your happiness as only good can come from this.

For further reading on gratitude, see:

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Gratitude Exercises for free.

Anchor, S. (2011) The Happy Secret to better work. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?language=en
Association for Psychological Science. (2010, March 5). Well-being is related to having less small talk and more substantive conversations. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 16, 2019 from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304165902.htm.

Averill, J. (1997) The emotions: An integrative approach. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 513-541). New York: Academic Press.

Baker, J. C., Williams, J. K., Witvliet, C. V. O., Hill, P. C. (2016). Positive reappraisals after an offense: Event-related potentials and emotional effects of benefit-finding and compassion. The Journal of Positive Psychology. doi:10.1080/17439760.2016.1209540

Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. L., Jr., O'Connor, L. E., Parrott, L., III, & Wade, N. G. (2005). Forgivingness, vengeful rumination, and affective traits. Journal of Personality, 73(1), 183-225.

Bryant, F. and Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Carr, A. (2011) Positive Psychology. The Science of Happiness and Human Strengths. 2nd Ed. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Chida, Y. Steptoe, A. (2008) Positive Psychological Well-Being and Morality: A Quantitative Review of Prospective Observational Studies. Psychosomatic Medicine. 70(7):741-756, SEP 2008. https://insights.ovid.com/pubmed?pmid=18725425 DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e31818105ba

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: the to happiness [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow/up-next

Danner, D.D., Snowdon, D.A., & Friesen, W.V. Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 80, (5), 804-813. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp805804.pdf doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.80.5.804

Emmons, R.A. and McCullough, M.E., (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 84, (2) 337-389. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/application_uploads/Emmons-CountingBlessings.pdf doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377.

Gilbert, D. (2006) The surprising science of happiness. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy

Giving thanks makes you happier. Harvard Health Publishing. Harvard Medical School. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier

Gladwell, M. (2006) Choice, happiness, and spaghetti sauce. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/speakers/malcolm_gladwell

Khoda, R. (2016) The addiction connection. What's your definition of happiness. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-addiction-connection/201506/whats-your-definition-happiness

Lawrence, E.M., Rogers, R.G., & Wadsworth, T. (2015) Happiness and Longevity in the United States. Social Science Medicine Journal. November; 145: 115-119. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4724393/pdf/nihms749454.pdf doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.09.020.

Lyumbomirsky, S. (2007) The How of Happiness. New York: Penguin.

Lyumbomirsky, S. (2008) Eight Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness. Retrieved from https://gratefulness.org/resource/eight-ways/

Norton, M (2012) Michael Norton: How to buy happiness. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness/up-next

Ricard, M. (2007) The habits of happiness. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_happiness/up-next

Roberts, R.C. (2004). The blessings of gratitude: A conceptual analysis. In R.A. Emmons and M.E. McCullough (Eds.), The psychology of gratitude. (pp. 58-78). Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Doi :/10.1093/acprof:oso/97801995150100.003.0004

Sacasas, L.M. (2010) Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Retrieved from https://thefrailestthing.com/2010/11/25/gratitude-is-happiness-doubled-by-wonder/

Schwartzberg, L. (2011) Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude/details

Taylor, J. (2014) 5 Quotes from G.K. Chesterton on Gratitude and Thanksgiving. Retrieved from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/5-quotes-from-g-k-chesterton-on-gratitude-and-thanksgiving/

Tennen, H., & Affleck, G. (2002). Benefit-finding and benefit-reminding. In C. Snyder & S. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 584-597). Oxford University Press: New York.

Tice, L. (2008) Remember to say thank you. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_trice_suggests_we_all_say_thank_you

Wallace, B. (2008) The price of happiness. [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_wallace_on_the_price_of_happiness/up-next

Watkins, P.C., Woodward, K., Stone, T., Kolts, R.L. (2003) Gratitude and Happiness: Development of a measure of gratitude, and relationships with subjective well-being. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philip_Watkins/publication/233506390_Gratitude_and_happiness_Development_of_a_measure_of_gratitude_and_relationships_with_subjective_well-being/links/0deec5327213e6eb05000000/Gratitude-and-happiness-Development-of-a-measure-of-gratitude-and-relationships-with-subjective-well-being.pdf

Witvliet, C. V. O., Knoll, R. W., Hinman, N. G., & DeYoung, P. A. (2010). Compassion-focused reappraisal, benefit-focused reappraisal, and rumination after an interpersonal offense: Emotion- regulation implications for subjective emotion, linguistic responses, and physiology. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(3), 226-242.

Witvliet, Charlotte & Richie, Fallon & Root Luna, Lindsey & Van Tongeren, Daryl. (2018). Gratitude Predicts Hope and Happiness: A Two-Study Assessment of Traits and States. The Journal of Positive Psychology. 10.1080/17439760.2018.1424924.

Wong, Y.J., Owen, J., Gabana, N.T., Brown, J.W., McInnis, S., Toth, P., & Gilman, L. (2016) Does gratitude writing improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4553/aa14ae9dcf8119900b2c67778891eb025495.pdf

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The Science and Research on Gratitude and Happiness

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What is happiness? What is gratitude? We each have our own definitions of these, and for the most part, they will probably sound pretty similar. But if we were to take a deeper dive into the two, we would we find out more about ourselves, for instance, our behavioral tendencies and emotional well-being, than just what is a standard definition of each.

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Association of Texas Professional Educators

Anne started her teaching career in a position funded through Teach for America, working with students who experienced some of the highest poverty levels in the country. Chronic HVAC issues led to frequent school closures, and administrative inefficiencies left teachers struggling to make up for lost time. "I would find myself thinking about my students at all hours of the night," Anne explains. "And I always had grading and lesson planning to do on the weekends." But no matter how exhausted, she always felt the need to give more.

"There's an expectation that as a teacher, you are also a therapist, after-school caretaker, college counselor, and more," Anne says. For two years, Anne was on her feet 10 hours a day, including the half-hour lunch she ate standing up while supervising in the cafeteria. After work, she would go home and go straight to bed. "The sheer effort of making one more decision about what burrito to microwave was just too much for me most days."

Eventually, Anne left the teaching profession altogether. "I loved being part of the school community, and I loved going to work never doubting that what I did was important," she says. "But in the end, I think I just wasn't made to be a teacher."

She is not alone.

Teachers Are Leaving in Record Numbers

According to research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Consortium for Policy Research in Education, 44% of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years on the job. The reasons range from lack of autonomy and low pay to behavioral problems within the classroom and constantly shifting standards for evaluating teacher and student success. There's also the suffocating amount of paperwork and the extra time teachers are expected to dedicate outside the classroom to serve on committees, coach student teachers, and the like.

"In tech, people get paid for freelancing, consulting, or building great things," says Dawn Casey-Rowe, a former teacher who now writes on the topics of education, sustainability, and practical living. "In education, teachers are expected to 'jump in,' 'help,' or 'join.'"

With fewer than one-third of K-12 educators leaving the occupation due to retirement, it's no wonder that half of the nation's schools are struggling to find and keep quality teachers. What we're calling a teacher shortage is actually an exodus, according to Casey-Rowe.

If we're going to fix it, we need to have a long, hard conversation about self-care-what teachers can do to sustain it and what schools can do to support it.

Nurturing the Nurturers

"Most educators are nurturers," says Adam Saenz, a psychologist and bestselling author of The Power of a Teacher. "The downside of being a nurturer, though, is that the nurturer will often sacrifice their own well-being for the benefit of others." While incredibly noble, the dynamic isn't always sustainable. In his work facilitating workshops in stress management and teacher well-being, Saenz often reminds educators that "one of the most loving things we can do for people depending on us is to offer them the best version of ourselves. And the way we do that is by loving ourselves well enough to practice disciplined self-care."

Saenz advocates a holistic approach to self-care-in essence, asking yourself, "What does it look like to be a good steward of my occupation, my emotions, my finances, my body, and my soul?" While there are any number of tactics that can be used to support life balance and well-being, it's important to remember there is no one way to take care of yourself. For someone, self-care might look like taking time to exercise and plan nutritious meals. For another, it might mean tapping into resources for living on a tight budget or learning to be more efficient with their time. For another, it might involve asking more experienced teachers how they organize themselves and manage to leave work at work.

At the end of the day, self-care is about knowing your limits and figuring out what you need to be at your best.

Three Critical Questions

Andrea Rosario, who directs a free health coaching program offered through the Austin-based nonprofit It's Time Texas, suggests a curiosity-based approach to self-care. A certified health education specialist with years of experience helping individuals change their lifestyles and take control of their health, she encourages educators to ask themselves three critical questions:

1. What do boundaries look like with your students, peers, and administrators?

2. What brings you joy?

3. Who is in your community supporting your self-care?

For teachers who are used to making so many decisions on their own, this last question might be the most critical. While asking for help can feel vulnerable, seeking support when it's needed can put us in a much better position to help others in the long run.

In the absence of a formal mentoring or support system within your school, "help" could mean soliciting advice from more seasoned educators or talking to friends who can offer perspective outside the field. It could look like posting a notice in the breakroom asking for guidance on topics or processes you're uncertain about. Or, it might take the form of talking to a professional about ways to weave healthy balance back into your life-especially when it feels most impossible to do so.

The It's Time Texas coaching hotline is free to any Texan looking to make a healthy change. Apart from offering guidance on how to support physical health and well-being, coaches work with callers to identify self-care practices they can build into their daily routines-no matter how busy life gets. Often, callers already know what to do. What they need is the encouragement and accountability to do it. Health coaching provides the one-on-one support that so often makes the difference between floundering or sticking to our goals.

Ask anyone, and we bet they can name at least one teacher who has had a profound impact on their life-a mentor who sparked their love of learning or helped them unleash the potential they didn't think they had. Given the essential role educators play in life's most important journey, it's critical they be able to care for themselves with the same level of dedication they bring to the job.
It's Time Texas is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit empowering Texans to lead healthier lives, build healthier communities, and contribute to a healthier state. We're proud to partner with ATPE to support Texas educators' health and well-being. Connect with us at itstimetexas.org. To learn more about our free health coaching program, visit livinghealthier.itstimetexas.org.
Author: ATPE Partner It's Time Texas

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It's Time We Had a Talk About Self-Care

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Association of Texas Professional Educators Anne started her teaching career in a position funded through Teach for America, working with students who experienced some of the highest poverty levels in the country. Chronic HVAC issues led to frequent school closures, and administrative inefficiencies left teachers struggling to make up for lost time.

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-Listen (make sure the parents feels listened to and respected)
- Operate with sensitivity (we never know what the family is going through)

>Use neutral and objective language
> Be sensire and straight forward
>Acknowledge and validate emotions
>Acknowledge and apologize for mistakes (be humble)
>Ask questions to seek understanding
>Invite collaboration
>Check for understanding by paraphrasing

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Growth Mindset: Clearing up Some Common Confusions

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Growth Mindset: Clearing up Some Common Confusions

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A body of research has shown that telling children that they're smart and implying that their success depends on it fosters fixed mindsets. When these children later experience struggle, they tend to conclude that their ability is not high after all, and as a result they lose confidence, so our praise has the opposite effect of what we intended. On the other hand, praising hard work or strategies used, things that children control, has been shown to support a growth mindset.

This research was designed to learn more about one of the ways to support a growth mindset, not to identify all there is to fostering a growth mindset. When people newer to the growth mindset framework initially learn about this research, they sometimes conclude that we should simply praise children for working hard. But this is a nascent level of understanding. First, exhorting students to work hard would be an attempt to directly change behaviors without changing the underlying belief about the nature of abilities.

Second, students often haven't learned that working hard involves thinking hard, which involves reflecting on and changing our strategies so we become more and more effective learners over time, and we need to guide them to come to understand this. For example, a novice teacher who sees a student trying very hard but not making any progress may think "well, at least she's working hard, so I'll praise her effort," but if the student continues to do what she's doing, or even more of it, it's unlikely to lead to success. Instead, the teacher can coach the student to try different approaches to working, studying, and learning, so that she is thinking more deeply (i.e. mentally working harder) to become a better learner, and of course the teacher should do the same: reflect on how to adjust instruction. "It's not just about effort. You also need to learn skills that let you use your brain in a smarter way. . . to get better at something." ( Yeager & Dweck, 2012.)

Third, cultivating growth mindsets involves a gradual process of releasing responsibility to students for them to become more self-sufficient learners, and praise is a communications technique that tends to be more helpful earlier in that process of building agency. Later on, adults can ask students questions that prompt them to reflect, so that they're progressing down the path toward independence.

Fourth, praise and coaching are not the only, or most powerful, ways to foster growth mindsets. For example, another method is modeling lifelong learning and making it visible, which gets us to the next confusion.
Confusion #3: Growth mindset is about changing young people, not adults
Some recent criticisms paint growth mindset work as solely focused on the students and not the adults. This is a misunderstanding of what growth mindset efforts are about. In our work with educators, we encourage the adults to start with themselves. If we don't work to shift our own mindset about ourselves and our students, then we won't work to change many other important things in the system necessary to improve education. Furthermore, our efforts to foster growth mindsets in students are likely to fail because we will say and do things that reflect our fixed mindset beliefs, which students will notice. We must deeply explore mindsets within ourselves and then gradually work to develop our own growth mindsets and our habits as learners. This means authentically working to become better at what we do throughout our lives, including how we teach and how we create contexts that help students thrive, and making our learning process visible to one another and to students.

We encourage the schools we serve to train teachers early in their growth mindset efforts, involving reflections and discussions on adult beliefs and continuous improvement practices. We provide professional learning resources to help them do so. Dr. Dweck and other mindset researchers speak about the importance of fostering a growth mindset in adults and have researched the mindsets of educators, managers, leaders, and other grownups. Growth mindset research is about learning how we humans can all become more motivated and effective learners, not about how we can change students but not ourselves.
Confusion #4: All that matters is what's in the mind
Another confusion about mindset is that the only determinant of success is our mindset. But that's not the case. Context, culture, environment, and systems matter. For one thing, people's mindsets (as well as other beliefs and behaviors) are strongly shaped by the people around them. Beyond that, people's destiny is not only a function of what's within them, but also of what's around them. A lot of the early mindset research studies focused on individual's minds because they were seeking to understand how humans work. But mindset researchers recognize, research, and speak about the importance of shifting culture, context, and systems, and both researchers and practitioners actively work on that aspect of change efforts.
Confusion #5: Improvement is all about changing beliefs and not doing anything else
Related to that, another confusion we see, also reflected in recent commentaries, is that growth mindset work is solely about fostering the belief that we can improve, but not about changing the educational system or actually doing anything about that belief. Carol Dweck has talked extensively about changing learning tasks, testing practices, and grading systems. Too many tasks and teaching approaches are superficial, irrelevant, unengaging, and not learner-centered. We do need to change these tasks, the curriculum, and the pedagogy. We need to change the idea that school is about testing rather than about learning. We also need to better tackle broader issues such as childhood trauma and lack of exposure to early reading. People who dive deeper into growth mindsets learn about how important these issues are and how we might begin to address them, and a growth mindset helps them take on the challenges. As David Yeager and Gregory Walton point out:
[Mindset] interventions complement-and do not replace-traditional educational reforms. They do not teach students academic content or skills, restructure schools, or improve teacher training. Instead, they allow students to take better advantage of learning opportunities that are present in schools and tap into existing recursive processes to generate long-lasting effects . . . Indeed, [Mindset] interventions may make the effects of high-quality educational reforms such as improved instruction or curricula more apparent (Deepening our understanding over time Yeager & Walton, 2011 Growth Mindset Enables Change ). Let's Learn Together
As with anything else, the deeper we go into mindsets, the deeper our understanding becomes. Over time, more nuanced questions arise, such as about the relationship between mindset and performance, results, failure, potential, assessments, mistakes, and many other things. For example, early on a teacher who is learning about mindset may start oversimplifying mistakes as always being 'good', but this can confuse learners, as mistakes are not always something we should seek to do. With time we start distinguishing stretch mistakes, sloppy mistakes, aha-moment mistakes, and high-stakes mistakes.

Research has shown that developing a growth mindset is beneficial in a variety of contexts, from education to the workplace to interpersonal relationships to sports to health. It leads people to take on challenges they can learn from, to find more effective ways to improve, to persevere in the face of setbacks, and to make greater progress, all of which we need to further cultivate in education. Furthermore, there is evidence that its benefits are most pronounced for people who face negative stereotypes, such as underserved minorities and females in STEM, and as a result growth mindset efforts can narrow the achievement gap.

Growth mindset is a seemingly simple concept, but there is a lot of nuance to the framework and its applications. I hope that this article helps clarify common misconceptions. We invite people to continue diving deeper into this body of work and engage in explorations together. We welcome further feedback because it takes a village, or more precisely, all of us, to foster better learning.

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Growth Mindset: Clearing up Some Common Confusions | KQED

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A body of research has shown that telling children that they're smart and implying that their success depends on it fosters fixed mindsets. When these children later experience struggle, they tend to conclude that their ability is not high after all, and as a result they lose confidence, so our praise has the opposite effect of what we intended.

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Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves

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Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness

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How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness

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Many of today's parents and teachers came of age in the 1980s and 1990s - a time when the self-esteem movement was in its zenith. Self-esteem was supposed to be a panacea for a variety of social challenges, from substance abuse to violent crime. The , did not support such broad claims.

If teachers and parents want children to develop resilience and strength, a better approach is to teach them self-compassion, said Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself . "Self-esteem is a judgment about how valuable I am: very valuable, not so good, not valuable at all."

In contrast, "self-compassion isn't about self-evaluation at all," said Neff. "It's about being kind to oneself. Self-compassion is a healthy source of self-worth because it's not contingent and it's unconditional. It's much more stable over time because it is not dependent on external markers of success such as grades."
How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation
Most of us have a habitual way of talking to ourselves when we make a mistake or struggle with something. For many people, said Neff, self-criticism is the "number one way we motivate ourselves." It's the voice in our head that reminds us of all the consequences that will befall us if we fail that quiz or eat that tub of ice cream. But self-criticism brings with it "lots of unintended consequences such as anxiety and fear of failure," said Neff. Students may become more susceptible to perfectionism and procrastination "because the fear of not measuring up looms large."

When a student develops self-compassion, the seat of motivation shifts . Since internal value doesn't depend on external achievement, it frees students up to experiment, take risks and try new paths. "Self-compassion leads to learning goals instead of performance goals - such as trying again after messing up," said Neff. "It's a better academic motivator than self-criticism. It's a motivation of care instead of a motivation of fear."

Neff said that there is an empirical link between self-compassion and growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable and responsive to effort). Research shows that students who adopt a growth mindset thrive on challenges, show resilience in the face of obstacles and view failure as part of the learning process. Both self-compassion and growth mindset are robust responses to the inevitable ups and downs of life. "When we are self-compassionate, we remind ourselves 'I am a human and the human condition is imperfect for all of us,' " said Neff.
How Adults Can Teach Children Self-Compassion
The good news is that parents and educators "can teach students to be self-compassionate," said Neff. "It is a learnable skill. Our culture discourages it - you have to go against the grain a little bit - but it's a common-sense idea." Self-compassion isn't self-pity (poor me!) and it isn't arrogance (I'm the best). Instead, it's about treating yourself and your shortcomings with kindness, reminding yourself that you are human and -- like all humans -- you are a work in progress. Neff says, "Most of us have learned how to be supportive of others. We have to give ourselves permission to treat ourselves the same way."
Trade Criticism for Supportive Feedback
Parents can model self-compassion in the language they use with their children. For example, said Neff, if your child comes home with a less-than-stellar grade, help them view it as data - as an indicator of things what they need to work on - instead of as a judgment of their intelligence. Instead of harsh criticism, give them feedback that is "designed to help, support, encourage."
Model Compassionate Self-Talk
Adults can also model how they process challenges. "When you fail or make a mistake, talk it through out loud with your kids. Use language that communicates, 'It's OK to make mistakes. Now what can I learn from this?' " Compassionate self-talk reminds us of our common humanity, the inevitability of mistakes, and our ability to bounce back and keep going. It shifts the self-talk from "I am a failure - I am so ashamed of myself" to "Everyone messes up sometimes - let's see what I can learn from this situation so I can try again." In this way, self-compassion helps us move on to problem-solving faster, said Neff. Instead of getting stuck in a loop of negative thoughts and feelings, we can take a deep breath and move on to what to do next.
Be a Good Friend to Yourself
To make self-compassion a concrete idea for children, ask them to compare how they treat themselves to how they treat a friend. When we treat ourselves with the same kindness and care that we offer a good friend, we are practicing self-compassion. "By age 7, children have learned about the concept of friendship. A lot of their developmental energy is spent on learning how to be a good friend," said Neff. So when students are feeling frustrated or upset, ask them, "What would you say to a friend in this situation?" This simple question can help students reflect on the situation and reframe their response.
Calm the Nervous System
When something goes wrong, students' bodies may experience a spike of adrenaline. The heart starts to race, breathing gets more shallow - and this can make it harder to feel calm. Neff said that in these moments, we can teach kids to practice self-compassion by taking deep breaths while putting their hand on their heart. Gentle, caring touch releases oxytocin, a hormone that makes us feel safe and connected. Neff said, "Touch is one of the most powerful symbols of care. So if you are feeling upset, put your hand on your heart. Hold your own hand. Hug yourself. Even if your brain at the moment is full of the storyline of how bad you are, you can put your hand on your heart and calm your physiology down."
Self-Compassion and Trauma
Teaching self-compassion to children who have a history of trauma is particularly important - and particularly challenging. Dr. Patricia Jennings, associate professor at the University of Virginia and author of the new book, The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom often feel very bad about themselves, and their ability to feel compassion for themselves may be impaired. They don't even know how to accept compassion from other people yet." In these situations, caring teachers can literally rewire some of the neural pathways associated with attachment. , said that these children "

Jennings said one of the most transformational messages these children can learn from teachers is, "I know there are people in the world who care about me." This isn't always easy: Children who have experienced trauma may exhibit challenging behaviors in the classroom. But with time and consistency, these children can begin to internalize the message, "I really care about you. I care about how you are doing. And I care about how hard you are trying," said Jennings. Helping children feel and accept compassion from someone else is a "good first step to helping them develop self-compassion."

For parents and teachers who are not used to offering themselves kindness, teaching and modeling self-compassion for children is a gift we can give ourselves. "Self-compassion is a way of reparenting yourself," said Neff. "If you grew up with really critical parents, it's a chance to treat yourself like an unconditionally loving, supportive parent."

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How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness

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Many of today's parents and teachers came of age in the 1980s and 1990s - a time when the self-esteem movement was in its zenith. Self-esteem was supposed to be a panacea for a variety of social challenges, from substance abuse to violent crime.

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-Each of you is more than just a student in this class, and you should do your best to develop all the talents you have. I support your talents. I want to know about what you do outside the classroom."

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Social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life. In fact, core development abilities such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness and agreeableness can be as or even more important than cognitive intelligence in determining future employment. Despite these competencies being related to consequential life outcomes, it can be challenging for educators to find effective ways to prioritize, teach and assess social and emotional skills.

Developing these core life abilities through social and emotional learning (SEL) is critical to a child's development, as it directly correlates to success and happiness as an adult. For many children, school is the only place where any deficiencies in these abilities can be addressed before they become active members of society.

Combining these skills with academic development creates high-quality learning experiences and environments that empower students to be more effective contributors in their classrooms today and in their workplaces and communities tomorrow.

Is SEL worth the investment?

According to "Ready to Lead," a report for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) based on a national principal survey on how SEL can prepare children and transform schools, there is data to support the importance of embedding social and emotional development in schools. The report cites a 2011 meta-analysis that found that students who receive high-quality SEL instruction have achievement scores on average of 11 percentile points higher than students who did not receive SEL instruction.

However, the benefits of SEL do not end at graduation. A recent study from The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) looked at five primary social and emotional skills-open-mindedness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness-to determine which are the strongest indicators of success. The study revealed a lack of SEL regularly correlated with unfavorable outcomes such as an increased chance of unemployment, divorce, poor health, criminal behavior and imprisonment.

To further justify the advantages of SEL, the report shared that advances in neuroscience imply developing SEL skills in kindergarten "can have long-term academic benefits on students' reading and vocabulary, including in high poverty schools, suggesting that SEL may assist in closing achievement gaps." It also stated, "researchers at Columbia University concluded that for every dollar a school spends on social-emotional learning programs, it sees an eleven dollar return on its investment," indicating the investment in SEL is worthwhile.

The development of these skills has shown overall positive results, including better academic performance, improved attitudes, behaviors and relationships with peers, as well as deeper connection to school, fewer delinquent acts and reduced emotional distress (student depression, anxiety, stress and social withdrawal).

When it comes to translating those skills beyond the classroom, the OECD explains that subjective well-being can be defined as having a positive mental state; when reviewing the impact of SEL on adolescents, the results-which mirror findings from adult samples-indicate more ties between SEL skills and life satisfaction than between cognitive skills and life satisfaction by nearly 10 percent. Emotional stability appears to be the most relevant of the top SEL skills that correlate to life satisfaction, with consciousness and extraversion showing relevance in job and life satisfaction.

How do teachers feel about SEL?

According to the CASEL report, "Ready to Lead," interest in and support for SEL are high among teachers and school administrators. Principals, specifically, are eager for the expertise, training and support necessary to effectively implement new programming. The survey findings state that while a majority of principals (97 percent) believe teaching SEL skills in school will improve student behavior, learning and development, only 35 percent report their school has developed a plan for teaching students social and emotional skills. What's more, only 40 percent of principals anticipate it will improve academic performance, which is an indicator of the disconnect between SEL support and implementation.

A United States national teacher survey called "The Missing Piece", a report for CASEL, supports the idea that teachers widely endorse SEL. Ninety-five percent of those surveyed believe that SEL skills are teachable and that the curriculum can benefit students from all backgrounds.
Social-emotional skills support student achievement, but embedding SEL into the school day can be complex.
If you're launching a new SEL program or enhancing an existing one, these tips will help you avoid common implementation mistakes.

When will SEL become a priority?

Although the vast majority of education stakeholders agree SEL is important, it has remained on the sidelines while education leaders have instead focused on academics alone-as opposed to the development of the whole child.

Given the support that SEL has in the education community, it may just be a matter of time before it is widely adopted. Developing an emphasis on SEL in schools will lead to a more supportive space for students to freely share their creative ideas, shamelessly ask questions and learn academic concepts while building lifelong skills. The widespread advancement of SEL will require a gradual and grand shift in pedagogy. In the process, we can forge a more well-rounded education system to produce more socially responsible citizens who are better prepared to work together to build communities, nations and, ultimately, a better world.

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The Future of Education Depends on Social Emotional Learning: Here's Why - EdSurge News

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Social and emotional abilities are said to be indicators of how well a person adjusts to his or her environment, adapts to change and, ultimately, how successful she or he will be in life. In fact, core development abilities such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness and agreeableness can be as or even more important than cognitive intelligence in determining future employment.

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Every day, students meet up or buddy up with another student to check in with them. Each week, students will be changing buddies and thus allowing for students to get an opportunity to speak to all members of their class. Additionally, all students get an opportunity to express themselves and everyone gets and opportunity to check in with each other throughout the day.

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To build trust, students also need to see that their teacher is also a person. Expressing emotions, understanding why you might feel that way, and dealing with the emotions in front of the students will help build trust between you and your students because you are showing vulnerability.

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Increases student's reading skills since everyone is practicing at the same time. Reading is also practiced accross subjects.

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Make sure to greet students by name and allow a few moments to check in with each one. This strategy will help build a strong relationship with students.

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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior

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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior

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There's a saying some educators use: "The best classroom management strategy is an engaging lesson plan." That may be true, but there are often a few students who act out in class no matter how well the teacher prepares. Dearborn says when she started using compassion to help her students behave in school-appropriate ways, she had far more success. She often found that punishments embarrassed students and caused them to resent her deeply, damaging their relationship.
7 COMPASSIONATE BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES Tone, Volume and Posture
Dearborn empathizes with students who feel shame when they are called out in front of the entire class. Whenever possible, she tries to discipline privately, but classrooms are hardly private, so she often uses a combination of tone, volume and posture to get students on task.

First she adopts a calm and serious tone in her voice. Then, she squares her body to the student. She says this kind of communication can usually do the trick, but there are other steps if needed. For kids who might have oppositional defiant disorder or be emotionally disturbed, Dearborn advises a side posture with averted eyes so as not to trigger a violent response.
Avoid Standoffs
Dearborn said that in moments of escalation with students, often the best strategy is to offer a few alternative choices to the behavior a child is showing and then walk away. Sometimes a small nudge is enough to redirect behavior, and teens especially may not follow the teacher's direction if she hovers. Dearborn calls this "drive-by discipline."

"Say the kid's name superfast and then move on," she said. "Sometimes it's the right thing to do. It startles her, and then I move on before she can bait me into an argument."
Look for the Subtext: I Don't Care
When kids are acting in a confrontational, dismissive or volatile way, Dearborn suggests looking for the deeper message the student is communicating, whether they know it or not. She imagines an invisible subtitle running in front of the student that communicates what she really needs. When things get tense, "everything out of their voice and their face and their body, that is just interference getting in the way of me reading the invisible subtitles," Dearborn said. She has had to practice ignoring the loud anger and hostility in order to look for the invisible subtitle.

"If you're assuming the best about the kid, that they want to learn appropriate behavior, they want to be positively connected to you, but they somehow can't, there's something in the way. What can you imagine the invisible subtitle is for 'I don't care?' " Dearborn asked a crowd of educators at the Learning and the Brain conference.

"For me, the invisible subtitle for 'I don't care' is, Mrs. Dearborn, I really, really care, but I can't tell you that. Do care?"

Reading the "subtitles," as she calls them, has helped Dearborn to stop perceiving misbehavior as disrespect. That doesn't make her a pushover, she said. It makes her an advocate for the student.

"So now when kids say, 'I don't care' to me, I say, 'That's OK because I care, and I can care for the both of us right now, so let's do this.' "

Approaching the student with the assumption that they want to behave appropriately changes the communication dynamic.

"I'm not doing it because I'm frustrated and now I want to punish them. And even though the words and the consequences I'm giving might be the same in either case, it is the quality of interaction that shifts, and kids pick up on quality and our unspoken intention more than anything else in a disciplinary interaction."

The subtext could also be simpler. Maybe a student is talking in class, and when the teacher calls her out on it, she denies talking. "For me, the subtitle for 'I wasn't talking' is, 'Mrs. Dearborn, I was totally talking. You know I was talking. I know I was talking. Everybody in the room knows that I was talking. But I'm embarrassed that you called me out about it right now, so if you walk away, I'll stop.' "

Dearborn says to accept the student's answer and move on.
The Gentle Press: Head Down on the Desk
High school students often put their heads down in class either sleeping or refusing to participate. A teacher might tell say, "sit up" or "no sleeping in class," but to Dearborn, those approaches don't demonstrate care. Instead, she tried to express compassion, saying: "It's OK to be tired, but you can't sleep in class. Can you sit up and work on the assignment?"

If that gentle reminder doesn't work, Dearborn knows a more private conversation is necessary. She would spend a few minutes with the student in the hallway. Sometimes a walk outside is enough to wake the student up, but other times it's a chance to reaffirm an offer to help or learn about deeper issues that are going on.

"This is called the gentle press - when you gently press forward at a student until either they're in the academic work or you're in a relationship-building moment," Dearborn said. "Sometimes this doesn't end in academic work. Sometimes the gentle press ends in relationship-building."

She recounted a past experience with one of her students who had his head down. When they stepped outside class, the student burst into tears and said his brother had been deployed by the military.

"He's not going to access the academics today. He's in emotional crisis and we have to have some space for that." she said. "If I had just gone by him and said, 'sit up, no sleeping in class,' what would that have expressed to him? "
Choice, Timeline, Walk Away
Dearborn said that when people come to her workshops, they arrive with hopes of an exotic new solution that will solve everything. But changing behavior comes down to hard work. And to help students learn appropriate classroom behavior, she presents a series of choices that are connected to consequences, not punishments. Students can be given choices, including ones that lead to undesired consequences.

"The sooner we can get our students to internalize this truth - that their choices matter, that they are in charge of whether they receive the sweet or bitter fruit based on how they choose in any given situation - the sooner they internalize that concept, the better off they're going to be."

Giving students space to make their own choices means that sometimes they'll choose to act in ways teachers wish they wouldn't. But even in those moments, incidents that could lead to an office referral, students are testing whether their teacher cares enough to hold her accountable.

"[The student] understands I can go to the wall without abandoning or abusing, without lashing out," Dearborn said. "And she for whatever reason needs to learn that lesson, apparently. So I can be that person. It's not how I want it to go, but if we need to go here a couple of times so she can learn who we are together, that's OK with me."

It's counterintuitive, but Dearborn said it would be easier for the student if she lashes out at them because then the student can blame her for how the interaction ends. That way, the student doesn't have to confront her own actions.

"But if I just maintain choices, leave them with her, with kind eyes, in the end, even if she ends up out of the room, she understands at some level, maybe not consciously and right then, later, that could have gone differently," Dearborn said.
Visual Cues
When kids don't follow through with a teacher's verbal command, it might not be because they're being defiant. Sometimes they're not listening because of attention issues, learning differences or auditory processing issues. They could also be English language learners or they're fatigued by a teacher talking too much.

"Because they're hearing my voice too much, they're tuning me out," Dearborn said. "If I don't have another way to communicate with them I'm losing half of them half the time."

This is where she can communicate expected behavior with an image . She has had kids line up, for example, in what they thought was a straight line. When she showed them a photo of how they were actually lined up, they did it again.

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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior | KQED

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By addressing student behavior with compassion -- even when they're acting out -- teachers can find productive ways to get kids on task or engage in relationship-building.

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Culturally Responsive Strategies to Support Young Children with Challenging Behavior

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Culturally Responsive Strategies to Support Young Children with Challenging Behavior

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Mrs. Green leads the children in her preschool classroom in their morning song: "The more we get together, together, together, the more we get together the hap-." She stops abruptly to run after Miles, who has left morning circle to play with the musical instruments. As Mrs. Green approaches him, Miles folds his arms across his chest, then kicks his legs and screams. Mrs. Green gently places her hand on Miles's arm and looks him in the eye. She says, "Miles, I see that you are upset because you don't want to sit at morning circle and want to play with the musical instruments instead. Should we take the instruments to the circle and play with them after we've finished our calendar activities?" Miles smiles. Mrs. Green notes his response and says, "OK. First, please sit calmly at morning circle for three minutes; then you can play with the instruments. Is that a deal?" Miles nods. Mrs. Green responds, "Give me a high-five!"

Miles's actions are clearly a source of frustration for his teachers. Although teachers will want to evaluate whether they are planning activities that require children to sit for an extended time and ensure that the activities they offer children are active and meaningful, it is also important for teachers to understand how to support children who exhibit challenging behavior. Challenging behavior is defined as "any repeated pattern of behavior, or perception of behavior, that interferes with or is at risk of interfering with optimal learning or engagement in prosocial interactions with peers and adults" (Powell, Dunlap, & Fox 2006, 26). Challenging behavior can signal difficulty with social and emotional adjustment-foundational competencies that are linked to children's school readiness and later school success (Fantuzzo et al. 2007).

Although challenging behavior can occur in any classroom, research indicates that some children in urban communities experience conditions that contribute to risk factors for social and emotional delays (Fox, Dunlap, & Powell 2002). In addition, there is a specific need to support children who live in poverty, as children in poor families are twice as likely to be at risk for developmental, behavioral, and social delays as children in families earning 200 percent or more of the federal poverty line (Children's Defense Fund 2014). That is, while 10-21 percent of all preschool children show challenging behaviors such as aggression, noncompliance, defiance, tantrums, and property destruction, 30 percent of children who live in poverty exhibit such behaviors (Voorhees et al. 2013).

In this article we describe five culturally responsive core strategies to promote positive teacher relationships with young children in preschool and minimize challenging behavior: learn about children and families, develop and teach expectations, take the child's perspective, teach and model empathy, and use group times to discuss conflict. As African American boys experience a much higher rate of suspensions and expulsions from preschool settings than do other children (Gilliam 2005), these relationship-building techniques are particularly relevant for teachers as they reflect on their own practices and biases-especially toward African American boys-in early childhood classrooms.

Learn about children and families

A core consideration in developmentally appropriate practice and cultural responsiveness is that practitioners learn about each child and family and intentionally adapt and respond to each child's strengths and needs (Copple & Bredekamp 2009; Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2009). Culturally responsive practice is often defined as using the experiences and perspectives of children and their families as a tool to support them more effectively (Gay 2002). As this approach is child and family centered, it sets the stage for critical relationship building (Ford & Kea 2009).

Teachers can partner with families by inviting them to visit the classroom and participate in activities with their child. Teachers can also arrange to visit children at home, where they may engage in informal discussions with family members about what children enjoy doing for fun and learn about their favorite food, toy, or song. These interactions can reveal cultural values and norms in the home environment. Families may also share information about their child's temperament, primary play partners, and home language (NAEYC 1995). Meetings at school with families might address family routines, religious holidays and traditions, and activities the families enjoy in the community. Teachers can use information they learn about a child and family to support the child's social and emotional adjustment to the early childhood environment. Further, these conversations can demonstrate that not all children and families within a particular racial or ethnic group display similar characteristics, which is a potential teacher bias (Ford & Kea 2009). Sharing a short, warm anecdote with families, in person or in a note, about something their child did that day assures parents that the teacher cares about their child and makes an effort to know the child individually. This further connects families to their child's classroom community.

During a recent conversation with Miles's mother, Mrs. Green learned that Miles's father is a musician and that Miles really enjoys music. Miles's mother explained that Miles likes to dance and sing to his favorite songs, moving vigorously around the house. Mrs. Green used her knowledge about Miles's interest to plan music and movement activities for future morning circles to engage Miles.

Pyramid Model Framework

The five core strategies we suggest are informed by fundamental principles of the pyramid model (Fox & Hemmeter 2009)-a comprehensive framework for addressing the social and emotional outcomes of young children (Hemmeter, Ostrosky, & Fox 2006). The pyramid model includes three levels of support: universal prevention strategies for use with all children; secondary social and emotional approaches for children at risk for social and emotional delays; and tertiary individualized and function-based interventions for children with persistent challenges (Fox & Hemmeter 2009).

Develop and teach expectations

The second culturally responsive strategy in the pyramid model framework is developing and teaching two to five classroom expectations that are linked to the values and cultures of the children, teachers, and families. Expectations should be positively stated and developmentally appropriate, and should apply to both children and adults (teachers and families) (Steed & Pomerleau 2012). After cultivating a better understanding of children and families, early childhood teachers can base expectations on shared values and connections to cultures. Young children should be included in forming guidelines for behavior, as they are more likely to understand and follow them when they have input. Examples of expectations for preschool children include "Be a Friend, Be Safe, and Be a Helper" and "Use Listening Ears, Use Gentle Touches, and Use Walking Feet."

Expectations need to be consistently emphasized to prevent challenging behavior. In addition to responding to opportunities that arise during the day, teachers decide how and when they will teach, model, and positively reinforce the expectations across environments (circle time, music and movement activities, recess, lunch/snack) so that the guidelines and associated behaviors become part of the program culture (Benedict, Horner, & Squires 2007). Many teachers develop songs and hand movements to go with their expectations. Other approaches include modeling, using puppets, reading stories, and role-playing. Pictures of the children, teachers, and staff demonstrating the expectations can be posted in classrooms and common areas for further encouragement.

To reinforce positive behavior and to bring the actions to children's attention, it is important to verbally acknowledge children and adults when they demonstrate expectations. When a child's behavior reflects a great example of an expectation such as "Be a Friend"-like helping another child clean up a spill at lunch or inviting a new child to build a block tower-teachers can write a note of thanks or give the child an opportunity to wear a "Super Friend" cape. A bulletin board in a common area provides a public place to post notecards recognizing adults who demonstrate examples of meeting program expectations ("Miss Wilma was a helper today when she fixed Erin's hearing device!").

To be culturally responsive, it is important that expectations reflect the values and cultures of families and teachers and other staff in the school. For example, in the African American culture, in which community is valued over independence (Ford & Kea 2009), guidelines for some activities (like snack) may emphasize relationship-building behaviors-passing the food bowl-over independent adaptive skills-taking an appropriate portion of a self-serve snack.

Develop and teach empathy

Another culturally responsive strategy for supporting positive relationships is empathy-concern for others arising from an emotional connection. Empathetic individuals apply interpersonal sensitivity to understand the experiences of others in order to provide support or assistance (Berliner & Materson 2015). Researchers have long theorized that empathy is a critical component in teacher effectiveness in urban settings, positively impacting teachers' dispositions in interactions with students of color (Warren 2014). Thus, it is important for teachers in urban settings to model and encourage empathy to foster a culturally responsive classroom environment.

To develop and teach empathy, teachers first have to know themselves (Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2009). It is necessary for teachers to engage in critical self-reflection to uncover implicit personal biases and assumptions, and bridge understanding across cultural groups (Cooper, He, & Levin 2011; Price 2015). Whether subconscious or explicit, teachers' negative perceptions about children who differ from them in terms of culture, race, or ethnic identity can impact the teachers' ability to teach effectively and create empathetic classrooms.

Teachers can help children learn empathetic behavior by modeling warm and responsive actions, like anticipating and responding promptly to children's needs and worries, and greeting children with a smile (Twardosz 2005). Using storybooks, games, and music is another way to teach empathy. Teachers can create lessons and activities that highlight respect, kindness, compassion, and responsibility-and help children discover similarities with peers from different backgrounds (Berliner & Materson 2015). Teachers can ponder reflective questions, such as, What are my initial reactions to this child and her family?, What do my reactions tell me about my personal beliefs and assumptions?, and What can I do to build the child's and family's trust? (Collins, Arthur, & Wong-Wylie 2010; Price 2015). Although there is work to be done to unpack the contextual factors that may explain why African American boys are expelled and suspended at a higher rate than other preschool children, self-reflective questions like these and those offered throughout Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (Derman Sparks & Edwards 2009) are one place to start.

It is necessary for teachers to engage in critical self-reflection to uncover implicit personal biases and assumptions.

Historically, picture books have featured mostly white characters (Larrick 1965). When choosing high-quality books for the classroom, make sure that the characters reflect the ethnic makeup of your classroom (Larrick 1965; Koss 2014), as it is important for all children, and particularly those of color, to "see themselves" in books. During these lessons, teachers can teach relevant emotion vocabulary (Joseph, Strain, & Ostrosky 2008), read books, and sing songs that reflect the children's cultures. According to the tenets of Afrocentric teaching-which harnesses the skills African American children bring to schools to engage them in the classroom experience (Ford & Kea 2009)-combining music with creative movement, mime, and dance is a form of expression for many African American children and engages them in shared affective experiences that are useful for empathy development (Boykin 1994; Laird 2015).

For example, in a jubilant rendition, Miles and Carmen share a toy drum and a tambourine as they dance to a popular song heard in their communities. The song promotes unity, friendship, and love. Through group music making, children can express feelings and connect with the feelings of others, promoting positive social and emotional development.

Additional Resources

Center for the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL)- http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu

Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention (TACSEI)- http://challengingbehavior.fmhi.usf.edu

Pyramid Model Consortium- www.pyramidmodel.org

Perspective taking

A fourth culturally responsive strategy, perspective taking, has been defined as the capacity to understand another's thoughts, feelings, or internal states (DeBernardis, Hayes, & Fryling 2014). Through the use of affective statements, teachers can reframe a child's challenging behavior and focus on the child's internal state. Affective statements are "I" statements that express a feeling, precisely describe a child's behavior, and make the child aware of the positive or negative impact of the behavior (Costello, Wachtel, & Wachtel 2009). Take, for example, a child who often transitions from lunch to outdoor time by pushing his way through classmates to discard his trash and dash to the playground door. A teacher might say, "Stop running in the classroom. When you run in the classroom, our friends are not safe." To reframe the child's behavior, the teacher might consider that the child is excited to play outside. From this perspective, the teacher could rephrase her statement: "I see that you are really excited about going outside. Thank you for putting your dish in the trash, but please remember to use your walking feet and move around your friends." When teachers use affective statements to reframe a child's challenging behavior, it demonstrates their understanding of the child's perspective. Miles's teacher used an affective statement that considered his perspective about morning circle when she stated, "Miles, I see that you are upset because you do not want to sit at morning circle and want to play with the musical instruments instead."

Using group time to discuss conflict

The final culturally responsive strategy drawing from the pyramid model framework is using group time to resolve conflict. This allows for a restorative justice approach, which offers those involved in the conflict an opportunity for reconciliation. Although many children benefit from the use of group time to address conflict and this approach can promote inclusion, as opposed to exclusion (e.g., time out), as a response to challenging behavior, it is important to develop methods and awareness so children do not feel shamed during the process but rather part of a trusting community of problem solvers. When done well, problem solving as a group can foster active engagement and learning and enable children and adults to build strong relationships. The teacher can establish the tone for the group by reading a poem about friendship or sharing a culturally relevant and familiar quote from a song, movie, or book. Next, it is helpful to remind children of the expectations for the discussion: "We've been practicing how to listen and how to talk at group time. Let's remember to wait calmly for our turn to speak, make eye contact with the person to whom we're talking, and use kind words." In some cases, teachers can minimize challenging behavior by conducting group time prior to situations with potential for challenging behavior (before a field trip, in the beginning of the school year, prior to implementing a change to the environment) (Costello, Wachtel, & Wachtel 2009; Pautz 2009).

Conclusion

Young children with challenging behavior are often rejected by their peers and receive less positive feedback from teachers than their peers do (Hemmeter, Ostrosky, & Fox 2006). Early childhood classrooms are a primary setting for teaching skills that are critical for young children's social and emotional development. Given the large amount of time many children spend in these settings, it is important that strong, positive teacher-child relationships be nurtured to ensure that children receive the support needed to promote positive social and emotional development (Bronfenbrenner 1977) and school readiness in general (Williford et al. 2013). Practitioners in urban settings play a valuable role in young children's social and emotional development by providing supports that are relevant and appropriate.

The five culturally responsive strategies described in this article can guide teachers in creating a classroom atmosphere that not only responds to children's challenging behaviors but also anticipates their needs. Implementation of these strategies helps teachers initiate sustainable relationships and nurturing classrooms where all children are valued and have opportunities to grow and develop. The more children get together and engage in prosocial interactions with teachers and peers, the happier everyone will truly be.

References

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Berliner, R., & T.L. Masterson. 2015. "Review of the Research: Promoting Empathy Development in the Early Childhood and Elementary Classroom." Childhood Education 91 (1): 57-64.

Boykin, A.W. 1994. "Afrocultural Expression and Its Implications for Schooling." In Teaching Diverse Populations: Formulating a Knowledge Base, eds. E.R. Hollins, J.E. King, & W.C. Hayman, 243-56. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Bronfenbrenner, U. 1977. "Toward an Experimental Ecology of Human Development." American Psychologist 32 (7): 515-31.

Children's Defense Fund. 2014. The State of America's Children. Washington, DC: Children's Defense Fund. www.childrensdefense.org/library/state-of-americas-children/2014-soac.pdf.
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Cooper, J.E., Y. He, & B.B. Levin. 2011. Developing Critical Cultural Competence: A Guide for 21st Century Educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Copple, C., & S. Bredekamp, eds. 2009. Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children From Birth Through Age 8. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Costello, B., J. Wachtel, & T. Wachtel. 2009. The Restorative Practices Handbook for Teachers, Disciplinarians, and Administrators. Bethlehem, PA: International Institute for Restorative Practices.

DeBernardis, G.M., L.J. Hayes, & M.J. Fryling. 2014. "Perspective Taking as a Continuum." Psychological Record 64 (1): 123-31.

Derman-Sparks, L., & J.O. Edwards. 2009. Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Dixon, H. 2016. "Making Peace in Kindergarten: Social and Emotional Growth for All Learners." Young Children 71 (4): 57-66. www.naeyc.org/yc/pastissues.

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Ford , D.Y., & C.D. Kea. 2009. "Creating Culturally Responsive Instruction: For Students' and Teachers' Sakes." Focus on Exceptional Children 41 (9): 1-16.

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Joseph, G., P. Strain, & M.M. Ostrosky. 2008. Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children: Labeling Emotions. What Works Brief #21. Champaign, IL: Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations of Learning. http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/kits/wwbtk21.pdf.

Koss, M. 2014. "Diversity in Contemporary Picture Books: A Content Analysis." Journal of Children's Literature 41 (1): 32-42.

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Price, C. 2015. "Reflective Questions for Early Interventionists and Early Childhood Special Educators." Presentation at the Annual International Conference of the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children, in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Voorhees, M.D., L.V. Walker, M.E. Snell, & C.G. Smith. 2013. "A Demonstration of Individualized Positive Behavior Support Interventions by Head Start Staff to Address Children's Challenging Behavior." Research and Practice for Persons With Severe Disabilities 38 (3): 173-85.

Warren, C.A. 2014. "Towards a Pedagogy for the Application of Empathy in Culturally Diverse Classrooms." Urban Review 46 (3): 395-419.

Williford, A.P., M.F. Maier, J.T. Downer, R.C. Pianta, & C. Howes. 2013. "Understanding How Children's Engagement and Teachers' Interactions Combine to Predict School Readiness." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 34 (6): 299-309.

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Culturally Responsive Strategies to Support Young Children with Challenging Behavior

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Challenging behavior can signal difficulty with social and emotional adjustment-foundational competencies that are linked to children's school readiness and later school success.

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How Teachers Can See Students' Identities As Learning Strengths

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How Teachers Can See Students' Identities As Learning Strengths

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George Sirrakos' first teaching experience was in the Bronx, and although he grew up in New York City, he had rarely been to the neighborhoods his students called home. As a white, male teacher, his experience growing up as a New Yorker did not mirror those of his students, and he wanted to try out some of the reality pedagogy techniques he learned in Dr. Emdin's class.

Sirrakos said he first tried a core practice Emdin calls "co-generative dialogue," where teachers select students who represent a variety of classroom experiences to give feedback on the class. The teacher actively listens and solicits solutions students believe would help them. Sirrakos said when he first tried this, students just complained.

"As a new teacher, I was spending a lot of time on my lesson plans, so when you think you're spinning this brilliance to students and then they spend an hour telling you why this class sucks so much, it's kind of eye opening," Sirrakos said. Naturally, he immediately felt defensive, but he worked hard to hold those feelings at bay and focused on listening to what the students were saying.

For example, Sirrakos had spent a lot of time and his own money to decorate his science classroom with posters and quotes he hoped would inspire his science students. In a dialogue, one student told him that his class environment was boring. Sirrakos was confused and pointed out all the decorations on the walls meant to liven up the room. His students explained those images represented him, not them. Sirrakos was still confused, but he asked his students to help him fix the problem.

Students started bringing in their own posters, including things they made. The one rule was it had to be related to science in some way. Immediately students were more cheerful. "They have to be part of the solution," Sirrakos said. "That's where we talk about having these co-generative plans of action." In this example, the solution didn't require a big shift, it only required that Sirrakos recognize he wasn't achieving the result he thought he was, and be open to students' owning their classroom space.

In his first two years of teaching, Sirrakos felt like he was being pulled in two directions. His first year went fairly well, although he realized he was using a hyper-standardized way of teaching with lots of rote memorization. Students took to it well because they were used to that approach. But as he gradually began using more reality pedagogy, he noticed students were more involved in their learning.

It was a big shift when he really started to believe that, "whatever the students are telling me does have some value," Sirrakos said. "I still position myself as the expert when it comes to pedagogy and learning, but I don't position myself as the sole holder of that knowledge."

Practically, this means Sirrakos continues to do co-generative dialogues to get student input and then acts on the feedback he receives. He lets them choose how they will display their knowledge, not always insisting on a standardized assignment. He encourages student questions, even if they take the conversation beyond the curriculum. And, he admits to students when he's not an expert.

Trained as a biologist, Sirrakos has less depth of knowledge about physics. So, when students asked questions that were beyond his knowledge he told them he didn't know and encouraged them to try to find the answers on their own and report back. He'd give them extra credit when they did their own research to answer student-posed questions.

The core part of this approach has little to do with how teachers invite students to participate in creating the class -- co-generative dialogues are just one way -- but giving students authentic voice matters. When teachers insist that class be structured one way, with a single measure of success, and materials created from one point of view, it doesn't feel designed for the students themselves. Listening to their input, acting on it, and valuing who they are and what they bring to the classroom without preconceived notions about their identities is a core part of implementing this approach.

LETTING STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD
Another core strategy Emdin discusses in his book is co-teaching, in which teachers ask students to master material and teach it to their peers. In his book Emdin writes, "the fundamental principle of co-teaching in reality pedagogy is that the neoindigenous student is the expert on the best way to deliver information to others who are part of their culture." This is true any time the teacher's culture is not the same as their students, regardless of race and class.

Emdin writes about the disconnect he felt from his mostly white Ivy-league graduate students. They didn't connect to his style of teaching, but when he let them teach each other parts of the curriculum they responded much better. It's important to note that when Emdin watched students teach, he felt the pace was too slow and that it wasn't how he would teach, but that didn't make it wrong. The other students in the class responded very positively to these experiences because the teaching was of their culture. And Emdin learned some things he could use to reach his students better.

Sirrakos has had success using co-teaching methods with both his Bronx students and students an an elite international school in Germany, although he says it requires more time and effort. Students aren't teachers, even though they often communicate with one another more clearly than their teacher can. When asking students to design and give a lesson, the teacher has to be prepared to give them plenty of time to master the content, and provide support with materials and lesson formats. Sirrakos found it was important to share with students that he wanted to learn from their styles of teaching.

"What I learned was having students undergo that iterative process, they were able to function as ambassadors for future students," Sirrakos said. This was a side benefit because it empowered students to play an even more invested role in the culture and function of the classroom.

Sirrakos remembers one student teaching a lesson about the process of photosynthesis, which involves chloroplast and chlorophyll within the plant cell. The student put up a picture of a Twinkie. He asked his classmates what was on the outside of a Twinkie; they answered, a plastic wrapper. Good, he said, so you're going to remember that chloro-"plast," like plastic, is on the outside. Then he asked what was on the inside of a Twinkie; creme filling they answered. So chloro-"phyll," like filling, is on the inside. Students immediately got it and when they took exams Sirrakos would sometimes notice students writing those analogies in the margin so they could remember.

Sirrakos used the analogy with many future classes, although he discovered it didn't work with his students in Germany who weren't familiar with Twinkies because they came from a different culture. Sirrakos also learned from his students that his PowerPoints were boring compared to theirs and that his body language and positioning in the classroom was holding him at a distance. He noticed that when students taught, they moved around, joining their peers in the middle of the room, whereas when he was teaching he would often stay at the front.

He began incorporating all these ideas into his own teaching and his students gradually became more engaged with the material and seemed to learn it better too. Interestingly, many of the more progressive teaching practices were already in place at the German international school and Sirrakos unconsciously began teaching more traditionally, perhaps because his students were more affluent and he thought they'd get it on their own.

But his students started acting out in class and showing other signs of disengagement. Emdin reminded Sirrakos that he was a foreigner in their culture and needed to use the same reality pedagogy strategies to reach these students as he had with the inner city New York City students who had a different culture. This was an important lesson -- the reality of students each year is going to be different.

"The content may not change, but your ability to make the connections between their realities and the content is going to be different," Sirrakos said.

HIP HOP AS A TEACHING VEHICLE

Wauwatosa is a suburban area outside Milwaukee. And in this environment, high school English teacher Jon Balcerak is having a lot of success teaching hip hop.

Most teenagers are aware of and often listen to hip hop music. "When I play a song, it's not like part of the student population gets it and everyone else is wondering what's this strange music," Balcerak said. Not only do kids everywhere listen to hip hop, but many are aware of hip hop culture too, including things like ciphers, where lyricists trade off rhyming in a collaborative circle. Balcerak has found there are important lessons about the give and take of ideas, sharing the floor, and listening embedded in a tradition that isn't part of the culture he grew up in.

Balcerak doesn't infuse hip hop in everything, but he does often hold up a verse or a rhyme as a valuable text to study. For example, when he teaches American literature he inevitably touches on transcendentalism and the writing of white men like Emerson and Thoreau. Alongside those older texts, Balcerak will ask students to examine a hip hop verse to show the ideas are present in pop culture as well.

"It's very much the object of that lesson, it's not a bridge to some canonical text," Balcerak said. He's found that teaching through hip hop is a good way to open up conversations with students about some of the social justice issues relevant to their lives today.

"This is culture and music and art that kids are already attuned to," Balcerak said. "You get to meet them where they are."

More than merely teaching with hip hop, thinking through these ideas has helped Balcerak to open himself up to his students, listen to their suggestions, trust them, and to see respect as a multidimensional gift that goes far beyond mere obedience.

"The first thing is about creating a culture of respect," Balcerak said. "You can do that without any hip hop aspects at all."

In fact, assuming kids like hip hop can actually be the opposite of respectful. George Sirrakos now teaches education at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and he coaches many teachers. He remembers one well-meaning teacher who assigned students to write a rap about evolution. He was impressed by her alternative assignment and asked her how she had come up with it. She replied that her students were of color so they all liked hip hop music.

When Sirrakos asked the class whether they liked hip hop, about three quarters said they listened to it and the rest named a variety of other types of music. But the students assumed the teacher had assigned them raps because of who they were.

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How Teachers Can See Students' Identities As Learning Strengths - MindShift

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Teachers develop lessons that are more relevant by asking students for critiques and giving them some teaching responsibilities.

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The Role of Schools in Supporting Traumatized Students

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The Role of Schools in Supporting Traumatized Students

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Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools: SupportivePolicies and Practices for Learning

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Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools: SupportivePolicies and Practices for Learning

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To provide trauma-informed care to children, youth, and families involved with child welfare, professionals must understand the impact of trauma on child development and learn how to effectively minimize its effects without causing additional trauma. This section provides information on building trauma-informed systems, assessing and treating trauma, addressing secondary trauma in caseworkers, and trauma training. It also offers trauma resources for caseworkers, caregivers, and families.

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To provide trauma-informed care to children, youth, and families involved with child welfare, professionals must understand the impact of trauma on child development and learn how to effectively minimize its effects without causing additional trauma. This section provides information on building trauma-informed systems, assessing and treating trauma, addressing secondary trauma in caseworkers, and trauma training.

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How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe

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How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe

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In this way, teachers are uniquely positioned to ameliorate some of the effects of early trauma. "The adults in the school environment may be the most stable and mentally well people [some children] have contact with," said Jennings. "Their teachers can become role models for them for what a healthy adult is like. School can become a sanctuary for kids like this."

Preschool and kindergarten teachers play an especially important role because children's early classroom experiences influence their perception of school for years to come. Jennings said that a caring kindergarten teacher can help these children "learn that adults, generally, are people who can provide support to them, even if their parent cannot." That's one reason the preschool suspension and expulsion rates are troubling. They disrupt yet another adult-child relationship and reinforce feelings of instability. As early childhood expert Suzanne Bouffard noted, "Young children who are suspended are often the ones who need the most social and academic support - and they end up missing opportunities to get it."
Building a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Environment
Let Go of Zero Tolerance: Zero tolerance policies and harsh classroom discipline models can "trigger reactions that amplify feelings of trauma," said Jennings. Punitive measures can retraumatize children and "reinforce in their mind that the world is a dangerous place, that people don't like them, and that they are no good."

Teachers need the flexibility to de-escalate a situation rather than administer a prescriptive consequence. Ultimately, these students need to learn how to de-escalate situations themselves and regulate their emotions, said Jennings, "and the only way they can learn that is in a place that feels safe."

Reframe Student Behavior: It's easy for teachers to take students' behavior personally or to misinterpret a child's actions as willful defiance. Jennings said that teachers should "remember that behaviors that are disruptive or unhelpful in the classroom might be self-protective responses to chronic stress." This perspective can help teachers make a small but powerful mental shift: instead of asking "what's wrong with him?" ask "what happened to him, and how did he learn to adapt to it?"

For example, "Hypervigilance can really help when you are in a dangerous situation. A child who is hypervigilant may be adept at noticing small changes and reacting quickly." But this same hypervigilance will "make it really hard to focus and dive deeply into the reading material."

Children who experience food scarcity may have a tendency "to quickly grab or hoard things." These kids might fail the famous marshmallow experiment simply because "they don't trust that the second marshmallow is really coming," said Jennings. "In the context of their lives, this is an adaptive response that makes sense."

Cultivating this kind of empathy takes practice, says Jennings. It means developing "the ability to stop yourself from reacting with your habitual tendencies, take a breath and reflect" on the child in front of you. When teachers take the perspective of a student, "things really shift."

Generate and Savor Positive Emotions: Because teachers don't always know which students are coming to school with traumatic backgrounds - and because they have an obligation to teach all learners - educators "have to consider universal approaches that help everybody and embrace those kids who need it most." Developing a strong classroom community is foundational to this work.

When children suffer from trauma exposure, they are on high alert for potential threats. Teachers can intentionally help students "recognize and savor" small, special moments in the classroom, said Jennings. "Help the class pay attention to what it feels like to feel good. Enjoy positive emotions together as a community. Not only do you get to help kids who don't get to feel those positive emotions as much, but you also create bonds between students in your classroom - and that is exactly what they need."

This can be as simple as celebrating acts of kindness, pausing after a good moment to soak up the feeling in the room, and using tools such as morning meetings to foster a respectful classroom culture. "When teachers cultivate community, students who have experienced trauma come to believe, 'I am part of this community. They accept me, they care about me, and they want to help me. I belong here.' That's something all kids can benefit from," said Jennings.

Draw on the Power of Story: Children with trauma backgrounds need plenty of opportunities to learn about, experience and practice compassion and resilience. Literature is a powerful vehicle to support this endeavor, said Jennings. Stories and books can broaden students' perspectives, giving them a window into how other people feel, bounce back from challenges and develop healthy relationships.

"As you read a story to a group of children, ask 'How do you think this person is feeling in this story? Can you imagine if you were a person in this story? How would that feel to you?'" said Jennings. Reading aloud isn't just for elementary school classrooms. According to one study, even teenagers benefit from hearing about how scientists approached failure and setbacks. (For two curated lists of books related to kindness and compassion, click here and here.)

Put On Your Oxygen Mask First: In Jennings' work, she focuses first on helping teachers develop resilience, self-awareness, and self-regulation -- and then on how they can teach these tools to children.

She said that teachers need to learn how to manage their own stress that comes with navigating students' trauma-related behavior. Jennings devotes a chunk of her book to teacher self-care and includes this resilience self-reflection survey that helps teachers think about their own ability to "navigate and recover from adversity."

How do we best teach children about compassion and resilience? First and foremost, adults must remember that "kids learn these skills through imitating us," said Jennings. "If we don't embody them, our instruction won't work. It will come off as phony. If we are not behaving the way we want them to behave, we are being hypocritical -- and they know it."

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How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe | KQED

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A caring teacher can create a new template about adults, says Patricia A. Jennings, one that says, "Teachers are caring, kind people who want to help me."

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Culturally Responsive Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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Culturally Responsive Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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When you meet someone new, you should look that person in the eye, offer a firm handshake, and smile.

Right?

Greeting someone new (and making a good first impression!) is an important skill - one that falls within the complex and multifaceted umbrella of social and emotional learning (SEL). Students are often taught specific strategies, such as making eye contact and shaking hands, to support the development of SEL. In fact, research has demonstrated that integrating SEL instruction into the academic day is critical for positive and continuous growth in both academic learning and in SEL, the set of skills typically framed in terms of broader core competencies, including building relationships, setting goals, developing self-awareness, and making responsible decisions (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011).

Experts caution, however, that a one-size-fits-all approach to SEL instruction may not be the best fit for many learners. The reason for this lies within human nature itself: our social interactions, behaviors, and emotions are intricate and fluid; moreover, they are heavily influenced by other factors, such as our cultures.

For example, consider again: how should we greet a new person? In many cultures around the world, the strategy of making eye contact would be considered disrespectful rather than friendly or polite. Other cultures employ different strategies entirely. In Tibet, it is often considered more appropriate to extend one's tongue to say hello. In Zambia, a greeting might instead begin with clapping. In still other cultures, an initial greeting should always begin with a bow. With so many different types of greetings, how do we decide which to teach?

Now take this a step further: if we teach students one set of social practices, how might such teaching impact a student whose native culture may recommend something else entirely?

The intersection of culture and SEL is an important one, since school settings are often meeting grounds for learners and educators from a rich and diverse range of cultures, languages, and behavioral norms. Given this, scholars across several disciplines are exploring how cultural responsiveness, or the practice of respecting and learning from a multitude of cultures, can influence how students develop SEL competencies.

Researchers in California and Texas, for instance, have examined how a culturally adapted SEL program can support adolescent Latino students (Castro-Olivo, 2014; Cramer & Castro-Olivo, 2016). To adapt the program, the researchers not only translated materials into Spanish from an existing English-only program, but also found that they needed to incorporate new and culturally relevant content that had been tested with focus groups and experts to ensure that it was aligned with cultural norms, goals, and values of the participants and their families and communities. In addition, teachers were provided with specialized training in the social and emotional needs of students prior to delivering the program. Initial results of this work were promising: in studies of the program, students demonstrated significant growth in SEL knowledge and emotional resiliency through the adapted program.

In discussing SEL initiatives, Dr. Dena Williams notes the need for more work in this area, stating that "school-based social-emotional learning programs have the potential to shift the climate and culture of our schools, but they do not always guarantee that students will apply the skills they learn at school to their lives outside the classroom, especially if those skills seem irrelevant to their realities" (2017, n.p.). A culturally responsive approach, one that situates and celebrates learning within the rich cultural contexts of students, may be the key to bridging this gap and ensuring that all students can reap the full benefits of SEL instruction (Irvine & Hawley, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

Currently, there are few established best practices to guide the design and implementation culturally responsive SEL, but stakeholders across the education ecosystem are already working together to explore new possibilities. In Alaska, for example, the Association of Alaska School Boards is working on a four-year grant to improve school climate through school-wide commitments to teacher and student SEL programming. Within the Culturally Responsive and Embedded Social and Emotional Learning (CRESEL) program, students and teachers work together address surface strategies ("how should we greet a new person?") and move into deeper territory, such as how to co-create a culturally relevant school climate and how to help teachers examine any implicit bias they may bring to the classroom. Importantly, this model also takes into account regional topics and practices, such as how to incorporate seasonal subsistence into skill-building in the classroom, and how to acknowledge the nuances of different Native Alaskan tribal values when teaching students about behavioral practices.

For many, though, the concept of culturally responsive SEL is still quite new and may seem rather challenging. This is understandable; if something as straightforward as a greeting is actually not very straightforward at all, then tackling the entire spectrum of social and emotional learning from a cultural lens can seem even more daunting. On this, however, experts already agree: just as when we greet new people, a good first step is to open our minds, open our hearts, and simply decide to begin.

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Culturally Responsive Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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When you meet someone new, you should look that person in the eye, offer a firm handshake, and smile. Right? Greeting someone new (and making a good first impression!) is an important skill - one that falls within the complex and multifaceted umbrella of social and emotional learning (SEL).

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Classroom accommodations for sensory processing issues

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Classroom accommodations for sensory processing issues

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Even in a highly-structured classroom environment, you can foster creativity with strategies like possibility thinking, divergent thinking, encouraging student interests, and collaborative learning.

How do students learn to challenge ideas and think beyond the status quo? Can creativity be fostered in classrooms that follow Common Core standards and test for conformity? At first glance, these questions may seem at odds. And, in fact, many educators believe that today's schools have abandoned the concept of creativity. Yet teachers can and do foster creativity in standards-based classrooms every day.

In the past decade, a new science of creativity has emerged. Neuroscientists are turning previously-held notions of creativity on their heads, including the fact that creativity does not involve just a single side of the brain. Most scientists agree that creativity must be defined by more than the sum of its parts, which include but are not limited to originality, self-expression, risk taking, intelligence, autonomy, collaboration, and imagination.

The Epicenter of Exploration and Discovery

We depend on our creative abilities to help us adapt and thrive in increasingly complex and uncertain times. Researchers also believe that a creative life fosters happiness and well-being, and that there is a significant connection between creativity, meaning, and intrinsic motivation. Creativity is at the epicenter of human exploration and discovery, an ability used to generate and communicate original ideas of value. Inspired by our senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, creativity is a force that nurtures human development, innovation, and an aesthetic appreciation of the world around us.

Many people associate creativity with those who are gifted and talented. Few would argue that Steve Jobs' creativity helped produce the iPhone and other innovative Apple products. But creativity is not confined to people of extraordinary intellect or talent -- or to big inventions. Everyone has creative capacities that evoke originality, like producing a new recipe, conveying a powerful idea through self-expression, or discovering a better way to achieve desired outcomes.

We are beginning to learn new ways in which creativity is fostered during childhood and adolescence. In an excellent blog post on the science of creativity, Diane Cadiergue shares surprising concepts about nurturing creativity, including that memorization is necessary to build a student's ability to generate original ideas. In The Systems Model of Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that talent may be of less importance than encouragement. He cites a wealth of research showing that when adults devote time and energy to children's overall development, they also help young people develop creative talents.

Creativity is part of The Compass Advantage™ (a framework designed for engaging families, schools, and communities in the principles of positive youth development) because the ability to explore, discover, and express new ideas of value to ourselves and others is an integral part of personal growth, happiness, and lifelong learning. Linked systemically by research to each of the other Compass abilities -- especially curiosity, resilience, and resourcefulness -- creativity is one of the 8 Pathways to Every Student's Success.
Image credit: Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD
To foster creativity in classrooms, teachers must understand how creativity originates. It is not enough to give assignments with teacher-perceived creative outcomes in mind. What is most important is to teach the thought processes and attitudes of mind associated with creativity, which include the exploration of intrinsically meaningful ideas as perceived by students. The suggestions below focus on the types of processes and attitudes that spawn creative thinking.

6 Ways to Boost Student Creativity

1. Experiment with possibility thinking.

Pose the question "What if?" in as many ways as possible, helping children naturally think of creative possibilities. This involves a shift from more traditional approaches that encourage students to ask, "Why is this and what does it do?" to having them ask, "What can I do with this?" For further details on this questioning technique, see Chapter 14 of Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom by Ronald A. Beghetto and James Kaufman.

2. Provide opportunities to explore individual interests.

Invite children to choose individual projects that hold special interest to them. Why? Creativity blossoms when children feel invigorated by activities they enjoy. For example, if a student loves playing flute, encourage him to write a paper on the history or mechanics of flute playing. If a child loves soccer, provide an opportunity for her to do a creative project about soccer.

3. Develop five core attitudes associated with creativity.

1. Self-discipline

2. Openness to experience

3. Risk taking

4. Tolerance for ambiguity

5. Group trust

Nurture the attitudes of mind that generate creativity. Research by Jane Piirto, Distinguished Professor at Ashland University in Ohio, suggests that there are five core attitudes of creative people:

In her book Creativity for 21st Century Skills, she provides a number of ways for teachers to embed these attitudes in the classroom, including the use of diary-like journals that help students reflect on their thinking to promote creativity.

4. Engage students in collaborative learning.

Encourage students to work together in groups. While creativity is associated with individual talent, we draw inspiration from other people's ideas and from our cultural surroundings. Great inventions and creative breakthroughs are most often the result of collaboration between people who have similar goals but diverse ways of thinking or seeing the world. Creative processes are at work when students pool their collective talents to solve a problem.

5. Practice divergent thinking.

Choose a sentence or short paragraph from a class reading assignment that holds different meanings for different people. Ask students to imagine the many different ways in which those words might be interpreted by people from diverse cultures, ages, or life experiences. The goal of divergent thinking is to generate as many different ideas as possible about a topic by exploring a multitude of possible solutions. In his excellent paper on how to encourage divergent thinking, Dr. Daniel Raviv of Florida Atlantic University outlines a number of activities that improve high school students' divergent thinking. Many are appropriate for younger students.

6. Help students make connections.

Give assignments that encourage metaphorical thinking to express complex ideas or solve a problem. The use of metaphors helps students gain new insights and challenge assumptions. Students who learn to connect seemingly unrelated ideas, thoughts, and concepts develop the ability to synthesize information in creative ways. Explore other creativity tools at MindTools, a website designed for businesses, but also a place where teachers can use their creativity to adapt the many brainstorming and idea-generating tools for their classrooms.

What other ways do you foster the thought processes and attitudes of mind associated with creativity in your classroom?

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Even in a highly-structured classroom environment, you can foster creativity with strategies like possibility thinking, divergent thinking, encouraging student interests, and collaborative learning. How do students learn to challenge ideas and think beyond the status quo? Can creativity be fostered in classrooms that follow Common Core standards and test for conformity?

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Welcome One, Welcome All: The Culturally Inclusive Classroom

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Welcome One, Welcome All: The Culturally Inclusive Classroom

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Cultural Responsiveness. It's one of the education buzz terms du jour. But what does it really mean and how can it better address your students' needs?

Many teachers are either unsure of what exactly culturally responsive teaching is-or have an oversimplified definition of it. At its core, cultural responsiveness and inclusion is about supporting and welcoming diversity in all students. It's so much more than hanging flags from different countries in your classroom or using hip-hop music in your lessons. Teaching through the lens of cultural responsiveness means eliminating exclusions in the learning environment based on race, ethnicity, gender, household income, religion and ability.

Lofty? Maybe. But fostering a culturally inclusive vibe in the classroom doesn't mean you have to be an expert in every possible life experience or cultural nuance. That's not even close to realistic. It does, however, mean you must become more of an active learner yourself. It all starts with you-being curious about your students' lives and experiences.

Consider this: If you're an American K-12 teacher reading this, there's around an 80% chance you're caucasian and an even greater chance you're a woman. On the flip side, the student population is nearly half male and more than 50% ethnic minorities. That means a large portion of the student population might never be taught by a teacher who reflects their own image or experience. And that's just when it comes to gender and race.

It's important to acknowledge the value in the unique experiences and perspectives each student brings to the classroom. Part of being culturally responsive is finding ways to connect with every student on a personal level-to get them to share, and for everyone in the classroom to see these differences as the valuable resources they truly are.

Think of your students as cultural and experiential ambassadors for you and the rest of your class. These "ambassadors" gain more ownership of the classroom experience because they become an active participant in shaping it. And valuing what every student brings to the table creates a richer learning environment for everyone, not just those whose experiences are less mainstream. (**NOTE: Part of being culturally responsive is recognizing that one student's perspective doesn't necessarily represent an entire group, so be sure to avoid making broad generalizations based on a single student's experience.**) This commitment to fostering a collaborative atmosphere, in turn creates a safe and welcoming place to learn.
The Scientific Link Between Culture and Learning
Neuroscience proves there's a strong connection between trust, emotions and learning-while feelings of stress or being misunderstood make cognition more difficult. So the more accepting, inquisitive and inclusive the learning environment is, the greater each student's potential for learning becomes. Building personal relationships with students who feel marginalized goes a long way in creating a greater understanding (from a teaching perspective). It also serves to make these students not just feel included, but integral.

Another way to boost your students' learning potential is by tapping into their existing neural pathways. These pathways determine things such as how we respond to people, situations and the ways in which we process the world around us. Neural pathways are highly influenced by culture. For example, some of the most common cultural tools for learning are ritual, recitation, metaphor and music. They are powerful building blocks that your students are already equipped with. So be careful not to overlook students' existing strategies for sharing information and find ways to mirror them through similar types of instruction.

Many teachers who focus on cultural inclusiveness recommend a self-evaluation of how things are presented to students. Clarifying your expectations by explaining and modeling exactly what you mean is particularly important when dealing with students whose primary language isn't English or those with special needs. It's also important to note that many cultures place more value on the interdependence of the collective group as opposed to the individual. In some cultures, for example, resolving conflict is something typically done quietly and privately versus face-to-face or in front of a group. And for others, indirect questions or requests can be confusing to those who may be used to a more direct parenting style.

Being a culturally responsive teacher requires a certain level of persistence-a tenacious desire to succeed. That's because it's more of a process than a strategy. And developing any new process takes time, not to mention a period of trial and error. But, above all, don't be afraid to start. It's your effort and openness to which students will respond. After all, the only way you can truly fail at 'cultural responsiveness' is not to respond to the need for it at all.
10 Things Educators Can Do to Foster a Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Learning Environment:

1. Use open-ended questions to engage students. (i.e., "Would anyone like to share a different perspective or another opinion about that?")

2. Establish clearly defined rules for your classroom as to what is and what isn't appropriate. (e.g., Be respectful of others and their ideas, Be open to perspectives and opinions that are not like your own, etc.)

3. Express your commitment as an educator to understanding cultural differences and your desire to have a classroom where culture is valued and respected.

4. Share details about your background, upbringing and other personal information with students to inspire them to do the same.

5. Replace ethnocentric terms with more inclusive ones. (e.g., Use 'Winter Break' as opposed to 'Christmas Break')

6. Encourage all students to think about things from a perspective other than their own.

7. Promote open, honest and respectful class discussions whenever possible, even if it is uncomfortable. (Most growth comes when we're pushed beyond our comfort zone.)

8. Avoid making assumptions. When in doubt, or better yet, as a general rule: Ask first.

9. Find ways to get to know students on an informal level, through out-of-class activities, after school office hours, between classes, etc.

10. Practice positive and welcoming non-verbal communication with students. (e.g., Smiling, eye contact, posture, gestures and physical proximity)

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Welcome One, Welcome All: The Culturally Inclusive Classroom

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Cultural Responsiveness. It's one of the education buzz terms du jour. But what does it really mean and how can it better address your students' needs? Many teachers are either unsure of what exactly culturally responsive teaching is-or have an oversimplified definition of it.

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WHAT IS SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER ANYWAY?

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WHAT IS SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER ANYWAY?

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I have tried to explain Sensory Processing Disorder in so many ways that I swear my face is going to turn blue.

And what about the parents whose kiddos have SPD but still aren't sure what it is.

By no means will this fit every child. Sensory challenges present themselves in so many different ways, depending on if your child is hyper or hypo sensitive.

That said, here's the diving board to understanding. Happy splashing!
Click Here to Read: The Sensory-Behavior Connection

To learn more about Sensory Processing Disorder, please consider the following affiliate links provided for your convenience:

Shipping is FREE with Amazon Prime or $35+ order. Sign up for a FREE 30-Day Amazon Prime Trial HERE. Along with FREE shipping you will get access to thousands of movies, tv shows, music and books for FREE!

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What is Sensory Processing Disorder Anyway? | The Sensory Spectrum

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I have tried to explain Sensory Processing Disorder in so many ways that I swear my face is going to turn blue. And what about the parents whose kiddos have SPD but still aren't sure what it is. By no means will this fit every child.

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Each week, staff members meet to discuss problems in the school. The meeting should be agenda driven, with prioritized items addresed first. After delegating a solution, a group of students can and should also be involved in carrying out the solution.

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SEL 101: What are the core competencies and key settings?

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-I agree with you because...
-I respectfully disagree with you because...
-I don't know how to answer this question right now.

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Behaviour management: Self-regulated learning and wellbeing

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Behaviour management: Self-regulated learning and wellbeing

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Behaviour management: Self-regulated learning and wellbeing

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Having clear strategies that promote appropriate school behaviours and prioritise student wellbeing are important for maintaining positive and caring relationships between staff, students and parents. Toward the end of 2018, the Australian Student Wellbeing Framework was introduced to replace the National Safe Schools Framework.

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Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning

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Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning

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Cite this

Rimm-Kaufman, S. (2010, April 19). Improving students' relationships with teachers. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/relationships

Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.

Picture a student who feels a strong personal connection to her teacher, talks with her teacher frequently, and receives more constructive guidance and praise rather than just criticism from her teacher. The student is likely to trust her teacher more, show more engagement in learning, behave better in class and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn (assuming that the content material of the class is engaging, age-appropriate and well matched to the student's skills).

High quality academic instruction

High quality academic instruction is designed to be appropriate to students' educational levels. It also creates opportunity for thinking and analysis, uses feedback effectively to guide students' thinking, and extends students' prior knowledge.

What do good teacher-student relationships look like and why do these relationships matter?

Teachers who foster positive relationships with their students create classroom environments more conducive to learning and meet students' developmental, emotional and academic needs. Here are some concrete examples of closeness between a teacher and a student:

A high school student chooses to share the news that he recently got a part in a community play with his teacher because he knows that his teacher will show genuine interest in his success.

A fourth grade boy who is struggling in math shows comfort in admitting to his teacher that he needs help with multiplying and dividing fractions even if most of the students in the class have moved beyond this work.

A middle school girl experiences bullying from other students and approaches her social studies teacher to discuss it because she trusts that the teacher will listen and help without making her feel socially inept.

Positive teacher-student relationships contribute to school adjustment and academic and social performance

Positive teacher-student relationships - evidenced by teachers' reports of low conflict, a high degree of closeness and support, and little dependency - have been shown to support students' adjustment to school, contribute to their social skills, promote academic performance and foster students' resiliency in academic performance (Battistich, Schaps, & Wilson, 2004; Birch & Ladd, 1997; Curby, Rimm-Kaufman, & Ponitz, 2009; Ewing & Taylor, 2009; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Rudasill, Reio, Stipanovic, & Taylor, 2010).

Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative and more engaged in learning (Birch & Ladd, 1997; Decker, Dona, & Christenson, 2007; Klem & Connell, 2004). Teachers who use more learner-centered practices (i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students, include students in the decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and relational needs) produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such practices (Daniels & Perry, 2003).

Students who attended math classrooms with higher emotional support reported increased engagement in mathematics learning. For instance, fifth graders said they were willing to exert more effort to understand the math lesson. They enjoyed thinking about and solving problems in math and were more willing to help peers learn new concepts (Rimm-Kaufman, Baroody, Larsen, Curby, & Abry, 2014). Among kindergarteners, students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if they had a close relationship with their teachers. Further, kindergarteners with better teacher-student relationships showed better performance on measures of early academic skills (Birch & Ladd, 1997).

The quality of early teacher-student relationships has a long-lasting impact. Specifically, students who had more conflict with their teachers or showed more dependency toward their teachers in kindergarten also had lower academic achievement (as reflected in mathematics and language arts grades) and more behavioral problems (e.g., poorer work habits, more discipline problems) through the eighth grade. These findings were greater for boys than for girls (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Further work indicates that kindergarten children with more closeness and less conflict with teachers developed better social skills as they approached the middle school years than kindergarten children with more conflictual relationships experiences in the past (Berry & O'Connor, 2009). A recent study examining student-teacher relationships throughout elementary school (first through fifth grade) found that teacher-student closeness linked to gains in reading achievement, while teacher-student conflict related to lower levels of reading achievement (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014).

What do positive teacher-student relationships look and feel like in the classroom?

This video clip shows a third grade teacher facilitating positive communication among peers by conducting a "Thoughtful Thursday" activity in which students discuss thoughtful actions or words they have experienced from classmates throughout the week. The student talks about the "safeties" (student safety-patrol members) outside the school and how they welcomed him to the school.

In this video clip, a preschool teacher is facilitating positive peer interactions by communicating with students in a warm, calm voice and making encouraging statements, such as "Very good teamwork!'

How to develop positive relationships with your students:

Show your pleasure and enjoyment of students.

Interact with students in a responsive and respectful manner.

Offer students help (e.g., answering questions in timely manner, offering support that matches students' needs) in achieving academic and social objectives.

Help students reflect on their thinking and learning skills.

Know and demonstrate knowledge about individual students' backgrounds, interests, emotional strengths and academic levels.

Avoid showing irritability or aggravation toward students.

Acknowledge the importance of peers in schools by encouraging students to be caring and respectful to one another.

In contrast, what do negative teacher-student relationships look and feel like?

Teachers who have negative relationships with a student show evidence of frustration, irritability and anger toward that student. Teachers might display their negativity through snide and sarcastic comments toward the student or describe the feeling that they are always struggling or in conflict with a particular student. Often, teachers will describe a specific student as "one who exhausts them" or "a student who leaves them feeling drained and burned out."

Negative teacher-student relationships can amplify when teachers show irritability and anger toward several or many of the students in the classroom. In these types of classrooms, teachers may find themselves resorting to yelling and harsh punitive control. Teacher-student communications may appear sarcastic or disrespectful. Student victimization or bullying may be common occurrences in such negative classrooms (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2006).

Negative teacher-student relationships are stressful for both teachers and students (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Lisonbee, Mize, Payne, & Granger, 2008) and can be detrimental to students' academic and social-emotional development (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014; O'Connor, Collins, & Supplee, 2012).

Do's:

Make an effort to get to know and connect with each student in your classroom. Always call them by their names, find out information about their interests and strive to understand what they need to succeed in school (Croninger & Lee, 2001; Whitlock, 2006).

Make an effort to spend time individually with each student, especially those who are difficult or shy. This will help you create a more positive relationship with them (Pianta, 1999; Rudasill, Rimm-Kaufman, Justice, & Pence, 2006; Spangler Avant, Gazelle, & Faldowski, 2011).

Be aware of the explicit and implicit messages you are giving to your students (Pianta, et al., 2001; Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2002; Hemmeter & Conroy, 2012). Be careful to show your students that you want them to do well in school through both actions and words.

Create a positive climate in your classroom by focusing not only on improving your relationships with your students, but also on enhancing the relationships among your students (Charney, 2002; Donahue, Perry & Weinstein, 2003; Wentzel, 2010).

Be aware that you are modeling behavior for your students, whether intentional or not.

Students notice your interaction style. They notice whether you show warmth and respect toward them, to other students and to adults at your school. Often, they will model their own behavior after your behavior.

Students notice the methods you use to manage strong emotions. They notice positive strategies, such as taking a deep breath or talking about your frustrations. Likewise, they notice negative strategies, too, such as yelling at students or making mean or disrespectful jokes about colleagues (Jones, Bouffard, & Weissbourd, 2013). Be aware that students will often adopt the strategies that you use.

Don'ts:

Don't assume that being kind and respectful to students is enough to bolster achievement. Ideal classrooms have more than a single goal: teachers hold students to appropriately high standards of academic performance and offer students an opportunity for an emotional connection to their teachers, their fellow students and the school (e.g., Gregory & Weinstein, 2004; Wentzel, 2010).

Don't give up too quickly on your efforts to develop positive relationships with difficult students. These students will benefit from a good teacher-student relationship as much or more than their easier-to-get-along-with peers (Baker, 2006; Birch & Ladd, 1998; Hartz & Williford, in press).

Don't assume that respectful and sensitive interactions are only important to elementary school students. Middle and high school students benefit from such relationships as well (Allen et al., 2013; Meece, Herman, & McCombs, 2003; Reyes, Brackett, Rivers, White, & Salovey, 2012).

Don't assume that relationships are inconsequential. Some research suggests that preschool children who have a lot of conflict with their teachers show increases in stress hormones when they interact with these teachers (Lisonbee et al., 2008).

Don't wait for negative behaviors and interactions to occur in the classroom. Instead, take a proactive stance on promoting a positive social experience by including students in discussions about prosocial interactions and consistently modeling those positive interactions for them (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009).

How to cultivate positive relationships in your classroom

Know your students

Knowing a student's interests can help you create examples to match those interests.

If a student who loves basketball comes to you with a question about a math problem, you might respond to her with a problem involving basketball.

If a student who speaks Spanish at home comes to you with a question about English vocabulary, you might answer his question and then ask him what the word is in Spanish and how he'd use it in a sentence. This type of specific responding shows that you care about your students as people and that you are aware of their unique strengths (i.e., fluency in another language).

Knowing a student's temperament can help you construct appropriate learning opportunities.

If a girl in your class is particularly distractible, you can support her efforts to concentrate by offering her a quieter area in which to work.

If a boy in your classroom is very shy, appears engaged but never raises his hand to ask questions, you can assess his level of understanding of a concept in a one-on-one conversation at the end of class.

Give students meaningful feedback

Notice the way that you give feedback to your students. If possible, watch a video of your own teaching.

Are you giving students meaningful feedback that says you care about them and their learning, or are you constantly telling your students to hurry?

In your conversations, are you focusing on what your students have accomplished or are you concentrating your comments on what they have not yet mastered?

Does your body language, facial expression and tone of voice show your students that you are interested in them as people too?

Are you telling them to do one thing, yet you model quite different behavior? For example, are you telling your students to listen to each other, but then look bored when one of them talks to the class? Be sure that the feedback you give to your students conveys the message that you are supporting their learning and that you care about them.

Are you paying more attention to some students than to others?

In this clip, a third grade teacher is monitoring and assisting her students during an independent reading activity. She kneels down next to one of her students and asks him questions to determine if he comprehends the story. The teacher positions herself in close proximity to the student and speaks to him with a calm and respectful tone of voice, which conveys the message that she is here to support him.

Create a positive classroom climate

Be sure to allow time for your students to link the concepts and skills they are learning to their own experiences. Build fun into the things you do in your classroom. Plan activities that create a sense of community so that your students have an opportunity to see the connections between what they already know and the new things they are learning, as well as have the time to enjoy being with you and the other students. Make sure to provide social and emotional support and set high expectations for learning.

Be respectful and sensitive to adolescents

Supportive teacher-student relationships are just as important to middle and high school students as they are to elementary students. Positive relationships encourage students' motivation and engagement in learning. Older students need to feel that their teachers respect their opinions and interests just as much as younger students do. Even in situations where adolescents do not appear to care about what teachers do or say, teacher actions and words do matter and may even have long term positive (or negative) consequences.

How to improve relationships with difficult students

Develop positive discourse with students with challenging behavior

Think about what you say to the difficult students in your classroom. Are you constantly bombarding your more challenging students with requests to do something? Do you find yourself constantly asking students to stop doing what they are doing? No one likes being badgered and pestered, and your students are no exception.

Try to find a time or place when you can have positive discussion with the problem student.

Notice and mention the positive behaviors they exhibit.

Remind yourself that even if a challenging student appears unresponsive to your requests, she is hearing the messages that you are giving her. Her responses may not change her immediate behavior but may matter in the long term.

Make extra effort to develop and sustain relationships with difficult students

Difficult students require more energy on your part. For example, you may need to spend time with them individually to get to know them better - to understand their interests as well as what motivates them. This will not only allow you to tailor your instruction to their interests and motivation, but the time spent will also allow them to develop trust in you. Recent research on high school students who have frequent and intense discipline problems shows that when adolescents perceive their teachers are trustworthy people, they show less defiant behavior (Gregory & Ripski, 2008). Persistent teacher-student conflict throughout the elementary years increases the likelihood that children will exhibit negative externalizing behaviors (O'Connor et al., 2012), so it is important for teachers to build close relationships at an early age with children at-risk for behavioral issues.

This video clip highlights a teacher talking about how developing positive relationships is particularly important with behaviorally difficult children.

Forming positive relationships with behaviorally difficult students

These video clips show two teachers talking about the ways positive relationships with their students helps to reach and motivate them.

Theoretical perspectives to explain student behavior

Three theoretical perspectives - attachment theory, social cognitive theory and self-system theory - help to explain why students behave in certain ways in your classroom and how you can use your relationships with them to enhance their learning.

Attachment theory

Attachment theory explains how students use their positive relationships with adults to organize their experiences (Bowlby 1969). Central to this theory is that students with close relationships with their teachers view their teacher as a "secure base" from which to explore the classroom environment. In practice, students with this "secure base" feel safe when making mistakes and feel more comfortable accepting the academic challenges necessary for learning. Strong teacher-student relationships can even act as a buffer against the potentially adverse effects that insecure parent-child attachment can have on students' academic achievement (O'Connor & McCartney, 2007).

Social cognitive theory

Social cognitive theory posits that students develop a wide range of skills simply by watching other people perform those skills. Thus, modeling behavior can be a positive and effective modality for teaching (Bandura, 1986). Applied to the classroom environment, teachers play a critical role as live models from which students can learn social behaviors and positive communication skills. Social cognitive theory also sheds light on the importance of feedback and encouragement from teachers in relation to student performance. Teachers serve as role models and help regulate student behavior through interactions and relationships.

This video clip shows a 16-year-old boy describing one way his teacher is modeling behavior. Given the relationship he describes, it is easy to see the influence that this teacher has on the student.

Self-System theory

Self-System theory emphasizes the importance of students' motivation and by doing so, explains the importance of teacher-student relationships (Harter, 2012; McCombs, 1986). Students come to the classroom with three basic psychological needs - competence, autonomy and relatedness - all of which can be met in a classroom through students' interactions with teachers and with the learning environment (Deci & Ryan, 2002).

Classroom practices that foster the feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness are likely to produce the engagement and motivation required for academic learning and success.

Competence refers to a student's need to feel capable of academic work.

Autonomy suggests a feeling that he or she has some choice and ability to make decisions.

Relatedness implies that a student feels socially connected to teachers or peers.

Positive teacher-student relationships help students meet these needs. Teachers offer feedback to students to support their feelings of competence. Teachers who know their students' interests and preferences, and show regard and respect for these individual differences, bolster students' feelings of autonomy. Teachers who establish a personal and caring relationship and foster positive social interactions within their classrooms meet their students' needs for relatedness (or social connection to school). Taken together, effective teacher-student relationships confirm to students that teachers care for them and support their academic efforts.

These video clips shows competence and autonomy from an 8-year-old child.

The students in my school have severe emotional and behavioral problems and my school has few economic resources - can good relationships really help?

Teacher-student relationships contribute to students' resiliency. Often, we assume that hard-to-change factors such as class size, teacher experience or availability of instructional supplies are crucial for predicting student achievement. In fact, these factors are not as important as having positive relationships.

In one study of almost 4,000 students (who were ethnic minority groups and from poor families), the presence of positive relationships with teachers and the experience of a positive and orderly school environment in elementary and middle school were strong predictors of gains in math outcomes - much stronger than class size, teacher experience, or availability of instructional supplies (Borman & Overman, 2004).

In another study, urban high school students with behavior and emotional problems were assigned to an intervention involving weekly interactions with teachers, monthly calls to the students at home and increased praise from adults. Those students involved in the intervention showed higher grade point averages over the five-month intervention period compared to their peers who were not receiving the intervention (Murray & Malmgren, 2005). Studies like this point to an important message - across ages and in all content areas, students will be more engaged and motivated if teachers meet students' essential need for social connection.

Can positive teacher-student relationships help to reduce the prevalence of bullying behavior in students?

The behaviors and emotions that young children display when interacting with peers play a critical role in their involvement with bullying throughout the school years. Teachers have the ability to reduce bullying behaviors that occur in the classroom by establishing a positive climate in which pro-social actions are both encouraged and rewarded (Hanish, Kochenderfer-Ladd, Fabes, Martin, & Denning, 2004). Through teacher-student relationship, teachers can assist students in understanding how to better understand and regulate emotions they are feeling. Teachers can also involve students in discussing alternative strategies to deal with social conflict and in establishing prosocial rules for the classroom (Allen, 2010; Fraser et al., 2005).

How does the importance of the teacher-student relationship compare to other important relationships, such as parent-student relationships, in students' lives?

From early childhood through adolescence, positive teacher-student relationships appear to complement the other important relationships in students' lives.

For young students, increased parental engagement (i.e., warmth and sensitivity, support for autonomy, involvement in learning) is associated with greater social bonds with other caregiving adults, including teachers (Sheridan, Knoche, Edwards, Bovaird, & Kupzyk, 2010).

In middle school students, the perception of their teacher (whether they felt that their teacher was supportive toward them or not) predicted students' interest in learning and their engagement in the classroom. At this level, parental support plays a complementary role by predicting youths' motivation in school (Wentzel, 1997).

In high school, parent and teacher supportiveness (combined with parent and teacher monitoring and high expectations) contribute to gains in mathematics achievement (Gregory & Weinstein, 2004). At this age, parent and teacher monitoring of behavior as well as high parent and teacher expectations play an important role in achievement.

This video clip is of a teacher talking about the complementary role that her relationship with the child and the family plays in managing a child's behavior in the classroom.

What are the factors contributing to positive teacher-student relationships?

Multiple factors determine teacher-student relationships: teacher characteristics and student characteristics each play an important role in predicting the quality of interactions that teachers have with individual students. Although less well-studied, other factors (school social climate, school policies, etc.) also contribute to the quality of these relationships.

Will more positive teacher-student relationships improve the peer relationships in my classroom?

Yes, positive teacher-student relationships can promote improved peer relationships in your classrooms through direct and indirect approaches. Teachers can directly promote positive social behaviors by orchestrating the relationships within a classroom in a positive manner (Battistich et al., 2004). Teachers can use positive teacher-student relationships indirectly to promote peer relationships as well. Students tend to be more accepting of peers who show engagement in the tasks of school (e.g., show attention, participate in classroom activities), and positive teacher-student relationships enhance students' engagement. Positive teacher-student relationships improve student-to-student acceptance in both current and future years (Hughes & Kwok, 2007).

Are positive teacher-student relationships easier to form in some situations than others?

Some situations (such as in elementary school, where each teacher is assigned only twenty or so students) provide more opportunities for the development of close teacher-student relationships. Other situations (such as the middle school or high school levels, where teachers routinely provide instruction to four or five groups of twenty-five or more students) make it more difficult to form positive teacher-student relationships with all students (Feldlaufer, Midgley, & Eccles, 1988; Meece et al., 2003), and thus, it takes more effort.

It is also easier to focus attention on positive teacher-student relationships in schools where the administrators believe that trust and positive relationships are important for improving students' performance (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 ). A distinguishing characteristic of schools with high performing students is the presence of an adult school community that works together in a coordinated manner to create a social environment that supports teachers' efforts to establish good relationships with students (Allensworth & Easton, 2007).

If teacher-student relationships reflect both characteristics of the teachers and characteristics of the student, how stable are these relationships over time?

The quality of teacher-student relationships is surprisingly stable over time. In other words, if a kindergarten teacher has a conflictual relationship with a student; it is likely that the child's first and second grade teachers will also experience conflict in their relationship with that same child. This stability is more evident when the relationships are conflictual rather than when the relationships are close or dependent (Howes, Phillepsen & Peisner-Feinberg, 2000; Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004). Most likely, the stability stems from the "internal working model" that students create in their mind about how relationships with adults typically ought to work.

Here is a video clip of a 16-year-old boy talking about a high school teacher. The teen talks about a teaching method that complements his learning style and motivates him to ask questions. The teacher allows students to question his thinking, a type of questioning that fosters learning, as the student describes. The quality of this give-and-take between the teacher and students provides one example of a teacher-student interaction that appeals to adolescents and enhances the teacher-student relationship.

Are there any unintended consequences associated with creating positive teacher-student relationships?

Ideally, classroom environments need to be nurturing while at the same time holding students to high academic standards (Curby, LoCasale-Crouch, et al., 2009; Stuhlman & Pianta, 2009). Classrooms that focus on nurturance without offering opportunities for academic learning do not produce increases in students' achievement (Allensworth & Easton, 2007; Lee & Smith, 1999).

Do positive teacher-student relationships work for all school subjects?

Positive teacher-student relationships play an equally important role in students' success across all subjects (McCombs & Miller, 2006). Students' social and emotional needs are present throughout the day and the year, regardless of the subject area.

Can positive teacher-student relationships support students' self-control?

In the past decade, there has been increased interest in methods to support students' development of self-control. Executive functioning is one component of self-control that refers to students' working memory, ability to direct attention, and the ability to control their responses in different situations. Through their relationships and interactions with students, teachers can help to develop and improve students' executive functioning skills and the behaviors that emerge because of those skills. For example, a higher degree of emotional support provided by the classroom teacher is associated with a reduction in students' off-task behavior (Rimm-Kaufman, Curby, Grimm, Nathanson, & Brock, 2009). Additionally, students with low effortful control perform similarly to children with high effortful control (i.e., the ability to substitute an automatic or immediate response for a more appropriate one, such as raising one's hand instead of calling out) on tests of reading and mathematics if they experience positive relationships with their teachers (Liew, Chen, & Hughes, 2010). Teacher-student relationships help students develop executive functioning skills regardless of whether they are low or high in these skills in the beginning of the school year. (See Willingham, 2011, for more useful information.)

This video clip provides an example of how a teacher's supportive interactions with an eight year old boy helps him get back on track and show more self-control in his behaviors.

How do you evaluate teacher-student relationships?

Several common and readily available instruments have been developed to assess teacher-student relationships. Although used primarily for research, these instruments can also serve as diagnostic tools to identify strengths and weakness in your own teaching. Some of these instruments rely on teacher reports of relationships, others are observationally-based measures of teacher-student interactions in the classroom, and yet others rely on students' reports of their relationships with teachers. One particularly innovative technique to use with young children relies on children's drawings of their teachers.

There are less formal ways to assess your relationships with students:

Invite a school psychologist into your classroom to observe your interactions, take notes and reflect with you about the child with whom you have a challenging relationship.

Set up a video camera and analyze your own interactions with the student who is causing you difficulty.

Give your students anonymous questionnaires (on paper or on-line) or ask small groups of students about how they feel while they are in your classroom.

Through this process, it is important to realize that even the best teachers have difficulties with a few students from time to time. The reasons for these difficulties are numerous and getting help from a collaborating teacher, the school psychologist, or a supportive administrator may offer you an outside view of what is occurring and help you improve your relationships with the challenging students in your classroom.

Are positive teacher-student relationships a "magic bullet"?

No, positive teacher-student relationships are only one part of a teachers' repertoire of classroom management and discipline strategies. High quality relationships complement high quality classroom management. Furthermore, it is not possible to develop positive relationships with every student. As a teacher, you can strive toward accomplishing that goal but realize that having an ideal relationship with each student may be unobtainable.

How are positive teacher-student relationships linked to classroom climate?

Improving teacher-student relationships constitutes only a first step toward creating a classroom community that is conducive to student's social and academic development.

Several student characteristics are risk factors for problematic relationships

Boys typically have more conflict and less closeness in their relationships with teachers than girls (Baker, 2006; Howes et al., 2000; Hughes, Cavell, & Wilson, 2001).

High levels of teacher-student conflict may affect girls and boys differently. For example, teacher-student conflict appears to affect math achievement more negatively for girls than for boys (McCormick & O'Connor, 2014).

Students with more internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety) show greater dependency on their teachers than their average counterparts (Henricsson & Rydell, 2004), whereas students with more externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, problem behaviors) show more conflict with teachers (Murray & Murray, 2004; O'Connor et al., 2012).

Students who exhibit more problem behaviors at home and school tend to develop more conflictual and less close relationships with their teachers (Birch & Ladd, 1998; Murray & Murray, 2004; O'Connor et al., 2012).

Students with emotional disturbances or mild intellectual disability have more negative relationships with teachers than students without these problems (Murray & Greenberg, 2001).

Bold preschool students with poorly developed language skills are perceived by their teachers as having more conflictual relationships. Shy preschool students with better language skills are perceived by their teachers as more dependent upon them (Rudasill et al., 2006).

For students at risk for problematic teacher-student relationships, teachers needed to make extra efforts to offer the social and emotional support likely to help them meet the challenges they face in school.

Teachers vary in their ability to create positive teacher-student relationships. Some teachers simply have an easier time developing positive relationships with students - personality, feelings toward students, their own relationship histories may all play a role. A few personal characteristics of teachers have been identified as important predictors of positive teacher-student relationships in elementary schools. Research has found that preschool and kindergarten teachers are more likely to develop close relationships with students who share their same ethnic background. In contrast, it was found that Caucasian pre-service teachers working in their 10-week field placement sites perceived African-American and Hispanic students as more dependent than these same teachers perceived White students. Asian-American and Hispanic pre-service teachers perceived African-American students as more dependent upon them as compared to Asian-American or Hispanic students (Kesner, 2000).

Pre-service teachers who recall their own upbringing as caring and nurturing were also more likely to experience closeness with the students in their field placement classrooms (Kesner, 2000). Teachers' beliefs and the types of practices that teachers prefer also appear to be important. Kindergarten teachers who use more age-appropriate, student-centered teaching practices reported less conflictual relationships with their kindergarten students than those who use more didactic, teacher-centered strategies (Manticopoulous, 2005). Much less is known about the teacher characteristics that contribute to positive teacher-student relationships at the middle and high school level.

Measures of teacher-student relationships

Student-teacher relationship scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001) is a teacher-report instrument designed for elementary school teachers. This instrument measures a teacher's perception of conflict, closeness and dependency with a specific child. Another instrument designed for teachers of middle and high school is the teacher-student relationship inventory (TSRI, Ang, 2005). It measures teachers' satisfaction with their students, the help they perceive they are offering to their students and their level of conflict with their students.

Classroom assessment scoring system (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro & Hamre, 2006) examines the presence of supportive relationships in the classroom. This system measures teachers' sensitivity as well as positive and negative climate in the classroom. Different forms of this instrument are available for preschool through twelfth grade.

Assessment of learner-centered practices (ALCP) is a set of validated survey instruments designed for teachers and students. These surveys, each designed for a different age group (grades K-3, 4-8 and 9-12), provide teachers with tools for self-assessment and reflection (McCombs, 2004). The emphasis of this work has been to identify discrepancies between teacher and student perceptions in order to assist teachers as they reflect upon and change their practices (McCombs & Miller, 2006). The ALCP process focuses on student learning and motivational outcomes, as well as the classroom practices that contribute most to maximizing these outcomes.

Feelings about school (Valeski & Stipek, 2001) examines young children's perceptions of their relationships with teachers and their overall feelings toward school. Young children's attitudes about school can also be assessed by having a child draw a picture of him/herself and his/her teacher at school and analyzing the picture for signs of negativity (Harrison, Clarke, & Ungerer, 2007).

Loneliness and social dissatisfaction questionnaire for young children (Cassidy & Asher, 1992) evaluates students' feelings of loneliness and discontentment with peer relationships in elementary school.

Teacher treatment inventory (Weinstein & Marshall, 1984) is a self-report measure that can be used with middle and high school students to rate their perception of the frequency of specific teacher behaviors. This measure can be used along with an adapted measure of perceived social connection.

Teacher-student relationships and the classroom climate

How do teacher-student relationships relate to classroom climate?

When first grade teachers use practices that demonstrate caring toward students and practices that foster interpersonal skills among students, students are less likely to reject one another (Donahue et al, 2003). In addition, aggressive students who have positive relationships with teachers are more likely to be accepted by peers than aggressive students who lack positive relationships with their teachers (Hughes et al., 2001). Ultimately, constructive teacher-student relationships have an important positive influence on the social skills of difficult as well as typical students (Zins, Elias, Greenberg, & Weissberg, 2000). Such findings suggest that enhancing individual teacher-student relationships has beneficial and cumulative effects for other aspects of classroom life.

Improving teacher-student relationships is only the first step toward meeting students' emotional and relational needs. A teacher should also work on producing a caring community of learners. Such efforts improve the nature of interactions among students and promote students' engagement in school (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; McCombs, 2004; Meece et al., 2003; Weinberger & McCombs, 2003).

Interventions

Studies have examined the effectiveness of interventions designed to create more caring school and classroom communities; each has resulted in specific recommendations for improving teacher-student relationships as well as peer-relationships.

1. The Child Development Project (CDP) focuses on fostering caring peer relationships, including students in decision-making during classroom meetings, and teaching students to better understand the feelings, needs and perspectives of others. The goal of CDP is to promote positive development among students and build upon their strengths. Students exposed to this intervention feel more positive about school and are more motivated (e.g., showed more task orientation and greater intrinsic motivation) than their counterparts not receiving this intervention in elementary school (Solomon, Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000). Likewise, CDP appears to have some long-lasting effects; students enrolled in the CDP elementary schools were less antisocial and more prosocial in middle school as well (Battistich et al., 2004). Further, in a district that pressed for high achievement, CDP was linked to positive effects on achievement outcomes as well as gains in socio-emotional skills.

2. The responsive classroom (RC) approach is a classroom-based intervention designed to integrate social and academic learning. When RC was examined to determine whether there were links between the use of its approach and the quality of teacher-student relationships, it was found that teachers using more RC practices had closer relationships with students in their classrooms (Baroody, Rimm-Kaufman, Larsen & Curby, 2014; Rimm-Kaufman & Chiu, 2007).

3. The RULER approach is another school-based social-emotional intervention that is designed to teach students critical skills related to emotions (labeling, expressing, regulating, etc.). This intervention was developed to align with the language arts curriculum in grades K-12. Investigations of RULER'S effectiveness have revealed that students whose teachers utilize more RULER approaches in the classroom demonstrated improved social skills and emotional intelligence (Reyes, Brackett, Rivers, Elbertson, & Salovey, 2012).

4. Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS) is an additional intervention intended to strengthen the social-emotional learning skills of students in pre-K through grade 6. Primary goals of the intervention include building problem-solving skills, developing conflict-resolution strategies, forming positive relationships, and increasing self-control and self-awareness. Teachers who implemented the PATHS curriculum in the early elementary grades reported increases in prosocial interactions and higher levels of academic engagement in their classrooms (Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2010).

When does the strategy work?

What developmental differences are associated with teacher-student relationships?

Teacher-student relationships are as important to adolescents as they are to younger students. Feeling a connection and sense of relatedness to a teacher represents an essential need of all children and teens (Gregory & Ripski, 2008). However, it is worth noting that the nature of positive teacher-student relationships changes depending on the age of the student involved. In other words, the precise behaviors that might be perceived by a kindergarten child as nurturing and caring (e.g., a doting smile, a one-armed hug), in contrast, might be perceived by adolescents as over-involved and cloying. It is also important to realize that in the early years of school, students' perception of their relationship with teachers and teachers' perception of those same relationships are quite similar. As children grow and develop, the gap between their perceptions of teachers and teachers' perception of them grows and widens (McCombs & Miller, 2006).

Students experience stressors as they grow and develop. Positive, healthy relationships can help students with the developmental transitions they experience.

Do good teacher-student relationships work better for some students than others?

Teacher-student relationships are important to virtually all students. However, high quality teacher-student relationships appear to be most significant for students who are at risk for school problems based on early behavioral and learning issues (Baker, 2006; Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2002). In one study, high quality teacher-student relationships appeared to be better predictors of classroom adjustment, social skills and reading performance for students showing initial externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity), internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, depression) and learning problems (e.g., attention problems) (Baker, 2006) than for students without these initial risk factors.

In another study, sensitive and supportive relationships proved to be more important in predicting increased self-reliant behavior and less off task, negative and aggressive behaviors in the kindergarten classroom for bold, outgoing children. (Comparable levels of sensitivity and support of the teacher played less of a role in children's classroom behavior for shy, hesitant children [Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2002). Teacher sensitivity and emotional supportiveness played a greater role in predicting children's academic achievement gains in first grade (after taking into consideration children's earlier achievement) for children "at risk" for school failure than for those without these risk factors (Hamre & Pianta, 2005).

Similarly, a recent study on children from rural families found that high emotional support provided by teachers was associated with increased behavioral self-control and lower levels of aggression in first grade students. This study also found that attending an emotionally-supportive classroom was equally important for students regardless of whether they were from families living with poverty or not and whether they were from families headed by a single parent or two parents (Merritt, Wanless, Rimm-Kaufman, Cameron, & Peugh, 2012).

In another study, poor teacher-student relationships correlated with a reading achievement gap between African-American and White students, all of whom initially demonstrated below average literacy skills. Specifically, when Hughes and Kwok (2007) studied a group of low achieving readers, they found that first grade children who had poorer relationships with their teachers were less engaged in school and had lower academic achievement in second grade. It is very important to note that Hughes and Kwok found that African-American children had poorer relationships with their teachers than children of other ethnic backgrounds (i.e., Caucasian, Hispanic). This suggests how important it is for teachers to develop the best possible relationship with all students, regardless of their ethnic background. Taken together, such findings suggest that high quality teacher-student relationships can partially compensate for disadvantages in other facets of students' social-emotional lives.

Student and teacher stressors

Student Stressors

Positive teacher-student relationships can offset some of the normal stressors that students experience as they grow and develop. The transition to middle school can be a stressful time for children; middle school students often show declines in motivation, self-esteem and academic performance (Feldlaufer et al., 1988).

Students who perceive greater support from their teachers experience less depression and have more growth in self-esteem between the sixth and eighth grades (Reddy, Rhodes, & Mulhall, 2003).

Students who perceive their teachers as respectful, eager to support their autonomy, focused on setting realistic and individualized expectations for performance, and offering nurturing and constructive feedback are more motivated in school (Wentzel, 1997). More specifically, if a student believes "my teacher trusts me" or "my teacher calls on me to give the answer," he or she is more likely to be interested in class, more likely to conform to the positive social norms of the classroom, and more eager to master the academic material being taught (Wentzel, 1997).

Teacher Stressors

Like other professionals in demanding roles, teachers may experience depleted energy and increased stress or "burnout." Physically and emotionally exhausted teachers struggle to sustain strong relationships with students (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Teachers are developing people and their psychological health is crucial to their success in the classroom, especially their ability to create high quality relationships with students (Rimm-Kaufman & Hamre, 2010). Teachers need to take time to care for themselves and receive support from others to improve their capacity to work with students.

During difficult times, an important source of support for teachers is the adult community within the school (Bryk et al., 2010). Increased collaboration and communication among teachers and other educational personnel can provide the social support needed to reduce feelings of stress and to renew teachers' energy. Teachers who feel positively about their own ability to cope with challenging situations and to form close relationships with others are more likely to provide higher quality environments that improve student outcomes (Brown, Jones, LaRusso, & Aber, 2010). There is a growing body of research showing how important it is for teachers to tend to their own psychological health and well-being.

In this closing video, teachers and students describe qualities that make a great teacher.

Where can I get more information?

Several books designed for teachers may be useful in promoting teacher-student relationships. Most of these books address the needs of children in early and middle childhood:

Charney, R. (2002). Teaching children to care: Classroom management for ethical and academic growth, K-8. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children.

Howes, C. & Ritchie, S. (2002). A matter of trust: Connecting teachers and learners in the early childhood classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pianta, R. C. (1999). Enhancing relationships between children and teachers. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Several research briefs and blogs about teacher-student relationships and social emotional learning in pre-K, elementary and secondary grades:

Allen, K. P. (2010). Classroom management, bullying, and teacher practices. The Professional Educator, 34(1), 1-15.

Allen, J., Gregory, A., Mikami, A., Lun, J., Hamre, B., & Pianta, R. (2013). Observations of effective teacher-student interactions in secondary classrooms: Predicting student achievement with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System - Secondary. School Psychology Review, 42 (1), 76-98.

Allensworth, E. M., & Easton, J. Q. (2007). What matters for staying on-track and graduation in Chicago public high schools. Consortium of Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. Retrieved from https://ccsr.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/07%20What%20Matters%20Final.pdf

Ang, R. P. (2005). Development and validation of the teacher-student relationship inventory using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The Journal of Experimental Education, 71(1), 55-74.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Baker, J. A. (2006). Contributions of teacher-child relationships to positive school adjustment during elementary school. Journal of School Psychology, 44, 211-229.

Battistich, V., Schaps, E., & Wilson, N. (2004). Effects of an elementary school intervention on students' "connectedness" to school and social adjustment during middle school. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 24(3), 243-262.

Berry, D., & O'Connor, E. (2009). Behavioral risk, teacher-child relationships, and social skill development across middle childhood: A child-by-environment analysis of change. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31(1), 1-14.

Birch, S. H., & Ladd, G. W. (1997). The teacher-child relationship and early school adjustment. Journal of School Psychology, 55(1), 61-79.

Birch, S. H., & Ladd, G. W. (1998). Children's interpersonal behaviors and the teacher-child relationship. Developmental Psychology, 34(5), 934-946.

Borman, G. & Overman, L. (2004). Academic resilience in mathematics among poor and minority students. Elementary School Journal, 104(3), 177-195.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.

Brown, J. L., Jones, S., LaRusso, M. D., & Aber, J. L. (2010). Improving classroom quality: Teacher influences and experimental impacts of the 4Rs program. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(1), 153-167.

Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Cassidy, J. & Asher, S.R. (1992). Loneliness and peer relations in young children. Child Development, 63, 350-365.

Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (2010). Effects of a multiyear social-emotional learning program: The role of student and school characteristics. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 156-168.

Croninger, R. G., & Lee, V. E. (2001). Social capital and dropping out of high school: Benefits to at-risk students of teachers' support and guidance. Teacher College Record, 103(4), 548-581.

Curby, T. W., LoCasale-Crouch, J., Konold, T. R., Pianta, R. C., Howes, C., Burchinal, M., Bryant, D., ...Barbarin, O. (2009). The relations of observed pre-k classroom quality profiles to children's achievement and social competence. Early Education and Development, 20(2), 1556-6935.

Curby, T. W., Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., & Ponitz, C. C. (2009). Teacher-child interactions and children's achievement trajectories across kindergarten and first grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101 (4), 912-925.

Daniels, D. H., & Perry, K. E. (2003). "Learner-centered" according to children. Theory Into Practice, 42(2), 102-108.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2002). Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3-33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Decker, D. M., Dona, D. P., & Christenson, S. L. (2007). Behaviorally at-risk African American students: The importance of student-teacher relationships for student outcomes. Journal of School Psychology, 45(1), 83-109.

Donohue, K. M., Perry, K. E., & Weinstein, R. S. (2003). Teachers' classroom practices and children's rejection by their peers. Applied Developmental Psychology, 24, 91-118.

Ewing, A. R., & Taylor, A. R. (2009). The role of child gender and ethnicity in teacher-child relationship quality and children's behavioral adjustment in preschool. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 24(1), 92-105.

Feldlaufer, H., Midgley, C. & Eccles, J. S. (1988). Student, teacher, and observer perceptions of the classroom environment before and after the transition to junior high school. Journal of Early Adolescence, 8(2), 133-156.

Fraser, M. W., Galinsky, M. J., Smokowski, P. R., Day, S. H., Terzian, M. A., Rose, R. A., & Guo, S. (2005). Social information-processing skills training to promote social competence and prevent aggressive behavior in the third grade. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(6), 1045-1055.

Gregory, A., & Ripski, M. (2008). Adolescent trust in teachers: Implications for behavior in the high school classroom. School Psychology Review, 37(3), 337-353.

Gregory, A., & Weinstein, R. S. (2008). The discipline gap and African Americans: Defiance and cooperation in the high school classroom. The Journal of School Psychology, 46(4), 455-475.

Hamre, B. K., & Pianta, R. C. (2001). Early teacher-child relationships and the trajectory of children's school outcomes through eighth grade. Child Development, 72, 625-638.

Hamre, B. K., & Pianta, R. C. (2005). Can instructional and emotional support in the first-grade classroom make a difference for children at risk of school failure? Child Development, 76(5), 949-967.

Hanish, L.D., Kochenderfer-Ladd, B., Fabes, R. A., Martin, C. L., & Denning, D. (2004). Bullying among young children: The influence of peers and teachers. In D. L. Espelage, & S. M. Swearer. (Eds). Bullying in American schools: A social-ecological perspective on prevention and intervention (pp. 141-150). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Harrison, L. J., Clarke, L., & Ungerer, J. A. (2007). Children's drawings provide a new perspective on teacher-child relationship quality and school adjustment. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 55-71.

Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: Developmental and sociocultural foundations (2nd. ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Hartz, K., & Williford, A. P. (in press). Differential susceptibility to sensitivity: Maternal and teacher influences on children's kindergarten behavior problems. Infant and Child Development.

Hemmeter, M. L., & Conroy, M. A. (2012). Supporting social competence of young children with challenging behavior in the context of Teaching Pyramid model. In R. C. Pianta, W. S. Barnett, L. M., Justice, & Sheridan, S. M. (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood education (pp. 416-434). New York: Guilford Press.

Henriccson, L., & Rydell, A. (2004). Elementary school children with behavior problems: Teacher-child relations and self-perception. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 50(2), 111-138.

Howes, C., Phillipsen, L. C., & Peisner-Feinberg, E. (2000). The consistency of perceived teacher-child relationships between preschool and kindergarten. Journal of School Psychology, 58(2), 115-132.

Hughes, J. N., Cavell, T. A., & Wilson, V. (2001). Further support for the developmental significance of the quality of the teacher-student relationship. Journal of School Psychology, 39(4), 289-301.

Hughes, J., & Kwok, O. (2007). Influence of student-teacher and parent-teacher relationships on lower achieving readers' engagement and achievement in the primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(1), 39-51.

Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79(1), 491-525

Jones, S. M., Bouffard, S. M., & Weissbourd, R. (2013). Educators' social and emotional skills vita to learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 94, 62-65.

Kesner, J. E. (2000). Teacher characteristics and the quality of child-teacher relationships. Journal of School Psychology, 28(2), 135-149.

Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 262-273.

Lee, V., & Smith, J. B. (1999). Social support and achievement for young adolescents in Chicago: The role of school academic press. American Educational Research Journal, 36(4), 907-945.

Liew, J., Chen, Q., & Hughes, J. N. (2010). Child effortful control, teacher-student relationships, and achievement in academically at-risk children: Additive and interactive effects. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25, 51-64.

Lisonbee, J., Mize, J., Payne, A. L., & Granger, D. (2008). Children's cortisol and the quality of teacher-child relationships in child care. Child Development, 79(6), 1818-1832.

Manticopoulos, P. (2005). Conflictual relationships between kindergarten children and their teachers: Associations with child and classroom context variables. Journal of School Psychology, 43, 425-442.

McCombs, B. L. (1986). The role of the self-system in self-regulated learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 11, 314-332.

McCombs, B. L. (2004). The learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for balancing a focus on academic achievement with a focus on social and emotional learning needs. In E. Zins, R. P. Weissberg, M. C. Wang, & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), Building academic success on social emotional learning: What does the research say? (pp. 23-39). New York: Teachers College Press.

McCombs, B. L., & Miller, L. (2006). The journey to learner-centered practices: A series for teachers and administrators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

McCormick, M. P., & O'Connor, E. E. (2014). Teacher-child relationship quality and academic achievement in elementary school: Does gender matter? Journal of Educational Psychology. Advanced online publication.

Meece, J. L., Herman, P., & McCombs, B. L. (2003). Relations of learner-centered teaching practices to adolescents' achievement goals. International Journal of Educational Research, 39(4-5), 457-475.

Merritt, E. G., Wanless, S. B., Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Cameron, C., & Peugh, J. L. (2012). The contribution of teachers' emotional support to children's social behaviors and self-regulatory skills in first grade. School Psychology Review, 41(2), 141-159.

Murray, C., & Greenberg, M. T. (2001). Relationships with teachers and bonds with school: Social and emotional adjustment correlates for children with and without disabilities. Psychology in the Schools, 38(1), 25-41.

Murray. C., & Malmgren, K. (2005). Implementing a teacher-student relationship program in a high-poverty urban school: Effects on social, emotional and academic adjustment and lessons learned. Journal of School Psychology, 43(2), 137-152.

Murray, C., & Murray, K. M. (2004). Child level correlates of teacher-student relationships: An examination of demographic characteristics, academic orientations, and behavioral orientations. Psychology in the Schools, 41(7), 751-762.

O'Connor, E. E., Collins, B. A., & Supplee, L. (2012). Behavior problems in late childhood: The roles of early maternal attachment and teacher-child relationship trajectories. Attachment &Human Development, 14(3), 265-288.

O'Connor E., & McCartney, K. (2007). Examining teacher-child relationships and achievement as part of the ecological model of development. American Educational Research Journal, 44(2), 340-369.

Pianta, R.C., La Paro, K.,& Hamre, B. (2006). CLASS: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Manual: K-3 Version. Charlottesville, VA: The Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning.

Pianta, R. C., & Stuhlman, M. W. (2004). Teacher-child relationships and children's success in the first years of school. School Psychology Review, 33(3), 444-458.

Reddy, R., Rhodes, J. E., & Mulhall, P. (2003). The influence of teacher support on student adjustment in the middle school years: A latent growth curve study. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 119-138.

Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Elbertson, N. A., & Salovey, P. (2012). The interaction effects of program training, dosage, and implementation quality on targeted student outcomes for THE RULER Approach to social and emotional learning. School Psychology Review, 41(1), 82-99.

Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., White, M., & Salovey, P. (2012). Classroom emotional climate, student engagement, and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104 (3), 700-712.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Baroody, A. E., Larsen, R. A. A., Curby, T. W., & Abry, T. (2014). To what extent do teacher-student interaction quality and student gender contribute to fifth graders' engagement in mathematics learning? Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., & Chiu, Y. I. (2007). Promoting social and academic competence in the classroom: An intervention study examining the contribution of the Responsive Classroom Approach. Psychology in the Schools, 44(4), 397-413.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Curby, T. W., Grimm, K. J., Nathanson, L., & Brock, L. L. (2009). The contribution of children's self-regulation and classroom quality to children's adaptive behaviors in the kindergarten classroom. Developmental Psychology, 45(4), 958-972.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Early, D., Cox, M., Saluja, G., Pianta, R., Bradley, R. et al. (2002). Early behavioral attributes and teachers' sensitivity as predictors of competent behavior in the kindergarten classroom. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 23, 451-470.

Rimm-Kaufman, S. E. & Hamre, B. (2010). The role of psychological and developmental science in efforts to improve teacher quality. Teacher College Record,112(12), 2988-3023.

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Improving students' relationships with teachers

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Cite this Rimm-Kaufman, S. (2010, April 19). Improving students' relationships with teachers. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/relationships Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement.

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Page 9 Teacher caring and community building

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-Be self aware
-listen to understand
-It's okay to say, "I don't know how to respond, but I appreciate you for sharing with me."
-proceed with compassion

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Measuring the Social and Emotional Dimensions of Student Success

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The California Department of Education's (CDE) definition of Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) provides a basis for understanding how California educators can work together to ensure equitable access and opportunity for all students to achieve the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). MTSS includes Response to Instruction and Intervention (RtI ²) as well as additional, distinct philosophies and concepts.

CDE's Definition of MTSS

In California, MTSS is an integrated, comprehensive framework that focuses on CCSS, core instruction, differentiated learning, student-centered learning, individualized student needs, and the alignment of systems necessary for all students' academic, behavioral, and social success. California has a long history of providing numerous systems of support. These include the interventions within the RtI ² processes, supports for Special Education, Title I, Title III, support services for English Learners, American-Indian students, and those in gifted and talented programs. MTSS offers the potential to create needed systematic change through intentional design and redesign of services and supports that quickly identify and match the needs of all students.

California's Multi-Tiered System of Support

Comparing MTSS to RtI²

CDE's RtI ² processes focus on students who are struggling and provide a vehicle for teamwork and data-based decision making to strengthen their performances before and after educational and behavioral problems increase in intensity. Please visit the CDE Web site on RtI² for further information.

MTSS Differences with RtI²

MTSS has a broader scope than does RtI ². MTSS also includes:

Focusing on aligning the entire system of initiatives, supports, and resources.

Promoting district participation in identifying and supporting systems for alignment of resources, as well as site and grade level.

Systematically addressing support for all students, including gifted and high achievers.

Enabling a paradigm shift for providing support and setting higher expectations for all students through intentional design and redesign of integrated services and supports, rather than selection of a few components of RtI and intensive interventions.

Endorsing Universal Design for Learning instructional strategies so all students have opportunities for learning through differentiated content, processes, and product.

Integrating instructional and intervention support so that systemic changes are sustainable and based on CCSS-aligned classroom instruction.

Challenging all school staff to change the way in which they have traditionally worked across all school settings.

MTSS is not designed for consideration in special education placement decisions, such as specific learning disabilities. MTSS focuses on all students in education contexts.

MTSS Similarities to RtI²

MTSS incorporates many of the same components of RtI ², such as

Supporting high-quality standards and research-based, culturally and linguistically relevant instruction with the belief that every student can learn including students of poverty, students with disabilities, English learners, and students from all ethnicities evident in the school and district cultures.

Integrating a data collection and assessment system, including universal screening, diagnostics and progress monitoring, to inform decisions appropriate for each tier of service delivery.

Relying on a problem-solving systems process and method to identify problems, develop interventions and, evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in a multi-tiered system of service delivery.

Seeking and implementing appropriate research-based interventions for improving student learning.

Using school-wide and classroom research-based positive behavioral supports for achieving important social and learning outcomes.

Implementing a collaborative approach to analyze student data and working together in the intervention process.

Venn Diagram of MTSS and RtI²

The following figure displays similarities and differences between California's MTSS and RtI ² processes. Both rely on RtI ² 's data gathering through universal screening, data-driven decision making, problem-solving teams, and are focused on the CCSS. However, the MTSS process has a broader approach, addressing the needs of all students by aligning the entire system of initiatives, supports, and resources, and by implementing continuous improvement processes at all levels of the system.
Return to Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) home page
Last Reviewed: Tuesday, February 21, 2023

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The California Department of Education's definition of Multi-Tiered System of Support and a comparison between it and Response to Instruction and Intervention.

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Every parent wants to raise a child who shows empathy toward other people. You may not be sure how to teach empathy to your child, though. And teaching empathy can be especially tricky if your child has certain learning and thinking differences.

A child who shows empathy is able to understand and appreciate the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of someone else. But kids with attention issues or social skills issues may struggle with this skill.

For instance, some kids with ADHD may be moving so quickly they're not aware of how another person is feeling. They may also not be able to focus on the situation. Kids with social skills issues like nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD) often have trouble picking up on nonverbal cues. They may not notice or understand the emotions people are showing.

That doesn't mean these kids aren't caring people. It does mean they may need extra help learning to recognize and respond to people's emotions.

If your child has trouble with empathy, there are specific things you can say and activities you can do to help her develop this skill. Here are eight ways to teach empathy.

1. Show empathy to your child when she's upset.

Being sensitive to how your child is feeling can help her understand how others might respond when she shows empathy to them. Here's what that might look like:

You're trying to get dinner ready and your child is demanding ice cream. Instead of getting angry, try to let her know you understand how she feels. You might say. "I know you really want ice cream now but the rule is dinner first, then dessert. Let's write down on the chalkboard exactly when you can have ice cream."

2. Discuss alternative strategies.

Do this when she's calm, not in the heat of the moment. You might say, "You did a good job waiting until after dinner for ice cream. But what else could we have said or done to make our conversation about it more pleasant?"

3. Raise awareness of nonverbal cues.

Kids with social skills issues often struggle with picking up on social cues. For example, downcast eyes and slumped posture might not register as "sad" to them. They may need help recognizing the messages from different types of body language, facial expressions and tones of voice, and knowing what they each mean.

Looking at pictures or watching TV shows on mute and helping your child identify and label the emotions expressed can give your child practice in recognizing and identifying signs of different emotions.

Learning empathy shouldn't be a chore for your child. You can even make it fun. Sit on a bench at the playground or at the mall with your child. Try to guess the mood of people who walk by, and explain what clues made you think a person was happy, sad or mad.

This kind of game helps your child tune in to how expressions, body language and tone of voice can show how someone feels.

5. Role-play different scenarios.

Some kids with social skills or attention issues have trouble imagining how another person feels. That can be true in everyday situations or in more serious situations, such as when a friend or family member is coping with grief. Acting out scenarios, such as not being invited to a birthday party, can make it easier for your child to see another person's point of view.

6. Model empathy in the moment.

When your child shows a lack of empathy in a social situation, model empathy for him. For example, maybe during the walk to school, another child drops her art project. Your child laughs.

You may be tempted to correct your child on the spot. Instead, jump in to help the other child. You might say, "Can I help you put it back together? Let us help you carry your books."

7. Feature pets in discussions about feelings.

This strategy can lighten the discussion. For example, when your cat is at the window, entranced by a bird, you can ask, "What do you think Sparky is thinking? Would now be a good time to pet him?" If the dog prances with joy when your child walks through the door, ask, "Would Sadie feel sad if you ignored her?" (Read more about pets and kids with ADHD.)

8. Be ready to change tactics slightly.

If the "How would you feel..." strategy isn't working, move the spotlight to yourself. You can say something like, "I remember a time when I was waiting in line at a pizza place and it was taking forever. And then someone didn't see there was a line and they gave their order before I could!"

Talking about how you felt-instead of making your child the center of the action-can be a subtle, helpful change. It helps your child focus on another person's feelings, and it can make the discussion feel less intense for a child who's tired of being "talked to" about social skills.

More Ways to Help Your Child Learn Empathy

Kids who have a hard time with empathy need explicit instruction in this key skill. It's not a quick process, however. So be prepared to teach it over and over until your child starts to pick it up on his own. Working on other social skills is important, too.

Being sensitive to what your child is feeling shows your child what empathy can look like.

Playing games to practice reading nonverbal cues can help your child tune in to how others are feeling.

Teaching empathy can be a long process, so be prepared to teach this skill over and over again.

About the Author

About the Author

Kate Kelly has been writing and editing for more than 20 years, with a focus on parenting.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Lynne Kenney, PsyD is a Harvard-trained pediatric psychologist and international educator in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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Every parent wants to raise a child who shows empathy toward other people. You may not be sure how to teach empathy to your child, though. And teaching empathy can be especially tricky if your child has certain learning and thinking differences.

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The CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL Essentials

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The CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL Essentials

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A printable compilation of key activities and tools for school teams

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Building Empathy in Classrooms and Schools

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Building Empathy in Classrooms and Schools

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Empathy is a complex concept and a difficult skill. It's time for educators to recognize the strength it takes to create, balance, and sustain an empathic mindset in a culture that doesn't always value it.

Empathy in education is often deemed a "soft skill." Sometimes we equate empathy to coddling, weakness, or even label it as a gender-specific trait. It is none of these things. We're neither born with it, predisposed to it, or incapable of it. Empathy doesn't happen because we do a few icebreakers in the beginning of the school year.

As educators, many of us begin each school year by celebrating individuals' uniqueness, striving to understand differences, and setting goals for embracing the cultures of all learners. Then, the academic rush starts. Lesson plans are due. Grades pile up. Parent conferences begin. Student behavior disrupts our lessons and strains our patience. IEP, PLC, and faculty meetings fill our calendars.

With a full plate every day, what do we often dismiss first? Empathy-for our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. But without empathy, we cannot understand the diverse students and communities we serve. That lack of understanding may limit our focus to generalizations and assumptions. A mindset without intentional empathy narrows focus, and prevents us from accurately identifying the barriers to learning for our students. In turn, students come to be viewed as academic producers rather than social-emotional beings.

Content knowledge and concrete skills can be assessed with answer keys and rubrics, yet empathy can be difficult to measure. Despite all of this, empathy should and must remain a priority in our classrooms and in our schools, even if additional programs and initiatives are secondary or eliminated.

So what does empathy in a classroom look like? And how can teachers cultivate it? Here are some ideas.

Modeling Empathy: It's Difficult, But Essential

Teachers' own behaviors and actions are the culture and the climate control in the room once the bell rings. This means if we treat students as respected co-learners, we are modeling our belief about how all people should be treated. If, or when, that modeling is not reciprocated by a student, that's a second opportunity for us to model and reaffirm a positive, empathic response for all students. The more often we remain consistent in our pro-actions and reactions, the more times we are reaffirming to our students 'this is who I am.' This creates the accepting atmosphere that embraces all our learners, regardless of the baggage they (or we) bring in each day.

When a student seems upset, teachers should take the time, no matter how inconvenient, to demonstrate empathy by making eye contact, taking the student aside to speak privately, and maintaining respect in words and actions during conversation. In working with a student who is in an emotional state, we should remember that as adults, we usually have the coping mechanisms and experience to recognize and handle these emotions. Students may not, and we cannot expect that from them unless we expressly teach them these strategies.

Sustaining this mindset can be difficult. Teachers pour hours into creative lessons and activities; it is hard to not take it personally when a student behaves rudely or disrupts a lesson or activity. However, educators' empathic responses need to be as intentional as lesson-planning time, not as impulsive as student behavior. When a student is upset, disengaged, or reactive, we as teachers should remember that he or she may now be battling a similar internal strife as we once endured as younger students. The response we would have wanted when we were in this emotional place is the same one we should embody to students.

That response will look different depending on student age, student-teacher comfort level, specific knowledge of student need, and the level and type of disruption. However, in every case, an empathic response does NOT seek to embarrass, belittle, or punish the student. Instead, an empathic response seeks to protect the learning environment at all times for all students, and address the disruption with attention to the context and the emotions of individual students.

Owning our mistakes publicly, especially the more educationally embarrassing ones, demonstrates to students that it's OK for them to take risks, too. When we call attention to, or are corrected by a student for a spelling mistake or other careless error, how we respond sets the tone for the empathic culture we're trying to create. Defusing with humor and humility reminds students that empathy also means accepting yourself, flaws and all.

Putting Empathy in the Curriculum

Take a poll in your classroom tomorrow: How many students can define "empathy?" How many can provide an example of empathy? You may be surprised by the lack of knowledge students have about empathy as an idea, a skill, or a mindset. If educators believe empathy is important, we need to find ways to explicitly discuss it with students. In the pressure-cooker of curriculum maps, testing regimes, and pacing guides, adding one more thing can feel overwhelming. To diffuse that feeling, here are a few ways empathy can pair with and deepen lessons or skills teachers already teach in the classroom:

Language Arts: Define empathy as a class. Then ask students to identify characters in stories, novels, or plays that demonstrated empathy or could be described as empathic. Compare and contrast empathic levels across characters or thematic units.

STEM classes: Introduce the design-thinking model for approaching a problem. Ask students to identify the "user" of the problem or product. Then, ask them to empathize with that user by identifying their thoughts, feelings, values, and worries. (See this resource and this one for a start!)

Public Speaking: Any time you require a presentation, ask students to spend time empathizing with their audience. Who are they? What interests them? Then, ask students to use their skill of empathizing with the audience as they strategize the presentation, and develop the introductory hook to connect the topic to the audience.

Behavior Management: When introducing behavioral expectations to students at the beginning of the year, define empathy and ask students to role-play different scenarios that can occur in the classroom. Ask them to brainstorm how empathy could change or shape those hypothetical scenarios to sustain a culture of caring, respect, and significance in the classroom.

Take Action, Be Intentional

The ultimate goal is to create the atmosphere that enables teachers to meet the needs of all students. If teachers don't take time to know students, how can we expect to reach them? If a student comes in hungry or tired from a challenging day-to-day environment, he or she may not be in the best position to succeed. How we act and react will determine whether we reach that student and their peers who may need a safe space. If teachers create that environment and personify that culture, we will reduce the empathic mindset gap that currently exists between teachers and students.

To build an empathic mindset, here are a few concrete actions every teacher can take:

Read stories from the perspective of characters similar to your students. Ask your students to share their favorite literature, whether it aligns to the current curriculum, or not. This can remind teachers of the thoughts, perspectives, and worries influencing students every day. Middle and high school teachers: Read Young Adult literature. Elementary teachers: Read the books your students love from the classroom library. Be intentional about choosing diverse literature that reflects the diversity of your classroom.

Follow a student schedule for a day. Or, if administration isn't supportive of this, simply ask a student to list all the assignments they've completed before arriving in your classroom and what his or her schedule looks like after school. We must keep in mind that this applies to all students. Students in 2nd grade can be overwhelmed just as readily as high school students. Read what one adult learned when she dared to take this challenge.

Survey students frequently. These surveys can use technology or not. Post-it notes and exit slips can be as informative as their digitized counterparts, Padlet and Google Forms. One of the most powerful questions a teacher can ask a student is this: "What's one thing teachers should know about students?" or "What's the most important thing I should know about you?" Either question can provide data to drive instruction with an empathic mindset. Whether we use high-tech or low-tech, other questions to survey students may include: What are your passions? What brings you anxiety in school? Whom do you admire? Teachers, keep these answers on file to reference when having a particularly trying time with students. Keep these answers private (unless the answers wander into mandated reporter territory), but reference them to help adopt a mindset of empathy for students. Here's an example of a Google Forms survey for high school students at the beginning of the year.

Empathy Includes Our Adult Interactions

Students watch teachers constantly, and our actions can unintentionally model unempathetic behavior. An eye-roll after a fellow teacher makes a comment, or dismissing what a peer says in earshot of students models a mindset that lacks empathy. In doing so, teachers are tacitly demonstrating these behaviors as acceptable. If teachers don't want students to make a face, roll their eyes, or respond sarcastically to a serious comment, then they must model how to respond differently when interacting with other adults.

By modeling the citizenship we want students to embody we can create the culture and climate that validates all, excludes none. This can be modeled by offering a solutions-based perspective, instead of joining in or validating complaints students have about other teachers. Ask students how they can think about the situation empathetically: "What do you think that teacher is trying to show you with that assignment? How could you approach him with a question that may provide your perspective, but also show you want to understand?"

In our educational roles, it is vitally important that we model how empathy has power to influence a variety of contexts and interactions. Investing in the well-being of both our students and our colleagues promotes a positive, empathic culture that makes classrooms and school a safe haven. If we want to make a lasting impact on our students and prepare them to for success in college, career, and citizenship, we must prioritize empathy as an essential mindset.
Image from Flickr user Eflon.

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Building Empathy in Classrooms and Schools (Opinion)

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Empathy is a complex concept and a difficult skill. It's time for educators to recognize the strength it takes to create, balance, and sustain an empathic mindset in a culture that doesn't always value it. Empathy in education is often deemed a "soft skill."

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NYC’s bold gamble: Spend big on impoverished students’ social and emotional needs to get academic gains

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NYC’s bold gamble: Spend big on impoverished students’ social and emotional needs to get academic gains

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NEW YORK - The zone for Public School 67 was drawn exclusively around the sprawling Ingersoll public housing complex, but as children trudge into the building, they can see the tips of the gleaming glass luxury towers that are reshaping the skyline around them in downtown Brooklyn.

No children from those luxury condos have enrolled in P.S. 67. It has roughly 225 students; 99 percent are low-income. The school has struggled to stem sliding enrollment and to address poor safety ratings by parents and test scores that were among the worst in the city.

In 2012, city officials became convinced that the school could not improve and began the process of shutting it down.

But community members rallied to keep it open, in part because of its auspicious beginnings - it was the first public school for black students in Brooklyn, opening the same year that slavery ended in New York, 1827 - and in part because parents weren't convinced that a new school would solve old problems.

So in the fall of 2015, P.S. 67 began the year with yet another new principal, this time as part of the city's "Renewal" program, a last-ditch effort to rescue failing schools. And now the community's wary acquiescence to yet another effort to "fix" the school has morphed into something more elusive - hope.

Enrollment has stabilized, attendance has improved and parents say they feel welcome in the building.

"This principal is the best we've had in a long time, but it's more than that," said John Rondon, who has taught at P.S. 67 for 27 years. "There's something that's changed internally. The fear we're going to be closed down isn't there as much. Somebody said to us, 'you're valuable,' and the kids feel that."

Last year, 23 percent of the school's third-graders passed the state reading test, up from 0 percent in 2014. School staff members, in part, credit the improved academics and optimism to the targeted extra resources that come with being a Renewal school, a sort of supercharged version of a "community school."

"There's something that's changed internally. The fear we're going to be closed down isn't there as much. Somebody said to us, 'you're valuable,' and the kids feel that."

Where the model works, it offers hope for other struggling schools in poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods, not just in New York, but nationally.

The stakes have become extremely high. If the Renewal program succeeds, it could become a prototype for improvement elsewhere. Until recently, education reform has prioritized the growth of charter schools, enforcement of strict discipline and high-stakes testing. As those ideas have produced less progress than anticipated, community school advocates hope their model can take over the mantle of reform.

The country has approximately 5,000 community schools, according to the National Center for Community Schools. The model is based on the idea that diagnosing the social and emotional needs of children and their families and then alleviating barriers such as hunger, mental health issues and poor eyesight will make academic success more attainable. Research has shown that the model can be successful, although, as in New York, progress in some places has been uneven.

"Academic failure doesn't happen in a vacuum... Students don't fail by themselves, it's a whole culture of failure that happens," said the New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, explaining why she mandated that all Renewals had to become community schools. "I wouldn't have imagined doing this without community schools as a model."

In New York City, Renewal schools got extra funding - about $547 million over three years for 94 schools - to provide more services, such as an extra hour of instruction for all students and additional mental health services. And each school has been paired with a community group "partner" to help serve various needs.

But some supporters of the community school model worry that the Renewal schools' rushed and uneven progress in New York may tarnish the whole concept.

"I'm very frustrated ... and I'm very fearful of what will happen with this program," said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers and a backer of community schools. "The funding by the city is there; it's now more about the management system."

Indeed, out of the original 94 Renewal schools named in 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has already closed three and merged five others into non-Renewal schools, arguing that families have "better options" in those communities. Schools were chosen for the Renewal program because they were in the bottom 5 percent of lowest-performing schools in the state, among other unwanted distinctions. On average, in the selected schools, less than 8 percent of children were reading at grade level in 2015; 88 percent of students were black or Latino; and students were also poorer, more likely to have learning disabilities and less likely to be fluent in English than students at other city schools.

Even by Renewal school standards, the children at P.S. 67 have a very high level of need. According to principal Kyesha Jackson, close to one in five children there are homeless. The school's neighborhood has the highest rate of gun violence in Brooklyn. Children are dropped off and picked up inside the school's cafeteria or auditorium, rather than the schoolyard, at parents' request. Almost 30 percent have some kind of disability.
Related: Should an urban school serving black and Hispanic students look like schools for affluent white kids?
Jackson was made principal only five days before the start of school in 2015, having never met her community partner, Tal Bar-Zemer, a community school director from the nonprofit group Partnership with Children. By a stroke of rare good luck, their shotgun relationship worked.

Children have noticed the change in the school.

At New York City's Renewal schools, on average, less than 8 percent of children were reading at grade level in 2015; 88 percent of students were black or Latino; and students were also poorer, more likely to have learning disabilities and less likely to be fluent in English than students at other city schools.

"There's less fighting, better security and we have more stuff," said Mariah Mayweather, who is in fifth grade. "It makes you want to come to school more."

Jackson was new to the community school model, but having spent 16 years teaching in another high-needs Brooklyn school, she found it made sense to her.

"I know we would not have had as much progress without the community school model," said Jackson. "There were so many issues that just with an [assistant principal] and a guidance counselor, we would not have been able to handle it."

Jackson said that Bar-Zemer, who focuses on attendance issues and parent involvement, has played an important role in the school's progress. Her presence and the division of labor mean that Jackson can concentrate on the academic and instructional issues. She visits every classroom every day, which allows her to get to know the kids and give the teachers immediate feedback.

"We try to help decrease the stresses and remove the barriers to learning," said Bar-Zemer. "In high-needs schools, teachers are the first line of defense; you'll see them bringing in coats and food, trying to find legal help for families. We take the onus off of them so they can teach."

As to the infusion of funding and services, Bar-Zemer said, "Equity isn't equality. Some kids and schools need more stuff, because they have less stuff."

Partnership with Children also provides a full-time social worker and two part-time interns. They help connect families that have legal, housing or medical issues to resources, and they run courses in each classroom on topics like how to deal with strong emotions.

They also see 14 children weekly in individual counseling and 24 in groups where they use art or other activities to work through difficult issues and trauma.

The counseling "is as important as the academic piece. We have been able to develop a culture where they learn that there are people here to support them," said Jackson. "They can reach out through words and art rather than belittling others and lashing out. And they are expected to do so."

Bar-Zemer said a "student sorter" program given to all the Renewal schools has also been very useful. She can filter student attendance by commute time, past attendance, counseling status and class. One pattern they found was that attendance is higher across the board on the days the school has its art program.

"It allows us to look at problems and also celebrate successes," said Jackson.
Related: The end of "no excuses" education reform?
But not all the Renewal schools have made the same progress as P.S. 67.

"We have been able to develop a culture where they learn that there are people here to support them. They can reach out through words and art, rather than belittling others and lashing out. And they are expected to do so."

By the program's own measurements, a number of schools have not succeeded. More than one-third of the schools haven't met even half of their own goals for attendance, academic progress and other improvements. Among its 31 high schools, graduation rates increased in 2i and decreased in eight last year over 2015 (two stayed the same).

Community school advocates blame the failures on the rollout and management, not the program itself. To begin with, not all the principals in the schools dubbed Renewal were convinced of the community school model. Some new principals had no idea what a community school was. And not all of the superintendents who did the hiring fully understood what was required in a community school.

In addition, because the 86 current Renewal schools are spread among 27 different superintendents, the average superintendent has just two or three Renewal schools among the roughly 50 he or she oversees.

And the rollout has been undeniably messy. For example, it wasn't until this past August, more than a year after the program began, that the city held its first meeting between principals and community school directors to discuss the most effective ways to build a community school.

That lack of coordination has played out at the school level, too. At one school in the Bronx, for example, the community partner and the principal didn't meet until the first day of school last year. The crush of the first weeks of school and the tensions that ensued meant that community staffers were not in place to lead the extra hour of learning time until November. And no mental health services were available in the school until January.

At the citywide level, the Education Department's separate silos for the superintendents and the Office of Renewal Schools have also had an impact. Some principals say they have received missives from superintendents that conflicted - or weren't coordinated - with directives from the Office of Renewal Schools.

Early last fall, for example, each Renewal school received word that they should hold a "state of the school" event in late September and invite parents, community members and elected officials. But each school was also told, by a different office, that they must hold a family night in September as a way to build family and community involvement. School leaders, completely overwhelmed, protested, and eventually the two events were combined.

Fariña acknowledges that there have unanticipated problems. "With any new programs, there are going to bumps in the road," she said.

"From the very beginning we focused on writing and literacy in particular," said Fariña, who was a teacher for 22 years. "If I had to change one thing right now, I would say I wish we had done the same thing with math.

"One of the changes we made is clearer lines of hierarchy," she added, "because superintendents really own these schools now, which they didn't in the beginning. I think the schools not making as much of a success are the ones where part of the structure fell apart."

In addition to the coordination issues, educators and some community groups say there has not been enough systematic attention paid to improving instruction. Parent and community groups such as the Coalition for Educational Justice fought to get expert teachers into the schools, but the agreement came too late to recruit enough teachers for all the schools in the program's first year.

"Equity isn't equality. Some kids and schools need more stuff, because they have less stuff."

This year, however, there are 241 model teachers in the schools, which several principals say has helped enormously - especially since teacher turnover is high in challenging schools.

School experts had expected higher turnover in the Renewal schools as teachers who were a poor fit cycled out. But at some schools, it wasn't the long-term teachers who left. At a dozen of the Renewal schools, at least half of the teachers newly hired in 2015-16 didn't come back this past fall.

City officials say that getting the right leadership in place has been the most important step to getting the schools on the road to improvement. Indeed, close to half of the original principals have been replaced.

Officials are also working to give more guidance about the use of the extra hour of learning time. "We've learned that working with individual communities to implement it works better" than simply providing the extra hour without much guidance, said Aimee Horowitz, executive superintendent of the Office of Renewal Schools
Related: At a school in Brooklyn's poorest neighborhood, literacy is up and disciplinary problems are down
But advocates' biggest fears center on whether the progress that has been made will be recognized so that the program can continue.

"In high-needs schools, teachers are the first line of defense; you'll see them bringing in coats and food, trying to find legal help for families. We take the onus off of them so they can teach."

"The timeline for academic turnaround and attendance improvement is very short," said Robin Veenstra-VanderWeele, the chief strategy officer at Partnership with Children. "In the court of public opinion, a few points increase in attendance and reading scores is going to look incremental, and since it is hard to create other standardized measurements, we're not measuring anything else."

P.S. 154 in the South Bronx is another Renewal school that struggled for years, was almost closed and is now improving. Alison Coviello taught there for 12 years before becoming principal in 2012. That year, on the annual schools survey, only 13 percent of teachers said that order and discipline were maintained.

Coviello's first move was to try to change the school's culture by instituting some new morning procedures. They began using a single entry point and walking children to their classrooms, so they at least knew who was in the building.

That was only the beginning. Coviello also instituted morning meetings and designated that a staff member be on call at all times if a classroom teacher felt they couldn't handle a disruption. Things didn't change overnight, but four years later children no longer run through the halls, adults no longer scream at students and children are engaged in classrooms. Last year 27 percent of children passed the state English exam, up from 5 percent in 2013.

"We wouldn't be able to go into the academic work without these other things in place," Coviello said.

The school now has a full-time asthma manager, through the Renewal program, who has helped improve family health and school attendance. She not only treats patients, she goes into homes to assess risk factors. Like some other Renewal schools, P.S. 154 found that asthma was a big reason for absences, as children were kept home when they were sick or when their parents were too ill to take them to school.

And then there are housing issues. The heat and hot water went out during the coldest weekend in January at the Mitchel Houses, where the majority of the children live. Attendance plummeted that Monday as children who were unable to bathe, get clean clothes or sleep properly stayed home.

P.S. 154's community partner, the YMCA, provides nine staff members, who work as teaching assistants in every kindergarten, first- and second-grade classroom.

Like Jackson, Coviello said the school couldn't have improved as much as it has without the community school services. And like other teachers and principals at several Renewal schools, Coviello and her team say that it was the belief that they could improve that made the key difference.

"It was the first time at this school that anyone came with the lens of 'What's going well and how can we support it?' instead of looking for what's wrong," said Coviello. "The paradigm of support instead of shutting down - it's huge. I can't even put into words what it did for us and our morale."
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about Race and Equity.

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NYC's bold gamble: Spend big on impoverished students' social and emotional needs to get academic gains - The Hechinger Report

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NEW YORK - The zone for Public School 67 was drawn exclusively around the sprawling Ingersoll public housing complex, but as children trudge into the building, they can see the tips of the gleaming glass luxury towers that are reshaping the skyline around them in downtown Brooklyn.

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3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students

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3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students

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3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students

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Edutopia blogger Nick Provenzano believes there’s more to teaching than dispensing curriculum, and he shares three practices that lead students and their families to trust him on a personal level.

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White Fragility in Teaching and Education: An Interview With Dr. Robin DiAngelo

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White Fragility in Teaching and Education: An Interview With Dr. Robin DiAngelo

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Why do white men clam up when conversations steer toward race? Why are white women prone to crying when discussing this topic (and how can those tears silence women of color)? Why do some leaders feel uncomfortable and reluctant to get feedback on how their actions and behaviors are perceived?

If these sound like familiar reactions-or how you respond yourself-to conversations around race, you're not alone.

There's a term for this type of defensive reaction, and it's called white fragility.

Inherent biases are discomforting and problematic, but it shouldn't be a problem to acknowledge and address they exist. White fragility shapes American culture and society-in ways both obvious and unconscious. As a white woman, former teacher in a predominantly black community, education writer, and diversity manager at Google, white privilege and fragility shapes the words I say and write, the actions I take, the responses I give. So, when I think about how to address those biases and how to actively understand them-and more importantly, challenge them-what do I do?

Talk to Dr. Robin DiAngelo, the very woman who coined the term "white fragility," and you may start to get some ideas.

DiAngelo is Affiliate Faculty of Education at the University of Washington, a writer and speaker on racial justice. A white woman herself, DiAngelo has published widely and just released her third book, " White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," which debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List.

Last week, DiAngelo and I sat down to discuss how these ideas shape relationships between teachers, children and parents in K-12 and higher-education communities, particularly in diverse areas that are served predominantly by white educators and education leaders.
Mary Jo Madda: So first off, we are both white females. To begin, can you give us a basic definition of what white fragility is?
Robin DiAngelo: White fragility is the defensive reaction that so many white people have when their positions or perspectives around race are questioned.
Most recently, you were a professor. How did you see white fragility manifest in the higher-education environment? What about in K-12?
I was a professor of education. I taught both elementary and secondary education. So, let's start with K-12 teachers.

K-12, and especially K-6 teaching is a primarily white female population, and a lot of those white teachers are motivated by their love of children. And they're very attached to a "colorblind" approach-that idea of "I'll look at every child as a unique individual and love them and everything will be OK."

Robin DiAngelo

At the same time, there are deep, implicit biases. Most white teachers grow up in segregated environments and have only ever had white teachers themselves. They went to all-white schools, in white neighborhoods. So, they have been left to rely on deeply problematic sources for their understanding of people of color.

We can see the result of that implicit bias-it doesn't have to be intentional, but think about it...the grade where the greatest number of suspensions of black and brown children occur is preschool. Research shows that many of those white teachers begin teaching already fearing black and brown boys. This is not likely a conscious fear, but segregation has left them to rely on limited and frightening representations.
And in higher education?
Many professors of education are those white teachers who have grown up and gone on to graduate school. And unfortunately, you can get through a graduate program in education in this country without ever discussing racism.

If you are in a progressive teacher-education program, you may have one required course. But that doesn't mean you'll be discussing racism in the course. You may just be discussing how to introduce ethnic authors in February and celebrate holidays (what we call "Tacos on Tuesday"). At the same time that we are not addressing structural racism, our schools are one of the most effective mechanisms for sorting children into unequal places in society. Our schools are not equal, and we all know that or we wouldn't care what schools our children went to. But oh do we care!

It takes strategic, intentional and courageous action to interrupt these systems, and student-teachers are not prepared to do that. Most of them operate from a colorblind approach. But then there's also this "white progressive" narrative.
I'm curious about this white progressive narrative, which is something I hear a lot about and, truthfully, have subscribed to myself. Take when white folks claim to support minority groups, but still become defensive when race relations come into conversation. What impact have you seen this take on students?
Well, what ends up happening is that students of color are struggling, and they blame themselves because everyone else is blaming them. There's no space for them to bring their experiences or concerns to the teacher because the teacher cannot hold that conversation.

I sincerely do not believe that any individual teacher would want to do harm to children. But defensiveness about the harm we are doing prevents us from not doing it. Racial disparity in education is real. We have to be willing to examine what part we play in these consistent patterns of inequity.

If I may say so, a lot of teachers are a bit of know-it-alls. We profess to value lifelong learning, but many of us are not lifelong learners.
That idea of "I'm the teacher and I always have the right answer?"
Yes.

Many teachers don't have a framework for understanding the marginalization of many of their students. So they blame the families and take umbrage at the suggestion that they play a part. They hear that as suggesting that they have intentionally sought to be mean.

For example, a parent of color might approach them with their concerns, "I think you are treating my child unfairly because of their race." It is highly likely that the teacher will take umbrage to that-"How dare you think that I would discriminate against your child!" Yet by every measure, schools do treat children of color unequally. White teachers need to understand that those parents are delivering their precious children into an institution that has not done right by them.

There is a deep history of harm between children of color and public education, and it's absolutely rational that parents of color should feel concerned and bring those concerns to white teachers. Rather than be offended, white teachers have to take parents of color seriously and earn their trust.

There's this other piece which you've spoken about-the credentialing concept. When I was a young teacher in a predominantly black community, I definitely mentioned my "credentials" in conversations, to build myself up or engender favor. What do we need to understand about this?

I've been in enough conversations with people of color to say that credentialing isn't helpful. They're probably rolling their eyes. It's not meaningful to them that you taught in a primarily black school, because most white teachers that are doing terrible harm to their children teach in primarily black schools. I use the analogy of being married to a man, and gender relations. He loves me, but the moment he fell in love with me, his sexism did not vanish. And it comes out at times, and we struggle with it.
We're having this interview in the Silicon Valley, and the edtech world is no different from education when it comes to diversity. Look at who runs the largest edtech venture capital or philanthropic firms, and then who ultimately gets funded. How do you see some of what you've researched playing out in the education technology space?
Well, this isn't the area that I've focused on, per se. But let's look at STEM, for a moment.

Elementary school teachers are overwhelmingly white females and have experienced gender bias in education. I taught in a large teacher-ed program that was overwhelmingly white and female, and math was a huge struggle for many of them. If you're in public schools, and you have teachers who themselves struggled with STEM subjects or suffered that lack of confidence-coupled with implicit bias-you can see how that lack of STEM preparedness is going to be reinforced. Then, you add the differences in funding in programs, and all of that adds to that structural outcome of overwhelmingly fewer women and people of color in the tech world.
I imagine that there may be people out there reading this article and thinking in the back of their mind that this feels like "reverse racism"-or being "racist" against white people. What would you say to them?
When you open up conversations around diversity with white people, in my experience, there's that immediate fear of being branded as a racist. Well, let's just start off with this- I do think you're a racist. And I think that I am, too. Let's just start from that premise, that all white people have inherently racist perspectives based on being socialized in a society in which racism is the bedrock, and then let's just get to work trying to figure out how it manifests, rather than if.

Reverse racism is just not possible when you understand that racism is a system of unequal institutional power. It transforms how you understand what it means to say, "I am racist and I think you're racist too." Everyone has racial bias, but when you back your group's collective bias with legal authority and institutional control, when your group is sitting at the tables making decisions that affect the lives of those not sitting at the tables... your racial bias becomes a far-reaching system that does not depend on your conscious intent. It becomes the default.

Let me be clear. I am not saying you and I are bad. I am saying that we are a product of our culture. But because it is learned, it can be unlearned.

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White Fragility in Teaching and Education: An Interview With Dr. Robin DiAngelo - EdSurge News

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Why do white men clam up when conversations steer toward race? Why are white women prone to crying when discussing this topic (and how can those tears silence women of color)? Why do some leaders feel uncomfortable and reluctant to get feedback on how their actions and behaviors are perceived?

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How to Build Empathy and Strengthen Your School Community

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How to Build Empathy and Strengthen Your School Community

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The word empathy is used a lot, but what does it really mean? Empathy is a concerned response to another person's feelings. It involves thinking, feeling, and even a physical reaction that our bodies have to other people when we relate to how they feel. To have empathy, we have to notice and understand others' feelings, but that isn't enough. We also need to care about and value them. Con men and torturers are very good at taking others' perspectives, but they don't have empathy for them.

Building empathy

Children and teenagers naturally have the capacity for empathy, but that doesn't mean they develop it on their own. They learn how to notice, listen, and care by watching and listening to adults and peers, and they take cues from these people about why empathy is important. All school adults - teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, administrators, and others - play a role in helping students develop and display empathy.

One role school adults can play is helping students expand their circle of concern. People are inclined to feel more empathy for those who are similar to them or in close proximity to them. But when it comes to building a school community and developing caring students, that's not enough. In strong school communities, students (and adults) have empathy for everyone - including those who are different in background, beliefs, or other ways. When educators show that they care about everyone in the school community and expect students to do the same, it can help students open their eyes and ears to others, including those who are sometimes treated as invisible.

Another important role is encouraging students to take the leap from having empathy to acting on it. Too often, we assume that young people will automatically know what to do when they feel concern for a peer or an adult, and then do it. But we all sometimes fall into the empathy-action gap, when we care about a person or cause but don't do anything to help. Educators can help young people overcome this gap by modeling and encouraging them to take action, whether it's standing up for someone who is teased, helping to solve a problem, or simply listening to someone who is feeling down.

Barriers to empathy

Even with this kind of encouragement, some things can get in the way of noticing others, feeling empathy, and acting on that empathy. These barriers include feeling different or distant from another person. They also include feeling overwhelmed or distressed by concern for another person, because that can make it hard to act.

To help prevent and overcome these and other barriers, educators can help students

Notice and reject stereotypes

Respect and value differences

Widen their circle of concern

Listen closely to peers and adults

Manage difficult feelings like sadness, anger, and frustration

Navigate social situations ethically and fairly

Five essential steps for schools

1. model empathy

When frustrated with students, pause and take a deep breath and try to see the situation from their perspective before responding.

When a student is upset, reflect back his feelings or the rationale for his behavior before redirecting the behavior.

Be aware of students' non-verbal cues and follow up on them. For example, if a student is slumping in her chair and appearing withdrawn or angry, say something like "I noticed that you are quieter than usual today. Is something bothering you?" rather than immediately reprimanding her.

Ask for students' input when appropriate and feasible (for example, when establishing classroom rules or generating ideas for group projects) - and really listen. Find opportunities to incorporate their feedback and respond to their needs.

2. Teach what empathy is and why it matters

Clearly explain that empathy means understanding and caring about another person's feelings and taking action to help. Explain how it improves the classroom and school community.

Stress the importance of noticing and having empathy for people beyond immediate friends, including those who are different or who are too often invisible.

Give examples of how to act on empathy, such as helping, showing kindness, or even simply listening.

3. Practice

Create opportunities to practice taking another's perspective and imagining what others are thinking. Play charades and do role plays, read and discuss books, and use "what would you do" style vignettes or case studies.

Name the barriers to empathy, like stereotypes, stress, or fears of social consequences for helping an unpopular peer. Share specific strategies to overcome them. For example, encourage students to privately offer kind and supportive words to a student who was bullied.

Foster emotional and social skills, like dealing with anger and frustration and solving conflicts. Use an evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) program and teach specific routines for calming down and resolving disputes. Use advisories and guidance counseling to develop social and ethical skills.

4. Set clear ethical expectations

Be clear that you expect students to care about one another and the entire school community. Don't just put it in the mission statement or on a poster - talk about it, model it, praise it, and hold students to it.

Do an exercise with students to help them reflect on who is inside and outside their circle. Discuss why and how they can expand the circle of who they care about.

Establish specific guidelines for unacceptable language and behaviors. Ban slurs or hurtful language like "that's retarded" or "he's so gay," even when said ironically or in jest - and step in if you hear them. Encourage students to think about why these words can be hurtful.

Enlist students in establishing rules and holding each other accountable.

Use restorative justice practices and peer mediation when conflicts arise.

5. Make school culture and climate a priority

Collect data from students and staff at least once a year about whether they feel safe, respected, and cared about at school.

Take time to examine the data and make efforts to address problem areas identified by students and staff.

Avoid over-emphasizing comparative evaluation, getting ahead by beating others, or other pressures that can erode trust and undermine empathy.

Authored by: Stephanie Jones, Rick Weissbourd, Suzanne Bouffard, Jennifer Kahn, and Trisha Ross Anderson of the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This resource is based on a research and program review supported by the Ashoka Empathy Initiative. Last reviewed October 2018.

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How to Build Empathy and Strengthen Your School Community - Making Caring Common

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To help educators learn how to build empathy among their school communities, the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education reviewed existing research on empathy and the strategies of evidence-based programs that promote it. Our work shows that there's more to developin