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Stayin' Alive - From "Saturday Night Fever" Soundtrack

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Stayin' Alive - From "Saturday Night Fever" Soundtrack

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Michelle Mickens. 105 likes. I am a graduate of the University of Georgia, with add-on certifications in ESOL and AP Literature. I am currently pursuing a degree from Kennesaw State University in...

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Available on:
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The Seven Principles of Personalized Learning

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The Seven Principles of Personalized Learning

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1. Choice and Voice

2. Choice for Demonstrating Learning

3. Mastery Based Assessment

4. Co-Planning Learning

5. Just in Time Direct Instruction

6. Flexible Pacing

7. Varied Strategies

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1. Avoid saying, "When I was in school..." or "back in my day."
2. Avoid saying, "My parents would have (fill in the blank) if I did what these kids are doing.
3. Avoid teachers who complain without offering solutions.
4. Avoid blaming parents or saying things like, "These parents nowadays..."
5. Avoid telling a students HOW they should feel or invalidate their feelings when they SAY how they feel.
6. Avoid complaining if you do not have legitimate solution to the problem.

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Do you ever catch yourself paying more attention to negative feedback, than positive? When someone compliments you on a job well done, do you shrug it off quickly then shift your thinking to what needs improvement?

Well, children do the same! But there are proven ways for all of us to fight back--to tame our inner critic!

Negativity is like second-hand smoke. It not only permeates the room but has dire health consequences for those unfortunate enough to be in its path.

According to neuroscientists, our brains are hardwired to focus more on the negative, including worry, disapproval, danger, illness, fear, and even the word, "no." As we verbally express these thoughts, additional stress chemicals are released.

The listener's brain is changed too, feeling more anxious and irritable. Trust and cooperation between people is undermined. In short, negativity can destroy family relationships and cause emotional harm.

When I first met my husband Richard in the late 1970's, he proudly displayed the personalized license plate "YEESSS" on his Triumph sports car. When asked about its significance, he quickly replied, "It helps me remember to think positively - to say yes instead of no. I'm much happier when I say, "YEESSS" to life."

Thinking back on that conversation, I must admit Richard was wise beyond his years. He already understood what it has taken neuroscientists years to discover - that negativity is linked to increased stress and unhappiness.

The Power of YEESSS

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Prof. Mark Robert Waldman, authors of the book Words Can Change Your Brain, show how negativity and stress are related. For example, with just one flash of the word "no," our brains release dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters that create havoc with our normal functioning.

Barbara Fredrickson, a pioneer in the positive psychology movement, discovered how positive thoughts affect the brain. In her book, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, Fredrickson shows how to overcome our bias toward negativity by developing a 3:1 ratio of positive to negative thoughts.

When we achieve this balance, we are more likely to find ourselves in caring relationships and productive work situations.

For a moment, think how many times children and teens hear the word "no" or experience negativity in their families or classrooms. Each exposure to negativism, as well as the child's own negative thoughts, is likely to cause emotional turmoil over time.

How do we help kids achieve the optimum balance between negativity and positivity?

There are several parts to the puzzle. First, we must acknowledge that adult behaviors influence children. And second, we must understand how children develop their own patterns of positive thinking.

The Art of Positive Communication

Adults play a big role in how children perceive and respond to negativity. When communicating with children, keep these simple principles in mind.

1. Stop and Think about your Words

Say "yes" whenever possible. If you can't say "yes," reframe your response to invite positive conversation. For example, if Susie asks to extend her curfew until 3AM, you might be tempted to say, "Absolutely not!" But instead of a quick, negative response, try asking a question to invite conversation on the topic. You might ask Susie, "If you were the mother, what would convince you to allow your daughter to be out that late?" You may or may not end up changing your mind, but you will engage Susie in meaningful conversation that will help her understand your decision-making process. And you'll spare Suzie's brain and your own from some stress-producing hormones!

2. Pay Attention to Delivery

Yelling and arguing produces bad chemicals in the brain. If you feel frustrated with a child, take a deep breath and try to relax before engaging in conversation. Good eye contact and a warm tone in your voice send positive signals to the brain. Words and delivery are equally important when parents are engaged in conversations in front of children. Like second-hand smoke, yelling affects everyone in the room!

3. Slow Down

Research shows that slowing down your speech produces calm feelings, particular with children who may feel anxious or angry. Speaking slowly also deepens people's connections, allowing them to better understand each another.

Helping Children Tame Their Inner Critics

In addition to building healthy channels of communication, research suggests three ways to help children tame their inner critics and build deeper roots of positivity. Adults support children and teens as they learn to:

1. Develop Gratitude

When children learn to recognize and appreciate the good things in life, they develop satisfaction and a sense of optimism. In The Transformative Power of Gratitude, I outline five ways to nurture gratitude in homes and classrooms, including helping kids focus on the present moment and fostering their imagination.

2. Define and Experience a Positive Day

Taking time to be with family and friends and doing the things you enjoy helps deepen relationships. Encourage children to design a day with you or someone close to them that would make both people happy. At the end of the day, help them savor their positive experiences by reflecting on the things they most enjoyed.

3. Develop their Best Selves

When children imagine themselves at their best their confidence increases. We help children become their best selves by showing interest in them and the kind of young people they want to become. Especially at times when children feel good about themselves, help them recapture their thoughts and feelings. What feels good to them? Tell them what you noticed about them.

How have you nurtured a balance of positivity and negativity in your own family or classroom? I always love to hear your stories!

Author

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD, is the author of Tomorrow's Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation. A developmental psychologist and researcher, she works at the intersection of positive youth development and education.

Follow Marilyn's work at Roots of Action, Twitter, or Facebook.

Subscribe to receive email notifications of Marilyn's articles.

©2013 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please see reprint guideline s for Marilyn's articles.

Photo Credits: R. Krishnan; K. Alsawintarangkul

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Do you ever catch yourself paying more attention to negative feedback, than positive? When someone compliments you on a job well done, do you shrug it off quickly then shift your thinking to what needs improvement? Well, children do the same! But there are proven ways for all of us to fight back--to tame our inner critic!

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@mrsmmickens or just click the QR code below.

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Research indicates that comprehension levels increase when students have prior knowledge.

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A recent article "Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years" in The Atlantic addressed the critical role that background knowledge plays in the ability to comprehend. The article subtitle was "Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge - even though education researchers know better."

The piece suggests that educators have treated comprehension as a set of skills, when in fact comprehension depends primarily on what readers already know. The article refers to a panel of literacy experts convened by officials who oversee the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As a member of the panel, Daniel Willingham, explained:

"Whether or not readers understand a text depends far more on how much background knowledge and vocabulary they have relating to the topic than on how much they've practiced comprehension skills. That's because writers leave out a lot of information that they assume readers will know. If they put all the information in, their writing would be tedious. But if readers can't supply the missing information, they will have a hard time making sense of the text."

Willingham and like-minded literacy experts posit that the best way to boost students' reading comprehension is to expand their knowledge and vocabulary by teaching them history, science, literature, and the arts, using curricula that guide kids through a logical sequence from one year to the next. Willingham has been making this point for a long time. I first read a piece he wrote about this in 2006 " How Knowledge Helps" around the same time I read E.D. Hirsch's book "The Knowledge Deficit", in which Hirsch claims that the solution to improving reading comprehension is to teach a core set of content topics over the grades.

In another 2006 Willingham article, "The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies", Willingham made the case that, even though decades of research shows that teaching reading comprehension strategies is effective, he considered them a "bag of tricks that can indirectly improve comprehension" and called for less explicit instruction of comprehension strategies. He wrote a later article in 2014 "Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?" that begins with this:

"In this commentary, we suggest that reading comprehension strategy instruction does not actually improve general-purpose comprehension skills. Rather, this strategy represents a bag of tricks that are useful and worth teaching, but are quickly learned and require minimal practice."

Having spent many years successfully teaching comprehension strategies, especially to struggling readers, Willingham's 2006 piece took me aback. Since then, I have gained a better understanding of the complex factors that contribute to reading comprehension and have a greater appreciation for the role that background knowledge plays. However, I still believe that teaching general knowledge is not THE solution to reading comprehension deficits as Willingham and The Atlantic article claim.

Part of the issue has to do with how much inference is typically required during reading. As Willingham notes, writers leave out a lot of information that they assume readers will know. Here are some examples (from Oakhill and Cain, 2016):
Example 1: Bobby was busy with his bucket and spade. The sandcastle was nearly complete. Then a huge wave crashed onto the shore. On seeing that his day's work has been ruined Bobby started to cry.

Inference: Bobby was making a sandcastle.

Background knowledge needed: a bucket and spade is used to make things out of sand at the beach

Inference: The sandcastle was ruined by the wave

Background knowledge needed: incoming tides cause waves to come onto the beach and flatten sand sculptures

Example 2: Johnny carried a jug of water. He tripped on a step. Mom gave him a mop.

Inference: Johnny spilled the water when he tripped.

Background knowledge needed: experience with spills and the mess they make

These are very simple examples, but they show why reading comprehension is a dynamic interaction between the reader and the text. It is a process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning and most texts cannot be understood without contributions from readers, including background and "world" knowledge.

Clearly, readers must have sufficient background knowledge in order to construct meaning through inferences, especially when reading academic, subject area text. But they ALSO need a set of meta-cognitive strategies to process and organize the information they are reading. That's where explicit instruction of strategies comes in.

Tim Shanahan referenced The Atlantic article in a recent blog post although his position about the importance of background knowledge was more measured:

"Research has long shown the importance of knowledge in comprehension. If a reader knows much about a topic, his/her reading comprehension rises. Studies of what American kids (and adults) know about science, geography, economics, technology, and history suggest that Professor Willingham has a point. Our kids simply don't know enough. (There are great inequities in knowledge distribution, just as there is great inequality in reading attainment.)"

Shanahan points out that, in addition to devoting a significant amount of time to reading and writing instruction, it is important to provide time for reading about content to build background knowledge.

Based on experience, I think the kind of "workbook" activities that were commonly used in the 1970's through the 1990's to teach discreet comprehension "skills" (such as choosing the correct answer from four options for the main idea or a conclusion drawn) were not effective. Students did not apply these skills that they were practicing in isolation to real reading. That's why a long time ago I focused on training content teachers of all subjects to embed strategy instruction and guided practice into content learning using real content reading (see The Key Comprehension Routine). Time and again I have seen very successful results, which is why I can't accept Willingham's conclusion that background knowledge is the main solution and comprehension strategy instruction should be minimal.

Reference:

Oakhill, J. & Cain, K. (2016). Supporting reading comprehension development: From research to practice. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 42 (2).

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Background Knowledge and Reading Comprehension - Keys to Literacy

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A recent article "Why American Students Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years" in The Atlantic addressed the critical role that background knowledge plays in the ability to comprehend. The article subtitle was "Schools usually focus on teaching comprehension skills instead of general knowledge - even though education researchers know better."

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5 Guiding Principles of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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5 Guiding Principles of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

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According to CASEL, social-emotional learning can be defined as: " the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions."

While students' emotional well-being and social skills has always been on educators' radar, recent years have witnessed a shift towards a stronger focus on SEL in the classroom. Researchers have come to understand the connections between academic performance and SEL, as well as the importance of attending to the many facets of student learning experiences in an effort to educate the whole child.

But implementing SEL initiatives in your school or classroom can be a challenge - whether you're looking to improve your school climate, integrate SEL lesson plans into traditional academic work, or partner with community organizations to meet your goals, gaining momentum to influence real change will be difficult. To help get you started, Annie Snyder, Learning Scientist from our Applied Learning Sciences team, has written a guide entitled Building Social Emotional Learning into the School Day: Five Guiding Principles. Find the full guide here, or read on for a synopsis:

5 Guiding Principles of SEL: Create, Integrate, Communicate, Instruct, Empower

1. Create

The purpose of this principle is to consciously create a nurturing, caring, and safe environment for students. In the guide, you'll find find specific strategies and a full, narrative example for carrying out this principle.

Sample strategy: Provide multiple ways for students to report, discuss, and work through conflicts.

2. Integrate

The key to this principle is to incorporate SEL skill-building into academic instruction whenever possible. It's about keeping social and emotional learning top-of-mind, and constantly revisiting your incorporation tactics to find new, creative ways to integrate. You'll find strategies and a narrative example in the guide.

Sample strategy: Design a full classroom unit based on a real-life theme (e.g. helping a local organization increase environmental sustainability.)

3. Communicate

This principle takes your larger community into account, and stresses that you communicate early and often with all SEL stakeholders. Every educator a student encounters during the day should be aware of SEL objectives and communicate with colleagues or partners about concerns and progress. The guide provides individual strategies for communicating with parents, school staff, and community partners.

Sample strategy: When communicating with school staff, researchers recommend that schools form a core team of school staff and administrators to lead in the communication and integration of SEL into school-wide strategies.

4. Instruct

The purpose of this principle is to consider social and emotional learning as you would any other subject area - as information and lessons worth explicit, planned instruction. With clear guidance, you will ensure that your students fully understand SEL content and expectations. Find step-by-step strategies and narrative examples in the guide.

Sample strategy: Explicitly teach protocols and procedures for handling challenging social situations. Recognize that time spent on topics such as conflict resolution counts as a "teachable moment" just as time spent on academic content.

5. Empower

This principle gets at the core of any social-emotional learning instructional plan: to empower students to take charge of their own social and emotional learning. It's about ensuring that students are supported and ready to take on the next phase of their academic and emotional lives with confidence.

Sample strategy: Provide data and feedback that students can use to modify and extend their own application of SEL strategies learned in the classroom.

Find the full guide below, or by clicking here:

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5 Guiding Principles of Social and Emotional Learning

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According to CASEL, social-emotional learning can be defined as: " the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions."

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Join groups on Facebook that support teachers

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Join groups on Facebook that support teachers

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1. Technology Teacher Tribe with Brittany Washburn
2. HS Teacher Helpline
3. Tech with Us Community
4. High School ELA Teacher Support Group
5. Teach with Tech
6. Creative High School English
7. #TeacherProblems
8. The Principal's Desk

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Republicans and Democrats both acknowledge the erosion of the middle-class. They differ on solutions to the problem. Left out of the public discourse discussion are the poor who, both parties seem to say, will do better if the middle-class is shored up.

Neither party has defined poverty as a moral concern. But it is a primary ethical matter once you take into account the impact that long-term poverty has on the lives of people, children in particular.

First, let's look at the facts in this country. In 2011, poverty levels stood at over 15%, the highest in twenty years. This is a measure of absolute, not relative poverty and is defined by the government as the "threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health."

Recent studies show that the brains of poor children are impacted by poverty. An historical example of this claim, given by Robert Sapolsky, a leading researcher from Stanford, demonstrates this dramatically. For many years, children's thymus glands were radiated to prevent SIDS (eventually causing thyroid cancer in thousands of adults). Physicians believed that the normal thymus in children should be small, which is what they saw in the children they dissected because the only bodies autopsied at the time were that of poor people,. In fact, the gland was small due to the stresses of poverty. The thymus gland in children normal children large and grows smaller with age.

In another study, Sapolsky wrote about the impact of stress upon the brains of poor children. The brains of poor children are atrophied. But was this because poverty causes small brains or people who are poor start out with smaller brains? Sapolksy thought the former, though conceded that his conclusions were tentative, as correlation doesn't prove causation.

But the mounting evidence is that the relationship between atrophied brains and stress is more than a correlation-it is causal. As a study at Boston Children's Hospital concludes, severe psychological and physical neglect produces measurable changes in children's brains.

Unfortunately, stress and poverty go hand-in-hand. More important than unhealthy lifestyles and lack of access to good healthcare, chronic stress makes many susceptible to cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, depression and diabetes. The impact upon the brain is seen with those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder: the hippocampus part of their brains is atrophied.

Chronic stress, which is experienced by many poor children, can be devastating since the hippocampus regulates emotional responses, is critical in the formation of memory and spatial awareness. (The impact of chronic stress is different than the reaction to acute stress, which may be beneficial by, for example, causing greater alertness and increased focus.)

Poor children experience high levels of stress because, amongst other reasons, they live in violent neighborhoods, walk across many busy vehicular intersections, move residences twice as often and get evicted five times as often as the average American, are more likely to be bullied in school.

So while changing eating habits of children is a good thing from every point of view, it will have a relatively small effect in making poor children healthier.

This isn't cause for despair, for it is possible to reverse the damaging effects of chronic stress in children. Sapolsky said that in rats, short-term exposure to glucocorticoids causes neurons to shrink, but they rebound when levels of the hormones return to normal. However, he notes that long-term exposure causes irreversible damage. http://news.stanford.edu/pr/96/960814shrnkgbrain.html

A recent study that looked at children in Romania who were transferred from orphanages to foster care reached the same conclusion. The brains of children in the orphanage were damaged but these changes can be partially reversed with quality foster care. One of the researchers, Margaret Sheridan, said, "Increasingly we are finding evidence that exposure to childhood adversity has a negative effect on brain development. The implications are wide ranging, not just for institutionalized children but also for children exposed to abuse, abandonment, violence during war, extreme poverty and other adversities." http://childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P896.html

It is easy to draw the wrong conclusion from these findings, as Sapolsky is well aware. He writes, "The psychosocial school has occasionally been accused of promulgating an anti-progressive message: don't bother with universal health care, affordable medicines and other salutary measures because there will still be a robust SES/health gradient after all the reforms. But the lesson of this research is not to abandon such societal change. It is that so much more is needed." https://www.georgiastandards.org/resources/Lexile_in_Action_CTAE/HS-IHS-...

True poverty (not that associated with recent immigrants, graduate students or religious ascetics) takes it toll on children. Society needs to intervene early by reducing stress to acceptable levels. Social change needs to be self-conscious and communal. It isn't a matter of one person being kind to another. It is a wholesale commitment to ensure that every children has the chance to live without chronic stress.

Here is Sapolsky once more: "Higher income inequality intensities a community's hierarchy and makes social support less available: truly symmetrical, reciprocal, affiliative support exists only among equals. Moreover, having your nose rubbed in your poverty is likely to lessen your sense of control in life, to aggravate the frustrations of poverty and to intensify the sense of life worsening . . . the surest way to feel poor is to be made to feel poor-to be endlessly made aware of the haves when you are a have-not. And in our global village, we are constantly made aware of the moguls and celebrities whose resources dwarf ours."

So, it turns out, part of the problem is income inequality. Addressing this problem is more likely to protect the brains of poor children than waiting for a recovering economy to provide more dollars in the pockets of the poor.

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Republicans and Democrats both acknowledge the erosion of the middle-class. They differ on solutions to the problem. Left out of the public discourse discussion are the poor who, both parties seem to say, will do better if the middle-class is shored up. Neither party has defined poverty as a moral concern.

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https://wilkesk12gaus-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/personal/kendrickkeanthony_wilkes_k12_ga_us/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7B2a2a046d-a8a8-403f-8b19-3ceb9a2416b6%7D&action=default&gad=504

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Georgia Young Author winner!!!

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