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Let's cut through the buzz around fluency and review what reading fluency is, why it is essential to ensure that our students have sufficient fluency, how fluency should be assessed, and how to best provide fluency practice and support for our students. We'll start by defining fluency.

While the National Reading Panel's definition of fluency as the ability to read text with accuracy, appropriate rate, and good expression (NICHD, 2000) is widely accepted among fluency researchers, these experts continue to debate the more subtle aspects of fluency (Stecker, Roser, and Martinez, 1998; Wolf and Katzir-Cohen, 2001). However it is defined, this much is certain: Fluency is necessary, but not sufficient*, for understanding the meaning of text. When children read too slowly or haltingly, the text devolves into a broken string of words and/or phrases; it's a struggle just to remember what's been read, much less extract its meaning. So it's important that teachers determine if their students' fluency is at a level appropriate for their grade. If not, how should it be developed? If a student is appropriately fluent for her grade level, how does a teacher help maintain that student's fluency? And, how does a teacher make these determinations? This process begins with assessments of the component pieces of fluency: prosody, accuracy, and rate.

The exact role of expression and phrasing - or prosody - in fluency and comprehension has not yet been determined, but it certainly is one element that signifies whether or not a student is truly a fluent reader. To measure the quality of a student's reading prosody, some educators rely on the four-level scale first developed for the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading (Daane, Campbell, Grigg, Goodman, and Oranje, 2005). This scale focuses on the level of skill a student demonstrates in phrasing and expression while reading aloud (see below). After listening to an individual student read aloud, the educator rates the student's reading according to the level that best describes the student's overall performance.

National Assessment of Educational Progress Fluency Scale

Fluent

Level 4

Reads primarily in larger, meaningful phrase groups. Although some regressions, repetitions, and deviations from text may be present, these do not appear to detract from the overall structure of the story. Preservation of the author's syntax is consistent. some or most of the story is read with expressive interpretation.

Fluent

Level 3

Non-Fluent

Level 2

Non-Fluent

Level 1

A checklist developed by Hudson, Lane and Pullen (2005, p. 707) provides a more detailed assessment of a student's prosody:

1. Student placed vocal emphasis on appropriate words.

2. Student's voice tone rose and fell at appropriate points in the text.

3. Student's inflection reflected the punctuation in the text (e.g., voice tone rose near the end of a question).

4. In narrative text with dialogue, student used appropriate vocal tone to represent characters' mental states, such as excitement, sadness, fear, or confidence.

5. Student used punctuation to pause appropriately at phrase boundaries.

6. Student used prepositional phrases to pause appropriately at phrase boundaries.

7. Student used subject-verb divisions to pause appropriately at phrase boundaries.

8. Student used conjunctions to pause appropriately at phrase boundaries.

Although most researchers consider prosody important, the subjectivity of judging students' prosody makes it a difficult component of fluency to study. Many researchers have focused on the more easily quantifiable components of fluency (rate and accuracy) and, therefore, some basic questions about prosody - like what should be expected in second grade versus sixth grade - have not been answered. Nevertheless, students' prosody is an extra piece of information for making instructional decisions. When students' speed and accuracy are at appropriate levels, reading with proper phrasing, expression, and intonation should be the next goal.

To measure students' oral reading speed and accuracy, researchers have developed a simple and very brief procedure that uses regular classroom texts to determine the number of words that students can read correctly in one minute. To obtain a words-correct-per-minute (WCPM) score, students are assessed individually as they read aloud for one minute from an unpracticed passage of text.

To calculate the WCPM score, the examiner subtracts the total number of errors from the total number of words read in one minute. An error includes any word that is omitted, mispronounced, or substituted for another word. Words transposed in a phrase count as two errors (e.g., reading "laughed and played" instead of "played and laughed"). Each time a word is read incorrectly it is counted as an error. Words read correctly that are repeated more than once, errors self-corrected by the student, words inserted by the student that do not appear in the text, and words mispronounced due to dialect or speech impairments are not counted as errors. They do, however, impact the final score since they slow the student down and, therefore, reduce the number of words that are read correctly in one minute (Shinn, 1989).

If the passage is randomly selected from a text or trade book, an average score should be taken from readings of two or three different passages to account for any text-based differences. If standardized passages are used (in which the text has been carefully controlled for difficulty), a score from a single passage may be sufficient (Hintze and Christ, 2004). Standardized passages can be found in the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills-DIBELS (Good and Kaminski, 2002), the Reading Fluency Benchmark (Read Naturally, 2002), or Edformation's AIMSWe b materials.

To determine if the student's score is on target, the examiner compares it to the oral reading fluency norms (see Screening, Diagnosing, and Progress Monitoring: The Details). My colleague Gerald Tindal and I (2006) developed these national norms for grades one to eight by analyzing data that were collected using the procedures just described with over 200,000 students from 23 states. It's critical to understand that a WCPM score can be an alarm bell, a canary in a coal mine. If the WCPM is very low, the student is not sufficiently fluent and an intervention is merited. However, a low WCPM score may be the result of weak fluency skills or other reading weaknesses, for example, in decoding, vocabulary, sight words, etc.- so administering some diagnostic assessments may be necessary to determine exactly what type of intervention a student needs.

The canary in the coal mine

With all the assessments schools are required to administer as a result of No Child Left Behind, Reading First, and numerous statewide and district initiatives, some educators are concerned about over-testing students. They ask: "How can we justify spending so much precious instructional time testing our students over and over again?" This concern is certainly legitimate. The purpose of having our students in school is to teach them, not to test them. However, as professional educators, it is imperative that we make decisions about the instruction we provide our students based on the best information available.

The WCPM procedure just described is an extremely time-efficient and reliable way to track students' fluency - and their overall reading ability. While it may be surprising that a one-minute assessment can be so informative, WCPM has been shown, in both theoretical and empirical research, to serve as an accurate and powerful indicator of overall reading competence - especially through its strong correlation with comprehension. Its validity and reliability have been well established in a body of research extending over the past 25 years (Fuchs et al., 2001; Shinn, 1998).

The relationship between WCPM and comprehension has been found to be stronger in the elementary and junior high grades than in older students (Fuchs et al., 2001), likely due to the fact that as a reader matures, competent reading involves more complex skills, vocabulary, and knowledge (and thus any single measure becomes less predictive of general reading competence as a student develops).

Teachers can and should use WCPM as their canary in the coal mine - their first indicator that all may not be well with their students' reading ability.** In first through fifth grade, WCPM should be used to screen all students, help to diagnose a possible cause of struggling students' problems, and to monitor the progress of struggling students who are receiving additional support. To learn how, see Screening, Diagnosing, and Progress Monitoring: The Details.

About the author

Jan Hasbrouck is president of JH Consulting, as well as an affiliate of the Behavioral Research and Teaching Group at the University of Oregon. Her most recent book, which she co-authored with Carolyn Denton, is The Reading Coach: A How-To Manual for Success.

Citations

Hasbrouck, J. (2006). For Students Who Are Not Yet Fluent, Silent Reading Is Not the Best Use of Classroom Time. American Educator, Summer 2006, 30(2).

References

Daane, M.C., Campbell, J.R., Grigg, W.S., Goodman, M.J., and Oranje, A. (2005). Fourth-Grade Students Reading Aloud: NAEP 2002 Special Study of Oral Reading (NCES 2006-469). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.:Government Printing Office.

Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., and Jenkins, J.R. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of reading competence: A theoretical, empirical, and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5(3), 239-256.

Good, III, R.H. and Kaminski, R.A. (Eds.) (2002). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), 6th Ed. Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement. Eugene, Ore.:University of Oregon.

Hasbrouck, J. and Tindal, G.A. (2006, April). ORF norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 636-644.

Hintze, J.M. and Christ, T.J. (2004). An examination of variability as a function of passage variance in CBM progress monitoring. School Psychology Review, 33(2), 204-217.

Hudson, R.F., Lane, H.B., and Pullen, P.C. (2005, May). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how? The Reading Teacher, 58(8), 702-714.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. NIH Publication No. 00-4769. Washington, D.C.:U.S. Government Printing Office.

Read Naturally (2002). Reading fluency monitor. Minneapolis: Author.

Shinn, M.R. (1989). Identifying and defining academic problems: CBM Screening and eligibility procedures. In M. R. Shinn (Ed.). Curriculum-based measurement: Assessing special children, 90-129. N.Y.:Guilford.

Stecker, S.K., Roser, N.L., and Martinez, M.G. (1998). Understanding oral reading fluency. In T. Shanahan and F.V. Rodriguez-Brown (Eds.), 47th yearbook of the National Reading Conference, pp. 295-310. Chicago:National Reading Conference.

Wolf, M. and Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5(3), 211-239.

Endnotes

*Comprehension depends on reading skills (like decoding and fluency), but it also depends on vocabulary and background knowledge. To learn more about comprehension, see "Building Knowledge: The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for All Children" by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in the Spring 2006 issue of American Educator, www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/index.htm.

**There are also screening assessments that should be administered as early as kindergarten, to determine if students are on track for reading achievement. To learn more, see "Preventing Early Reading Failure" in the Fall 2004 issue of American Educator, www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall04/reading.htm.

More by this author

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Let's cut through the buzz around fluency and review what reading fluency is, why it is essential to ensure that our students have sufficient fluency, how fluency should be assessed, and how to best provide fluency practice and support for our students. We'll start by defining fluency.

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As multilingual learners acquire English proficiency, building oral language skills should be a priority. Oral language provides the foundation for literacy and overall academic success. Students - English speakers and multilingual learners alike - need to develop both productive (speaking) and receptive (listening) language. Vocabulary is a critical aspect of oral proficiency (but it's not the whole story). We know that students with robust vocabularies do well in school because they use their word knowledge to comprehend text and read fluently, to understand lectures and explanations, and to more clearly express their ideas orally and in writing. Students' word knowledge is the driver of speaking and listening and is critical for learning new information.

To get back to the "rest of the story," other aspects of oral language that students need to develop are, for example, syntax, pronunciation, and pragmatics, which refers to socially acceptable ways of communicating such as knowing when more formal speech is required, taking turns in a discussion, or interpreting a comment as intended.

Most multilingual learners enter U.S. schools with weaker oral language skills than their English-speaking peers. They've had much less exposure to the sounds, words, and phrases of English, have had fewer opportunities to develop an innate sense of English grammar, and may have culturally influenced pragmatic practices.

Thus, multilingual learners need daily opportunities to learn and practice oral English in classroom environments that invite collaborative academic discussions, where oral language use is emphasized, and student-to-student interaction is promoted. As students strengthen vocabulary and other oral language skills, their reading and writing skills are more likely to improve.

Multilingual learners benefit from brief interactions to express their understanding (e.g., Think-Pair-Share, Turn and Talk) as well as more extended discussions where they summarize material, grapple with ideas, and build on one another's contributions.

The following activities promote oral language practice through more extended language use, practice that is more likely to develop a deeper level of oral language than brief exchanges. As an added benefit, these activities combine oral language practice with movement. shows that movement improves learning and focus as well as reducing classroom management issues. Multilingual learners have double the work, learning new information and skills in a new language, so opportunities to get up, move, and interact provide much-needed breaks from seat work. Establish and practice transition routines so that students move smoothly into the activities.

Take a Stand. This activity provides multilingual learners with listening skills practice. Students agree or disagree with a stated position and provide a rationale for their decision. Sentence frames may be useful for multilingual learners (and other students) such as, I respectfully disagree with ___________ because______________. The activity begins with the teacher making a statement to students related to a topic being learned, a current event, a story or novel, etc. Working in partners or teams with four to six students per team, the partners/team first discuss the statement made by the teacher. They have a chance to grapple with ideas, make connections between others' ideas and their own, build on a peer's contribution, express disagreement, make a counterargument, and come to consensus. On the teacher's cue, "Take a Stand," the partners/team stand or stay seated depending on what they decided. They then explain to the class their rationale for agreeing or disagreeing. Multilingual learners participate orally in the discussion but also practice listening skills within the group and as other partners/groups articulate the rationale for their decision to stand or sit. They also hear vocabulary associated with the topic repeated multiple times by speakers and in their own group discussion. Depending on the age of students, the students themselves can create the statements used for agreeing or disagreeing and ask the rest of the class to respond.

Standing Circle Share. This activity promotes oral interaction among small group members. While appropriate for all grade levels, teachers need to ensure students can accurately paraphrase or summarize text and teachers should take care to select readings at appropriate reading levels for their students. This activity provides differentiated instruction by having texts on the same topic at varied reading levels.

Students in a group are given a short passage or a paragraph from a text to read that is numbered, such as 1-6. Students number off so each one has a section of text to read. After students read their section, they all stand up and form a standing circle joining with their group members. In their groups, each person orally paraphrases what they read in the section of the text. Together, the group of students answers a series of teacher-created questions based on the information they read and shared, coming to consensus about their answers. After students finish their conversation about the questions and the text, they return to their seats and record in their notes three things they learned, or individually answer the questions after having the benefit of listening to the standing circle share.

Example: Math - Fractions Review

1. Students are given one of the following readings: Adding Fractions, Subtracting Fractions, Multiplying Fractions, Dividing Fractions

2. Students read and highlight/annotate their section of the text.

3. Students form standing circles of 4 that represent each of the readings.

4. Students paraphrase their section of the reading.

5. Together, students discuss:

6. "What similarities and differences are there between adding and multiplying fractions?"

7. "What similarities and differences are there between dividing and subtracting fractions?"

8. "What are ways to remember the steps for one of the readings?" (e.g., a mnemonic for the steps of adding fractions)

Frozen Moment. In this activity, students re-enact scenes from a book and freeze in place as they role play for their peers. In this example, students are studying immigration and reading a piece of literature connected to the content. After reading, a book about a Chinese immigrant family, the teacher distributes to each group of four or five students a piece of paper that has a three-or four-sentence scene taken from the story. Each group takes a few minutes to discuss their planned re-creation of the scene in pantomime, requiring that the scene be delivered with absolutely no movement (similar to a tableau), and each person in the group must assume a role. The roles may be characters (such as Mia or Mr. Yao) or stage props (such as the front desk, hamburger, or ledger). After adequate time to practice, students create their "frozen moments" while the rest of the class members close their eyes. When ready, class members open their eyes to view the scene and attempt to identify the which section of the book is being portrayed. (No calling out is permitted. If students think they can identify the scene, they raise a hand or use an agreed-upon signal). After the students have viewed the scene for a few minutes, the teacher joins the performers, tapping one of the actors who then "comes to life." In character, this student describes what he or she is thinking or feeling at that moment. For example, Mr. Lorenz's bright green car might say, "I can't believe I was stolen in the middle of the night. I'm in a strange place now." The teacher ends the soliloquy by again tapping the student, who returns to the fixed, still position. Other players in the scene are tapped until class members have correctly identified the scene that is being performed.

These activities are only a sampling of the many engaging ways to enhance oral language development in general education classrooms. All students benefit from these opportunities but oral language practice is critical for our multilingual learners to become more proficient users of English.

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Enhancing Oral Language Development for Multilingual Learners

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As multilingual learners acquire English proficiency, building oral language skills should be a priority. Oral language provides the foundation for literacy and overall academic success.

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What's in your backpack?  FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITY

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What's in your backpack?  FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITY

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What's in your backpack? FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE ACTIVITY

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Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

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Punctuation is a big deal for readers. Really, it is. Really? Yes, really! When kids understand how each punctuation mark works, they learn how to change way their voice sounds at each mark. And this makes them more expressive readers, which is part of being a fluent reader. I remember going through a horrible period […]

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Activity A: Scrambled Sentences
This intervention supports struggling writers who have difficulty constructing a basic sentence and need support with punctuation. (This strategy also supports Sentence Fluency.) Scrambled Sentences provides students with all the parts of a complete sentence and asks them to build the sentence correctly. Hochman (2011) explains that rearranging sequences of words into sentences and adding the correct punctuation and capitalization reinforces the concept of a sentence. Younger students may need to be given the first word of the sentence with the first letter capitalized.

Hochman, J., & MacDermott-Duffy, B. (2015). Effective writing instruction: Time for a revolution. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 41(2), 31.

Activity B: Punctuation Walkabout
If your student has trouble remembering which punctuation to use when, teach him to do a Punctuation Walkabout (Culham, 2003). This strategy provides a multi-sensory approach to learning how punctuation is used.

While editing for punctuation (periods, mainly), have the student walk while reading one of his drafts. When he intends to insert a stop (or period), he must physically stop and stamp his feet. Expand to other punctuation marks by adding new motions, such as shooting a hand up in the air for an exclamation point or curling one arm around his head for a question mark. This kinesthetic approach helps students realize the importance of punctuation for indicating the end and tone of a thought. In this intervention, the teacher will ask the student to read a draft and make a movement every time he comes to a punctuation mark. "As you read your draft aloud, stamp your feet when you read a period, shoot your arm in the air when you end with an exclamation mark, and curl your arm around your head when you use a question mark."

Culham, R. (2003). 6 + 1 Traits of writing. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Activity C: Bouncing Ball
If your student struggles to understand when to apply the rules of punctuation, this strategy will help them start to "listen" for places where sentences should be punctuated (Culham, 2003).Give the student a bouncy ball, and take a bouncy ball for yourself (or give the bouncy ball to another student in the class). Ask him to read his paragraph. Tell him that you will both bounce the balls each time there is (or should be) punctuation. If you both bounce your balls at the same time, he can keep reading. If only one of you bounces the ball, resolve the difference (Should there be punctuation? If so, what kind?) before moving on.

Teacher: James, here is a bouncy ball. Read your paper. Every time there should be a punctuation mark, bounce the ball, and I'll do the same. If we both bounce, keep reading. If not, pause your reading, and we'll figure out whether or not there should be punctuation, and if so, what kind.

James: The man sat across from me. (bounce) He looked into my eyes, (bounce) and said, "(bounce) James, I'm counting on you... (only teacher bounces). please.....do the right thing. (bounce)"

Teacher: Stop there. Only I bounced the ball after you. I bounced it because you read with a pause, like the man was going to say something to you but was hesitant. Do you think you need some kind of punctuation there to let the read know to pause?

James: Yeah, I guess so. But it's not a period, because it's not the end of the sentence. Maybe I need that dot dot dot thing...?

Teacher: Exactly! That's called an ellipsis. It lets a reader know that someone is taking a long pause before saying something.

Culham, R. (2018). Teach writing well: How to assess writing, invigorate instruction, and rethink revision. Stenhouse Publishers.

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Abstract:
A deep, developmental construct and definition of fluency, in which fluency and reading comprehension have a reciprocal relationship, is explicated and contrasted with superficial approaches to that construct. The historical development of fluency is outlined, along with conclusions of the U.S. National Reading Panel, to explore why fluency has moved from being "the neglected aspect of reading" to a popular topic in the field.

A practical, developmental instructional program based largely on the theoretical framework and research findings of Linnea Ehri is delineated. The nine essential components of that program include building the graphophonic foundations for fluency; building and extending vocabulary and oral language skills; providing expert instruction and practice in the recognition of high-frequency vocabulary; teaching common word parts and spelling patterns; teaching, modeling, and providing practice in the application of a decoding strategy; using appropriate texts to coach strategic behaviors and to build reading speed; using repeated reading procedures as an intervention approach for struggling readers; extending growing fluency through wide independent reading; and monitoring fluency development through appropriate assessment procedures.

The position taken throughout the piece is that teaching, developing, and assessing fluency must always be done in the context of reading comprehension.

Citation

Pikulski, J. J., & Chard, D. J. (2005). Fluency: Bridge Between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 58, 510-519.

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Fluency: Bridge Between Decoding and Reading Comprehension

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Abstract:A deep, developmental construct and definition of fluency, in which fluency and reading comprehension have a reciprocal relationship, is explicated and contrasted with superficial approaches to that construct. The historical development of fluency is outlined, along with conclusions of the U.S. National Reading Panel, to explore why fluency has moved from being “the neglected aspect of reading” to a popular topic in the field.

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Video 34: Repeated Reading (REL Southeast)

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Listen to the interview with Alex Shevrin Venet (transcript):
Sponsored by EVERFI and Listenwise

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Among the many challenges teachers have faced since the onset of the pandemic, one that persists is this feeling that students have changed, that they are less motivated, more entitled, and more disrespectful than ever before. Even if a teacher can find plenty of evidence to support this perception, it can't be making things any better.

And while it does seem that the pandemic exacerbated this feeling among teachers, I saw it long before we ever heard the word Covid. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I worked with far too many teachers who held a pretty low opinion of many of our students. There was a lot of "These kids (insert negative generalization)" or "Well what do you expect from him, he (insert negative generalization)."

I think many of these attitudes come from a real, valid, and vulnerable place, from teachers who once had high hopes but felt disappointed and hurt when things went wrong, teachers who had good intentions and got their hearts broken a little bit every time students rejected their efforts, teachers who see behaviors from their students that shock and frighten them. But regardless of where they come from, these mindsets hurt our relationships with students, and that makes everything else worse, from behavior to academics to the culture of school as a whole.

So with all of this in mind, I was intrigued when I came across the phrase unconditional positive regard. It was in Alex Venet's book, Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education ( Amazon | Bookshop.org), where she names it as the most important guiding philosophy in her work. Venet explains that unconditional positive regard is a stance that communicates this message to students: "I care about you. You have value. You don't have to do anything to prove it to me, and nothing's going to change my mind." In her book, she asserts that taking this stance and putting it into practice builds the foundation on which our students can thrive. And the more I learned about it, the more I was sold on its value.

But I suspect that for most teachers, adopting this philosophy won't be an easy task, because the demands of the job are so intense and the challenging behaviors students bring to school are so overwhelming. For some, even the idea of this philosophy might be off-putting at first, because you might see it as just another version of teacher-blaming. But it's not. Unconditional positive regard doesn't take accountability away from students for their behavior; it just works on the lens teachers use to address it, and that lens can make a huge difference, not only in how you interact with students, but how you feel about the work you do every day.

Because I think unconditional positive regard is such an important, revolutionary philosophy, and because implementing it can be challenging, I wanted to lift it out of the book and give it special attention. I already did an interview with Venet about the larger concept of trauma-informed teaching, but she agreed to have a separate conversation just on unconditional positive regard. You can listen to our conversation in the player above, read the full transcript, or get a peek at some of the key points of our conversation below.

What is unconditional positive regard, and why is it such an important part of trauma-informed teaching?
"Unconditional positive regard means I care about you, you have value, you don't have to do anything to prove it to me, and nothing will change my mind," Venet says. "So it's really this idea of seeing somebody as a whole and complete and worthy person starting from a place where care doesn't have to be earned, it's just assumed. Everybody gets care. You're allowed to mess up. You're allowed to have struggles, but that is never going to invalidate your worth, and it's never going to invalidate my care for you."

The concept was introduced to psychotherapy by Carl Rogers in the 1960s and applied to education by Alfie Kohn in a 2005 essay called Unconditional Teaching. Venet sees this stance as foundational in her work in equity-centered trauma-informed teaching "because it starts from that place of students are worthy, valuable people."

What does unconditional positive regard look like in practice?
"One of the things that allows for unconditional positive regard is to just get to know students," Venet explains. "I mean it's pretty basic but to get to know what they care about that's not necessarily related to the content. If you only are looking at a kid and going, oh, you're good at writing, you're good at science, whatever, then your regard is going to be conditional because you've placed parameters around what types of strengths I'm going to see in you."

It's especially important to make this a priority for students with whom you don't have much in common. "If I meet a student who is really into cats and the same TV shows as me and we have a similar sense of humor, it's easy for me to like them, to care about them," Venet says. But with students who only wanted to talk about Roblox, for example, "It was a little hard for me to find okay, where's my connection point? If I reground myself in, okay, if I'm going to believe this student has value, I care about them, I need to just get inside a little bit. What makes them tick? So tell me about Roblox. What do you like about it? How do you feel when you're playing it? Who do you get to connect with when you play Roblox? Where did you first learn about it?" Taking deliberate steps to get to know students as they are, outside of the context of your classroom, can help you see them as whole people.

Along with getting to know students, teachers practicing unconditional positive regard also work to learn about factors in students' lives that make them behave in ways that bother the teacher.

"If a student seems to never pay attention when I'm talking," she explains, "I'm not going to go immediately to a place of, Well, they're not paying attention because they don't care. Instead, I'm going to get curious and go, maybe something's going on that's distracting. Maybe they just have a hard time paying attention. Maybe I'm being kind of boring." This stance of curiosity - both for getting to know the student and figuring out what things might be causing problems - is essential for building unconditional positive regard.
What about when students become especially difficult? What insights can you offer to teachers for those times?
Venet shares the story of a former student, "Julia," who refused to participate, kept her head down most of the time, and hurled verbal insults at Venet when she tried to connect with her. Had she not been supported by her colleagues to take a stance of unconditional positive regard, "I could have come up with some conclusions like she's disrespectful, she hates me, she hates school, she doesn't care about her education. But by holding this unconditional positive regard, which essentially says with no evidence, I'm still going to believe that she has value and I'm still going to care about her, with no evidence that would support that, I gave it time."

During this time, Venet made much more subtle bids for connection. "She wouldn't talk to me in class, but if I was standing next to her in the lunch line, then I could make a little comment to her, and she would sometimes respond to it. I started to talk to her other teachers and try to find out a little bit. Like, what does she like? What makes her tick? She was really good at drawing, and so I started to see her art. I started to find some connection points. So then the next time she comes in, in the half a second before she puts her headphones in, I could say, hey, I saw you drawing in your last class. Can I see what you drew? And maybe she leaves one earbud out to start to talk to me about it."

As this process unfolded, Venet began to understand that Julia's behavior came from past trauma. "She has been really harmed by people in her life before and she's protecting herself. She's protecting herself because the same way that I don't have evidence for her, she has no evidence for me. She doesn't know that I'm safe. She doesn't know that I think she can learn. She doesn't know any of that. Out of the two of us, one of us had to take a leap of faith, and she's the kid so it has to be me. I'm the teacher so it has to be me to do that. And so I stuck with it for her until we gained that trust and until we were able to build it up."

One quote that Venet keeps in mind in these difficult times comes from the book Trauma-Responsive Schooling ( Amazon | Bookshop.org). "There's a coach in that book who is coaching some of her peers, and this question that she asks of other teachers is, How would you respond differently if you knew the student's behavior wasn't a choice? If I look at Julia and I say, her behavior's a choice. She is choosing to be mean to me and be disrespectful. Then maybe the action that I'm going to take is to say well, I'm going to punish her for it. I'm going to withdraw my part of the relationship. I'm going to put up a wall if she's putting up a wall."

Unconditional positive regard takes things in a different direction. "If I look at her and I say, maybe this isn't a choice, but it is a protective reaction to try to not get hurt by another adult, then I'm going to respond how I did, which is I'm going to stick with it. I'm going to try to earn her trust while always holding this idea that I think we're going to get there one day."

Even if the behavior IS a choice, Venet says, taking this stance helps the teacher approach the situation in a healthier way.

You advise teachers to have regular "perspective-keeping" conversations with colleagues to help stay on track with unconditional positive regard. Why are these important and how do they help?
"The relationship between a student and a teacher is not equal," Venet begins. "If I was going to meet up with a friend, and my friend called me a really horrible word and put her headphones in, I could just go, well, I'm not going to tolerate that from my friend. I don't have to spend time with this person. That's not the same relationship we have with students; students are required to be there and you're required to teach them. But as the adult, we have more power. We have the ability to impose consequences that can have long-lasting impacts.

"And so if a student hurts my feelings, it's okay for my feelings to be hurt. It's okay for me to say, that felt really bad. I hated that. I don't want to tolerate that behavior from people around me. However, the student can never be responsible for making me feel better or be responsible for my emotions because the power differential is not equal. I can't make that student responsible for me because they're not. They're required to be in school. I'm required to teach them."

But teachers shouldn't feel like they are trapped with their feelings; they can get help from their colleagues. "I can go to my colleagues and talk about how I was hurt, and they can say, yeah, that sounds really hard. We can process it. And then they can help me reset and say, okay, how are you going to show up tomorrow given the fact that you're feeling really hurt? How can you continue to hold this regard for her even though she is harming you?"

And if the student really crosses a line? "For example, if the student was calling me a slur based on my identity," Venet offers, "then I need to have people around me who can say, yeah, you shouldn't go back in that room with her tomorrow but she still deserves a teacher, so we're going to tag out. Somebody else is going to work with her. We're going to work on educating her. We're going to solve this problem. It requires a team effort. And I think this is where people have a hard time when we talk about unconditional positive regard, because if you are the only person in your building who's trying to make this shift, it's really going to be difficult because our schools are not set up to foster this."
"If we commit to an ethic of care, building relationships and caring for our students aren't strategies in the name of increasing academic achievement but the actual goal itself." This is from page 100 of your book. Embracing this stance would be a huge paradigm shift for many U.S. educators. Why do you think it's worth considering?
"It's basically the opposite of what we do in schools right now," Venet says, "and schools right now are so toxic in a lot of ways. What would it look like if kids just felt safe and cared about as part of their school experience? There's all this competition in schools, whether it be sports or perfect attendance awards or grades and scholarships or whatever, and people justify this by saying, well that's society and what do you want? That every kid gets a trophy? Well, what I want to ask is, have you ever been in an environment where every kid actually did get a trophy and seen how beautiful it was?

"At the school where I taught, they used to do this end of the year ceremony that was for kids who were graduating but also every kid in the whole school, and it was a small school so this was doable. And we actually gave a personalized academic award to every single student. All the teachers who shared students would fill out these little sheets of paper and kind of reflect on what was some of the academic growth that you saw this year. And we would create an award for every single kid, and then at this ceremony give them out. And it was absolutely beautiful. The kids really didn't care that everybody else was getting an award because what their personal award said to them was my teachers saw and noticed this thing I worked really hard on. So every kid getting a trophy? I don't know. I think that's great.

"I think a big part of why our world is so traumatic right now is a feeling of scarcity and competition, that there's only limited resources, and we all have to claw at each other to get the resources, and if you're in the way of that then you're my enemy. What if, instead of replicating that in school by saying there's only three sports awards, there's only one senior award, what if we work from abundance and said there's enough for everyone? There's enough care for everyone. There's enough celebration for everyone. And actually celebrating you doesn't mean that I lose. It means that we all have won collectively. When we make small choices as teachers to work from a place of unconditional care, we're planting the seeds for those bigger changes."

You can find Alex Shevrin Venet's work at unconditionallearning.org.

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Nothing's Going to Change My Mind: How Unconditional Positive Regard Transforms Classrooms

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What if students didn't have to do anything to earn our care?