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This is just a basic cheat sheet for conducting socratic seminars.

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This was from another class but it would be very helpful for doing edTPA as it lists all of the Academic Language information.

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Article on Erikson's Stages of PsychoSocial Development

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Article on Erikson's Stages of PsychoSocial Development

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This article will be useful to reference back to on occasion as it teaches about the different things people are struggling with at different points of their life. It is incredibly nuanced, so it isn't the sort of thing you can learn once and continue applying to your teaching without referencing back to it.

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Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development Explained

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Explore the 8 stages of Erikson’s developmental theory, with resources.

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Scaffolding is an important part of teaching, it is a vital part of any classroom which hopes to challenge kids who are advanced in an area while simultaneously teaching students who are struggling with that concept. This is a very useful resource on how to create scaffolds for lesson plans.

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Definition of Scaffolding

Educational (or Instructional) Scaffolding is a teaching method that enables a student to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal through a gradual shedding of outside assistance. It was first coined by researchers David Wood (Nottingham), Jerome S. Bruner (Oxford), and Gail Ross (Harvard) in their 1976 report, "The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving."

According to its original definition, scaffolding enlists the instructor as an "activator" whose role is to facilitate the student's incremental mastery of a concept. "Fading" is the process of gradually removing the scaffolding that was put into place for the student until he internalizes the information and becomes a self-regulated, independent learner.

TTwo years after their initial report, in 1978, the researchers revisited the work of famed psychologist Lev Vygotsky and found reason to revise their definition. Vygotsky writes in "Mind and Society" (Harvard University Press) that there are two levels of learning that need to be recognized as distinct: 1) the actual developmental level, "that is, the level of development of a child's mental functions that has been established as a result of certain already completed developmental cycles"; and 2) the potential development level "as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." The difference between these two levels is called the student's "proximal zone of development."

Since 1978, scholars have come to agree that, in order for educational scaffolding to succeed, instructors needed to target each student's proximal zone of development. And, because a student's proximal zone of development continually changes as she gains knowledge, educational scaffolding must continue to be individualized accordingly.

The 1980s

In the 1980s, University of Albany-SUNY professors Arthur Applebee and Judith Langer expanded the theoretical practice of scaffolding to include the following five features:

Intentionality: The learning task is fueled by a clear overall purpose; any auxiliary activities contribute to this purpose.

Appropriateness: The learning tasks pose problems that require outside assistance but can eventually be mastered by the student alone.

Structure: Modeling and questioning activities engage a natural sequence of thought and language.

Collaboration: The instructor's response to student work recasts and expands upon the student's efforts without rejecting what she has accomplished on her own. The instructor's primary role remains collaborative rather than evaluative.

Internalization: External scaffolding for the learning task is gradually withdrawn as the student internalizes conceptual patterns.

Applebee and Langer took the theory formed by Wood et al. and Vygotsky and embedded it in a general framework of language-learning. Reading and writing, they claim in "Reading and Writing Instruction: Toward a Theory of Teaching and Learning," are extensions and reformulations of earlier language-learning processes: "One does not simply learn to read and write: one learns to read and write about particular things in particular ways." In comparing the language-learning scenario between an adult and a child to the task-learning scenario between an instructor and a student, Applebee and Langer make a case for discourse acquisition as a vital part of educational scaffolding, and vice versa.

The 1990s

With the next decade came a tighter focus on application theory. Five methods of Educational Scaffolding based on the work of Hogan and Presley (1997) were presented as follows:

modeling of desired behaviors

offering explanations

inviting students to participate

verifying and clarifying student understandings

inviting students to contribute clues

In 1999, Zhao and Orey argued that educational scaffolding could be analyzed for application through six general elements:

sharing a specific goal

whole task approach

immediate availability of help

intention assisting

optimal level of help

conveying an expert model

Sharing a Specific Goal

Although it is the instructor's responsibility to establish a shared goal, the learner's interests should be considered and catered to as much as possible throughout the lesson. Zhao and Orey suggest achieving this through intersubjectivity, or the sharing of intentions, perceptions, feelings and conceptions; assessing the goal in terms of the student's prior knowledge; being aware of some of the unique, unusual, and often ineffective problem-solving techniques that students use; and allowing input from the student in order to enhance intrinsic motivation.

Whole Task Approach

The Whole Task Approach spotlights the overall goal to be attained through the learning task. The task is conceptualized as a whole instead of defined by the elements that make it up. This does not mean that the elements are ignored or rendered irrelevant; rather, each feature of the lesson is presented as it relates to the whole. This approach demands less cognitive effort than its alternative, since the overall concept is reinforced with every feature instead of grasped as a final conclusion. The approach is not effective, however, if the material strays too far beyond the student's proximal zone of development.

Immediate Availability of Help

If a student is unable to carry out a task on her own, how is she supposed to remain motivated or interested if she doesn't receive assistance in an efficient manner? Students experience far less discouragement and frustration if someone is there to help them proceed with the learning process. Any success of an instructor is a success of a student, and enhances her drive to learn more (and more independently).

Intention-assisting

Inherent in the scaffolding process is the act of understanding a student's present focus (another way to view their zone of proximal development). In order to provide an optimally productive learning environment, educators must relate and confer information according to the student's own current intentions.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to redirect the intentions of the learner if she does not have an effective strategy for completing the task. If her current strategy is effective, however, the instructor should not try to change it. It is the essence of scaffolding to help the learner proceed with the least amount of assistance possible.

Optimal Level of Help

The learner should be given just enough guidance to overcome her current obstacle; the level of assistance should not deter the learner from contributing and participating in the learning process. In other words, the instructor should only offer guidance through the areas of a task that the student cannot accomplish on her own. No intervention should be made if the current task is within the learner's grasp.

Conveying an Expert Model

A task can be demonstrated with an expert model, either explicitly or implicitly. In an explicit demonstration, the expert model clearly conveys how to accomplish the task. In an implicit demonstration, the information is outlined around (or implied by) the expert model.

The 2000s

Several methods of educational scaffolding were introduced in the 2000s.

Based on the work of Hogan and Presley, educational strategist Verna Leigh Lange stated in her 2002 article on Instructional Scaffolding that there are two major steps involved in the process: (1) "development of instructional plans to lead the students from what they already know to a deep understanding of new material," and (2) "execution of the plans, wherein the instructor provides support to the students at every step of the learning process."

Larkin (2002) suggested that teachers could employ the following effective techniques in scaffolding:

First, boost your students' confidence. To improve self-efficacy, begin by introducing students to tasks they can perform with little or no assistance. Provide enough assistance to allow students to achieve success quickly. This will help lower frustration levels and ensure that students remain motivated to advance to the next step. This will also help guard against students giving up due to repeated failures.

Second, help students "fit in." Students may actually work harder if they feel as if they resemble their peers. Avoid boredom. Once a skill is learned, don't overwork it. Look for clues that the learner is mastering the task. Scaffolding should be removed gradually and then removed completely when mastery of the task is demonstrated.

Application

General

Facilitative tools:

Break the task into smaller more, manageable parts.

Use 'think alouds', or verbalizing thinking processes, when completing a task.

Use cooperative learning, which promotes teamwork and dialogue among peers.

Use concrete prompts, questioning, coaching, cue cards, or modeling.

Other tools might include activating background knowledge and offering tips, strategies, cues, and procedures.

(The following example scenarios have been adapted from "Scaffolding" by Lipscomb, Swanson, and West of the University of Georgia.)
Pre-school

Morelock, Brown, and Morrissey (2003) noted in their study that mothers adapt their instruction to the perceived abilities of their children. By modeling or prompting the typical behaviors of their children (or behaviors slightly more mature than typical), mothers "scaffold" their guidance in an effort to engage them.

For instance, a very young child is playing with blocks by stacking them on top of each other. The mother attracts the child's attention and models how to "build" a wall or bridge by stacking them in a different way and using a toy person or truck to climb the wall or ride over the bridge. She then watches and assists as needed until the child appropriates the skill or loses interest and moves on to something else. She will try again the next time the child is playing with the blocks or try another construction which she feels will be more attractive to the child.

The study further suggests that the mother will adapt her scaffolding behavior to the needs of her child. If she sees that the child is imaginative and creative, she will then scaffold beyond the apparent skill level exhibited. Conversely, if she perceives that the child is less attentive or exhibits behaviors which are not easy to decipher, she will then demonstrate new skills instead of extensions to the skills already present. The authors suggest that this could be a possible early indicator for giftedness.

An elementary math teacher is introducing the addition of two digit numbers. She first solicits the students' interest by using a "hook" such as an interesting story or situation. Then she reduces the number of steps for initial success by modeling, verbally talking through the steps as she works and allowing the students to work with her on the sample problems.

An overhead projector is a great tool for this activity because the teacher is able to face the class while she works the problems. She can then pick up non-verbal cues from the class as she works. The students' interest is held by asking them to supply two digit numbers for addition, playing "Stump the Teacher." She takes this opportunity for further modeling of the skills and verbally presenting the process as she works through these problems.

The students are then allowed to work several problems independently as the teacher watches and provides assistance where needed. The success rate is increased by providing these incremental opportunities for success. Some students may require "manipulatives" to solve the problems and some may require further "talking through" the procedures. These strategies may be applied individually or in small groups.

More challenging problems can then be added to the lesson. Further explicit modeling and verbalization will be required. Some students will be able to work independently while some will require more assistance and scaffolding. The teacher will begin to fade the scaffolding as soon as she is sure that the students can effectively function alone.

Banaszynski (2000) provides another example of instructional scaffolding in his article about a project in which a group of eighth-grade history students in Wisconsin examined the Revolutionary War from two points of view-American and British. He began by guiding his students as they undertook a sequential series of activities in order to thoroughly investigate the opposing reactions to causes of the war. Then students contributed to a class timeline which detailed causes, actions and reactions. Banaszynski describes how work continued:

" After the timeline was completed, the students were arranged in groups, and each group did a critical analysis of primary-source material, focusing on the efforts each side made to avoid the war. This started students thinking about what the issues were and how each side handled them. The next step was to ask a question: Did the colonists have legitimate reasons for going to war against Great Britain? [I] asked each group to choose either the Patriot or Loyalist position and spend a day searching the Internet for primary sources and other materials to support their positions."

The instructor continued scaffolding by interviewing the groups to probe for misconceptions, need for redirection, and re-teaching. Students later compared research and wrote essays that were analyzed and evaluated by fellow students using rubrics; groups then composed essays that included the strongest arguments from the individual works.

The project, Banaszynski says, was an enormous success; students began the unit working as individuals reliant upon him for instruction. As work proceeded, the feedback framework was altered so that students were guiding each other and, in turn, themselves. Banaszynski's role in guiding the research and leading the reporting activities faded as the project continued and requirements became more complicated. As a result, students were able to appreciate their mastery of both materials and skills.

Adult and Higher Education

Kao, Lehman, & Cennamo (1996) postulated that scaffolds could be embedded in hypermedia or multimedia software to provide students with support while using the software. They realized that soft scaffolds are dynamic, situation-specific aids provided by a teacher or peer while hard scaffolds are static and specific. Thus, hard scaffolds can be anticipated and planned based on typical student difficulties with a task. With these two aspects in mind, they developed a piece of software called "Decision Point" and tested it with a group of students.

They embedded three types of hard scaffolds: conceptual scaffolds, specific strategic scaffolds, and procedural scaffolds. The conceptual scaffolds assisted the students in organizing their ideas and connecting them to related information. The specific strategic scaffolds were included to help the students ask more specific questions and the procedural scaffolds were useful to clarify specific tasks such as presentations. Examples of these types of embedded scaffolds include: interactive essays, recommended documents, student guides, student journal, and storyboard templates.

This type of software would be very useful in higher education and adult learning because it is portable, could be used asynchronously, and allows the learners more independence. One or two initial face-to-face sessions would be required to teach the basics, establish learning communities and relate the class expectations and timeline. The students could then proceed at their pace while working within the framework of their group and the class expectations. The instructor would provide feedback to groups and individuals, be available for assistance and scaffold specific students at their point of need.

If software with built in scaffolds is not available, then the instructor could provide a similar environment by having an open classroom in which the students are provided with the expectations and a timeline at the onset. They may then choose to attend face-to-face classes, work independently, or work in groups. The more knowledgeable students, as well as the instructor, could then provide scaffolding in and out of the classroom. The hard scaffolds could be provided with textbooks and references and links on the class website. The instructor would still provide feedback on assignments and class work, be available for assistance, and scaffold specific individuals or groups at their point of need.

Appropriately, more responsibility is placed on the adult learner. Motivation comes from within and is based on the learner's goals and objectives such as advanced degrees, career opportunities, and increased pay. Ultimately, the learner assumes a dual role in that they are students and peer instructors as they scaffold their classmates.

Challenges and Benefits

As with any other learning theory or strategy, there are challenges and benefits to educational scaffolding. Understanding and comparing both will assist the educational professional or trainer in their assessment of the usefulness of the strategies and techniques as well as allow for comprehensive planning before implementation. The challenges are real but can be overcome with careful planning and preparation.
Challenges:

Very time consuming

Lack of sufficient personnel

Potential for misjudging the zone of proximal development; success hinges on identifying the area that is just beyond but not too far beyond students' abilities

Inadequately modeling the desired behaviors, strategies or activities because the teacher has not fully considered the individual student's needs, predilections, interests, and abilities (such as not showing a student how to "double click" on an icon when using a computer)

Full benefits not seen unless the instructors are properly trained

Requires the teacher to give up control as fading occurs

Lack of specific examples and tips in teacher's editions of textbooks

When assessing the benefits of scaffolding, it is necessary to consider the context in which you wish to implement the strategies and techniques. Additionally, you must know the learners and evaluate their particular needs first.
Benefits:

Possible early identifier of giftedness

Provides individualized instruction

Greater assurance of the learner acquiring the desired skill, knowledge or ability

Provides differentiated instruction

Delivers efficiency - Since the work is structured, focused, and glitches have been reduced or eliminated prior to initiation, time on task is increased and efficiency in completing the activity is increased.

Creates momentum - Through the structure provided by scaffolding, students spend less time searching and more time on learning and discovering resulting in quicker learning

Engages the learner

Motivates the learner to learn

Minimizes the level of frustration for the learner

References

Applebee, A.N., & Langer, J. (1983). Instructional scaffolding: Reading and writing as natural language activities. Language Arts, 60(2), 168-175.

Banaszynski, J. (2000). Teaching the American Revolution: Scaffolding to success. retrieved February 10, 2004, from Education World: The Educator's Best Friend Web site: https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr218.shtml.

Benson, B. (1997). Scaffolding (Coming to Terms). English Journal, 86(7), 126-127.

Hogan, K., & Pressley, M. (Eds.). (1997). Scaffolding student learning: Instructional approaches and issues. Cambridge, MA: Brookline.

Lange, V. L. (2002). Instructional scaffolding. Retrieved on September 25, 2007 from https://condor.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/~group4/Cano/Cano%20Paper.doc

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wood, D., Bruner, J.S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Psychology and Psychiatry. 17.

Zhao, R., & Orey, M. (1999). The scaffolding process: Concepts, features, and empirical studies. Unpublished manuscript. University of Georgia.
https://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Scaffolding#Vygotsky.E2.80.99s_Zone_of_Proximal_Development

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Instructional Scaffolding: A Definitive Guide | InformED

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Educational (or Instructional) Scaffolding is a teaching method that enables a student to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal through a gradual shedding of outside assistance. It was first coined by researchers David Wood (Nottingham), Jerome S.

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This is an article about Metacognitive Strategies which teachers should incorporate into their classroom. It also includes 8 links to other articles.

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Metacognitive strategies refers to methods used to help students understand the way they learn; in other words, it means processes designed for students to 'think' about their 'thinking'.

Teachers who use metacognitive strategies can positively impact students who have learning disabilities by helping them to develop an appropriate plan for learning information, which can be memorized and eventually routine. As students become aware of how they learn, they will use these processes to efficiently acquire new information, and consequently, become more of an independent thinker. Below are three metacognitive strategies, which all include related resources, that can be implemented in the classroom:

Think Aloud

Great for reading comprehension and problem solving. Think-alouds help students to consciously monitor and reflect upon what they are learning. This strategy works well when teachers read a story or problem out loud and periodically stop to verbalize their thoughts. This allows students to follow the teacher's thinking process, which gives them the foundation they need for creating their own strategies and processes that can be useful for understanding what they are trying to comprehend.

Related Resource: readwritethink.org (High quality practices in reading and language arts instruction. Type "think-aloud" in the search button for lesson plans)

Checklist, Rubrics and Organizers

Great for solving word problems. These organizational tools support students in the decision-making process because they serve as an aid for planning and self-evaluation. Typically they ask what students know and need to know to arrive at an answer, and emphasize the need to reread the problem and self-check responses.

Visit Stetson & Associates, Inc. Differentiated Instruction Resources page for free rubrics and strategies

Explicit Teacher Modeling

Great for math instruction. Explicit teacher modeling helps students understand what is expected of them through a clear example/model of a skill or concept. When a teacher provides a easy to follow procedure for solving a problem, students have a memorable strategy to use for approaching a problem on their own.

Related Resource: http://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/sped/mathvids/index.html (Interactive website for teachers who are teaching mathematics to struggling learners)

Reading Comprehension

Truly comprehending reading involves students actively engaging with a text and accurately deciphering the layers of meaning. It is very important for students to develop solid reading comprehension skills because statistics show that people who have low reading comprehension ability suffer in academic, professional, and personal pursuits. The resources in this guide from supersummary.com are effective strategies for promoting reading comprehension.
Ultimate Guide to Reading Comprehension from SuperSummary

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Metacognitive strategies refers to methods used to help students understand the way they learn; in other words, it means processes designed for students to 'think' about their 'thinking'. Teachers who use metacognitive strategies can positively impact students who have learning disabilities by helping them to develop an appropriate plan for learning information, which can be memorized and eventually routine.

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My younger brother passed away during my freshman year at BYU, and absolutely consumed by grief, I flunked the semester it happened. As much as we hope it won't happen, the reality is that some of my students are going to experience losses of that caliber. This podcast gave a couple of interesting strategies for navigating the worst parts of grief.

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The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.
Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the 1960s, the psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was studying patients with terminal illnesses. She noticed a pattern as they came to terms with their mortality. The patients seemed to go through different psychological phases. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross eventually classified these phases into what she called the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The five stages were intuitively appealing and offered people a way to understand a complex experience. Very quickly, the simplicity of this framework began to seep into popular culture, books, TV shows, and later countless YouTube videos.Youtube Video on Grief: Your mind is protecting you by completely denying the reality. Numbness may follow. It's nature's way of letting you deal only with your emotions that you're capable of handling.Shankar Vedantam: As often happens, a system that was designed to be descriptive became prescriptive. The five stages, translated into popular culture, morphed into a model that told people they should expect to feel certain emotions and that their experience of grief would be a journey from one stage to the next.Youtube Video on Grief: Finally, five is acceptance. It's the fifth stage, and this is the end game here. And it is the result of all the stages of your grief.Shankar Vedantam: Over time, the five-stage model of grief became so ingrained in people's minds that new insights, based on rigorous research, did not get as much airtime. For decades, the popular understanding of what we feel when we grieve was largely drawn from the five stages model.Lucy Hone: Anyone who's ever been bereaved will know that people tell you about them, they expect you to go through them. And pretty quickly I became frustrated with them, because I don't want to be told what I'm going to feel. I am desperate to know what I can do to help us all adapt to this terrible loss.Shankar Vedantam: Today, we bring you the story of a researcher who's understanding of grief was transformed by a devastating experience in her own life. The surprisingly powerful technique she learned to cope with tragedy, this week on Hidden Brain.Shankar Vedantam: Lucy Hone is a researcher of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, 2010. She was living near Christchurch when it was struck by a powerful earthquake. The disaster, and a series of aftershocks, killed 185 people and destroyed most of downtown Christchurch. Thousands of people lost their homes. Lucy had just returned from graduate school in the United States. She was about to embark on a PhD. Her area of study, resilience. Given the disaster unfolding around her, Lucy rolled up her sleeves and started applying what she had already learned to help the people around her. One day, during a powerful aftershock, Lucy was standing outside her home, which was perched on the cliffs, overlooking the city.Lucy Hone: And I just stood there looking down on our village and I could see the children's school there. And I could see them all lining up, obviously, being looked after and counted. But what was so awful for me was that I could also see the cliffs on the other side of the village, really close to them, less than a mile away from them, tumbling down in front of them. So it was a pretty scary moment in my life.Shankar Vedantam: The Christchurch earthquakes lasted for more than a year. Residents lived in a constant state of anxiety, not knowing when the next tremor would strike. At one point, Lucy was giving a talk on resilience to survivors, when a woman in the audience raised her hand and described a problem she was having.Lucy Hone: She just said to me, "I'm startling all the time. I just am so jumpy every time someone crashes a saucepan lid, I seem to jump in the air and my heart is pounding and what do I do about that? And I said, "Firstly, does anyone else feel like that?" And the whole room lifted up their hands. So I think it was a real moment of collective resonance when we all realized that we had exactly the same startle reaction from those ever-present earthquakes. You just never knew whether you were safe and you never knew when the next one was going to come, so that kind of hypervigilance was pretty omnipresent.Shankar Vedantam: The problem was some of this hypervigilance, it was totally justified.Lucy Hone: Because we had over 10,000 aftershocks and five or six really major events. One of those was on Boxing Day, and I had taken my two sons and a friend visiting from England over to one of the big malls to the Boxing Day sales. And we were all just sitting there afterwards, having something to eat in one of the cafes and suddenly the whole mall started shaking. And so we got under the tables and all the cups of tea were being knocked over. But it really terrified us. And I remember locking eyes with my eldest son and that was probably the moment that we realized that these earthquakes weren't going to go away. That actually we were probably now in for a pretty rocky ride.Shankar Vedantam: So I want to fast forward a couple of years. In the summer of 2014, this is a couple of years after the earthquakes. I think you're still working on your PhD at this point. You organized a family beach vacation. It was several hours from your home and you were planning to go with two other families. You and your husband, and two teenage sons drove together. I understand your daughter, Abi, went with another family?Lucy Hone: Yes, that's right. So my friend Sally and I had arranged a family getaway on a long weekend in June. And at the last minute Sally's daughter, Ella, who was the same age as Abi, just 12 years old at the time, phoned up to say, "Hey, can Abi come with us in the car?" They were great girlfriends and always together. So we thought nothing of it and said, "Yeah, absolutely. You hop in with her." And we dropped Abi off and went on our way. And we had a four-hour journey ahead of us and they didn't turn up later, when they should have done, but we didn't really think anything of it at the time.Shankar Vedantam: Lucy and her family went to a local restaurant and sat down to dinner. Abi still hadn't arrived, but they were not too worried. The family Abi was traveling with had probably just gotten stuck in traffic.Lucy Hone: And so we just carried on having dinner without them. And then the hotel owner came and said to us, "There's a policeman on the phone for you and he'd like to speak to one of you."Shankar Vedantam: When Lucy's husband Trevor got on the phone, the police officer didn't say why he wanted to talk. He only said he needed to drive out to meet them.Lucy Hone: I think he said, "There's been an accident and I need to come out and talk with you in person." That was the defining moment. That was when I remember Trevor looking across at me and saying, "He's coming to see us and he wouldn't say anymore, but they don't bring you good news, do they?" And so we hunkered down in the lodge's office with the manager, who we did know through other families who knew her. And so that was reasonably comfortable being with her. But actually the whole experience, of course, was anything but comfortable. And I remember pacing the room and possibly it was about a 20 minute wait. He'd come from the local police station that just isn't very local, so we had an agonizing wait.Shankar Vedantam: When the police officer finally arrived, he had an odd question about Abi's shoes.Lucy Hone: He asked me what she was wearing and probably like any mother I knew exactly what my dear daughter was wearing and so I told him.Shankar Vedantam: Abi was wearing black Converse, Chuck Taylor high tops.Lucy Hone: And he said to me, "In that case, I'm sorry to tell you that was your daughter in the accident. And I tragically have to tell you that she has died." And he also told us that Sally, my friend, had been killed and Sally's beautiful daughter, Ella, who was such dear friends with our Abi, had also died. So all of them had been hit by a car who drove through a stop sign and plowed into them.Shankar Vedantam: It's hard to even imagine what you were going through at this point, Lucy. This is, literally, every parent's worst nightmare, but this nightmare was actually happening to you. Did you have a sense of being able to process what was going on and were you in shock?Lucy Hone: I was definitely in shock. I think it is a bit of an outer-body experience. You can almost observe yourself going through the process. I remember the physical sensations of feeling sick and sweating and we drank so much water. I remember that. And I remember pacing. I couldn't stay anywhere. I remember getting on the floor, getting up, walking around. You don't know what to do in that moment. I remember calling my sister and not being able to get through to her and then calling every member of her family and it turned out they were all together in a bar and they suddenly realized that something awful had happened, because they'd all had these missed calls. And I remember the other people in the lodge and feeling sorry for them thinking, "Oh, this is such an awful thing for you to watch." So you have, I think, odd thoughts, but actually what I remember Shankar, most of all is this feeling that was our new life story and that her death would be part of our life story for the remainder of our days.Shankar Vedantam: That night, the police drove Lucy and her family to a hospital in Christchurch.Lucy Hone: Where we then met my sister and her family, which was just a terrible moment. You can imagine family collective grief. And we were asked to go and identify the body and my dear son, Paddy, said to his dad, "Come on, dad, we've got to go and do it." Just awful moments. We went home at 5:00 or 6:00 AM and all just walked back into the house and sat there in disbelief. I do remember in those first hours and days, to be honest, feeling like I was on autopilot and that people were moving me around, standing behind me, pointing my shoulders in the direction I had to go. It was just staggering, really numb. And you're just in disbelief. I think that is the thing, isn't it? That when it comes out of the blue, your world has been smashed apart. Nothing makes sense. And you're just struggling and grappling to get through each hour. And, honestly, I remember those awful grief sweats and not sleeping. It was just awful.Shankar Vedantam: I understand that at one point soon after Abi's death, a couple of grief counselors came to your home. Do you remember what they told you?Lucy Hone: I do. We had a few people come and give us well-meaning advice. And really what stands out for me is that I remember them saying to me, "You're going to need to write five years of your life off to this grief. You're really not going to be able to function for the next five years." And that we were now prime candidates for divorce, family, estrangement and mental illness. And, honestly, I remember thinking, "Wow. I thought my life was already truly terrible. I can't believe that people are dumping all this on us as well." And I was horrified. So I remember someone talking to me about the fact that they'd lost a brother who had died and then he said, "And, to be honest, I don't really speak to my other brother any longer. His death tore our family apart." And I remember thinking, "Okay, right. That's something else I'm going to have to watch out for."Shankar Vedantam: The friends and counselors, obviously, meant well, but after they left, Lucy felt worse. It wasn't just that they were telling her that her life was terrible. They also seemed to be telling her that there was nothing she could do about it. When we come back, Lucy started to wonder if that was true. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden, Brain I'm Shankar Vedantam. Lucy Hone is a public health researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She studies resilience. In the summer of 2014, Lucy experienced every parent's greatest nightmare. Her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash. Before the accident, Lucy had been helping survivors of the Christchurch earthquakes. Suddenly she needed help, herself. Lucy, you've described a moment soon after the accident when you found yourself standing in your bedroom asking yourself a question and the question was, "Can I go on?" Can you describe that moment to me?Lucy Hone: Yes. It was my darkest, bleakest moment, I think, where I did have a sense that it all felt just too hard. Every day it felt like we were climbing a mountain and we never got to the top. Every day you'd be put down to the bottom and have to start the whole thing again. It was exhausting and I lost hope. And I'm a pretty hopeful person, and so I think that is a moment that really stands out for me.Shankar Vedantam: So something that many people don't realize is that grief isn't just in the mind, as you say, it's physically exhausting.Lucy Hone: It certainly is honestly physically exhausting. I did a lot of sleeping. And, of course, sleep gives you a temporary break as well from the thinking, because it just goes round and round in your head. And I was lucky that I could sleep and that our boys were of an age where I could go to bed at any time of day, if it was all too much. And I knew, because of my training, the importance of sleep as well.Shankar Vedantam: I understand that you had conversations at this time with your husband where you were running through what-if scenarios regarding Abi? Do you remember what they were about, Lucy?Lucy Hone: We once sat down on the rocks, we live by the beach, and we sat there and, yes, having those kinds of what if we hadn't arranged that weekend to go away? And what if we hadn't let her in the car, but then we also said to each other, she didn't suffer. We didn't have to sit, like so many parents, at her bedside for weeks and months and watch the life drain out of her. We took some comfort from the fact that she died instantly and wouldn't have known what was happening to her. And so, in that sense, we were just trying to help each other focus on the bits that weren't so terrible.Shankar Vedantam: At the same time, I think this is really revealing about people's grief journeys, in general, which is that very often when grief strikes a family, the people whom you would normally turn to for help are also suffering and that can really make it difficult to find your way out, because everyone around you is also being weighed down by this thing.Lucy Hone: It's so true Shankar and everybody grieves differently. And my mother had died when I was 30 and Trevor lost his father when he was 12, so we had both experienced grief before, but we were very aware that we have two 14- and 15-year-old beautiful boys who were, obviously, processing it in a different way to their parents. And then we had all Abi's friends. We live in a small family community and so we had all of them. And we weren't just one family, but two families. And so there was a real sense of collective grief. They lost two girls from the local primary and one of the moms. And particularly so soon after the earthquakes.Shankar Vedantam: You say that grief had a way of sneaking up on you. You call these grief ambushes. What do you mean by that term?Lucy Hone: Honestly, the awful aspect of grief is that you just can't control the emotions and in the least likely moments, they seem to absolutely take hold of you. And so whether it was sitting at the traffic lights, or once I write about how I went to the supermarket, which, because it had fallen down in the earthquakes, we didn't have a local supermarket for some time five or six years. So it wasn't until after Abi died that they reopened the local supermarket. And I swanned in there thinking, "Fabulous. It's back, how good is this?!" And I just got to the aisle that had her favorite snacks in it and just stood there and dissolved. And it just took me back to so many times when her little kindergarten was across the road and we'd come there after kindy and she'd buy her favorite bits and we were always together. And I just stood there and thought, "Oh, seriously." This is literally that grief ambush that overwhelms you and we're almost powerless to do anything about it. And it was okay for me, because I was in a quiet supermarket aisle at the time. But when it happens at work, that's just, it's a really tough, challenging aspect of grief.Shankar Vedantam: So the grief counselor and others told you that the next five years of your life are going to be consumed by grief, that you were prime candidates for divorce and estrangement, mental illness. You also heard about the five stages of grief. What was the conventional wisdom about the five stages of grief, Lucy?Lucy Hone: So I think, to be fair, like most people, I was aware of those five stages. Like most people, I could probably name three of them, but when people started telling me about them and, boy, anyone who's ever been bereaved will know that people tell you about them. They expect you to go through them. And pretty quickly I became frustrated with them, because I didn't feel anger and animosity towards the driver. I knew that that was a terrible mistake, but he didn't do it intentionally. And I wasn't in denial. From the very first moment, as I've said, I remember thinking, "Okay, this is my job now. My mission is to survive this." And so they didn't fit with my experience. But the other aspect that quickly frustrated me about the five stages is that I just found them too passive. It's reasonably helpful to be told that you might feel depression and acceptance, or anger and denial and all of these different things. But actually it was like, "I don't want to be told what I'm going to feel. I am desperate to know what I can do to help us all adapt to this terrible loss."Shankar Vedantam: I'm struck by the fact that at a certain point in your journey of grief over Abi's death, you were thinking like a researcher or starting to ask yourself whether you, yourself, could be almost a research subject, that you're studying yourself. You're observing yourself. You're thinking of your own experience, not just as a person going through the experience, but like a scientist. Did you have a moment of epiphany when you realized, in some ways, that you could become your own research subject on this topic?Lucy Hone: I think I did. I think it's fair to say that, yes, it was kind of an epiphany, "Aha moment." And it is also who I am. I am a researcher and I'm a mom and a wife. And so you're always... We all wear multiple hats, don't we? It's just that mine happened to be that I was experiencing this devastating loss and curious about my experiences, simultaneously. And that was the kind of aha moment that I was doing this internally, kind of observing my loss and my reaction to it. And then I thought, "Well, what I'm really curious about is we have all these tools from resilience psychology, which have been shown to help people cope with potentially traumatic events. Well, how useful are they when they are brought to the context of bereavement?" And so that's been the question that I've been really exploring ever since Abi died.Shankar Vedantam: Pondering this question gave her the space to analyze how her own mind was responding to grief. When she noticed something about how she was coping, she reserved judgment about what it meant. When she engaged in what-if scenarios? What if she hadn't allowed Abi to drive with the other family? What if she hadn't planned a beach vacation? She noticed how these thoughts made her feel. She paid attention to how she felt after getting exercise or a good night's sleep. In other words, she started behaving like a scientist. She eventually discovered there were things that made her feel better and things that made her feel worse. She came up with a series of techniques that gave her a measure of control over her grief.Lucy Hone: I distinctly remember standing in the kitchen thinking, "Seriously, Lucy, choose life, not death. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost."Shankar Vedantam: You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Lucy Hone is a public health researcher at the University of Canterbury. After her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a traffic crash, Lucy tracked her own bereavement process closely. She realized that she, herself, did not follow the five stages of grief. She also realized that we are wrong when we think grief is only something that happens to us. While it's true that grieving people do not feel they have much control over their emotions, there were things she could do to change the way she felt. They were active choices she could make. These choices did not erase her grief. That was neither possible nor healthy. But they did allow her to feel like she could manage it. The first step was to realize there was a difference between her reaction to grief and her response to it.Lucy Hone: So your grief reaction, you have very little control over, and that is all those physical symptoms that occur when we are bereaved. And, for me, that was that aching right in my solar plexus and the grief sweats, those awful nighttime sweats, and then torrid roller coaster of emotions. So it's really hard to control those and we call that grief reaction. But we do also have the grief response, which is about how we choose to respond to the grief. And that is about the ways of thinking and acting and the micro-choices we make all day long, which can really help or harm our grief. And so while grief reaction, we have little control, grief response is pervaded with choice.Shankar Vedantam: As Lucy started to analyze her own grief like a scientist, she stumbled on the work of Columbia University researcher, George Bonanno.Lucy Hone: Well, certainly George Bonanno's work is really comforting. And what he discovered was that actually most people get through grief on their own without needing any kind of medication or clinical intervention. And so this really gave me hope. And the other great researchers in this field a§are Struber and Schut, whose oscillation theory I came across, which is a different model of grief that says that we need to approach our grief. And then it's okay to withdraw, take a break from grief. And that's not avoidance and denial, but actually a really healthy way to grieve.Shankar Vedantam: You're talking about the researchers, Margaret Struber and Henk Schut. Describe for me, again, what they meant by this term oscillation, because you found both yourself going through this, but also in some ways deciding to pursue yourself.Lucy Hone: Yes. I think it made sense to me. So their theory of oscillation is that we oscillate between approaching our grief and then taking a break from it. But we also oscillate between attending to these two different types of grief. One is loss-oriented and the other is restoration-oriented, meaning that you fluctuate between coping with the loss, the actual, for me, Abi and how much I missed her. And then the restoration bit is about, "And who am I now? And how will I learn to live without her and her place in the family? And how am I going to get back to work and go to the supermarket and face my friends?" So you ebb and flow between these two processes. And it's a real, dynamic process. What resonated for me was that we needed to take breaks from our grieving process. And actually that's where positive emotion can come in too.Shankar Vedantam: When Lucy first confronted Abi's death, grief felt like an impassable mountain looming before her. When she was told she was a prime candidate for divorce or mental illness, that mountain grew larger. But when she started looking at the scientific evidence, she discovered cause for hope. While a small minority of people do get stuck in grief, the majority recover and regain healthy levels of psychological functioning. When Lucy chose to spend time away from her grief, this wasn't denial. Her brain was doing the perfectly healthy thing of oscillating between attending to grief and attending to recovery. Lucy also arrived at a third insight.Lucy Hone: I know from resilience psychology that it's really important to choose where you focus your attention. And so I absolutely had this voice in my head that would be aware if I was bargaining. If I started to do that "What if I hadn't booked that weekend away? What if we had just left? They just left 10 minutes later that day." And then I'd think to myself, "You're only allowed to have two what ifs." So once I'd done one "What if we hadn't booked..." Actually, I booked the holiday the weekend away, so "What if I hadn't booked it? And what if we hadn't allowed her into the car that day." And then I'd do another one and I'd think, "Nope, that's your limit. Go and distract yourself, because anymore what ifs are going to be harming you and you need to survive this." And so I would distract myself by phoning somebody else or doing something that really demanded my attention.Shankar Vedantam: This was part of a larger idea, borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy. As thoughts went through her mind, she started to ask herself a simple question, "Is this thought good for me or bad for me?" An important fork in the road came when Lucy and her husband were asked to attend the trial of the driver who had run the stop sign and T-boned the car in which Abi was riding. Lucy asked herself, "Would going to the trial be good for me or bad for me?"Lucy Hone: Grief is full of choices. And so when we were invited to go to the trial, I used a strategy that encourages you to ask yourself "Is doing that going to help me or harm me in my quest to survive this loss?" And so Trevor and I both agreed that we didn't want to go to the trial, that actually that wasn't going to help us. I just didn't need to be standing in the same room as the driver. At that time, I needed to focus my energy and attention elsewhere. And that was on the boys, so in fact, we went instead to their school just that day to meet with the teachers and just check in with them, because they'd just been back at school about three weeks, I think. And that felt like a much better use of my time. And I distinctly know that what I appreciated was that I was putting myself in the driver's seat and taking back a bit of control.Shankar Vedantam: So in some ways I think what I hear you saying is that when people are experiencing grief, partly what we almost expect them to do is we expect them to follow scripts. And sometimes we provide scripts to them and say, here's what you're supposed to feel, and here's what comes next, and here's what comes before this, and here's what you're supposed to do after this. And in some ways, by taking back that narrative, you can start to make choices that in some ways craft your own journey. And it may be that the choice that you make is different than the choice that your husband makes, but it's important that each of you exercises the agency to make the choice that in some ways is the best fit for your mental makeup and your psychological well being.Lucy Hone: Yeah. That's completely it. That we all grieve differently. Grief is as individual as your fingerprint. There's actually very little evidence that says that we go through those five stages. They have been perpetuated, because they're a tidy model and health practitioners and people, they are drawn to the fact that when people are grieving and it's such a torrid time that if they can just give them met tidy five-stage model, then maybe that makes them feel better and it's easier for the health practitioners to give this model. But actually grief's not like that. It's messy and untidy. And in our work, people rarely say that they go through those stages.Shankar Vedantam: I'm wondering if there are other choices you found yourself having to make, where you could ask yourself the question, "Is this going to be good for me or is this going to be bad for me?"Lucy Hone: Absolutely. It became my go-to strategy. And I'd often find myself... Of course, I'm weak willed like everybody and I'd find myself trolling through Instagram late at night, looking at pictures of Abi and noticing the comments that her friends have put on there. And I do that for a few minutes and then think, "Seriously, Lucy, is this helping or is it harming you. Be kind to yourself. Put your phone away and go to bed." And I so often did find those things, looking at photos, even just hanging out with her friends. As I say, we're a pretty small community, so I would bump into her friends and sometimes that would be good and other times I'd think, "No, that's actually not what you need right now. That's not going to be good for you. So just walk back out of the supermarket and come back later," or whatever it was. But it was definitely my practical question that enabled me to find my own pathway through grief.Shankar Vedantam: It's worth pointing out that I think that what you did is not easy to do. It really is easy to get angry. It does feel natural to engage in what ifs. These are human reactions. And I want to flag that while making conscious choices about what to focus on does make sense, that doesn't mean that it's always easy to do.Lucy Hone: No, and I would totally agree with that. And I always make that point of saying to people, "This isn't easy, but it is possible." And I think it comes down to, for me, my motivation for survival was huge, because we had lived through every parent's worst nightmare and I felt like the stakes were pretty high and that almost made that easier to stick to the two what-if's rule, because I felt like if I didn't, the grief could completely consume me. And so that's not saying that I'm in denial, because I certainly did grieve. And I'm all for experiencing all kinds of emotions and I didn't want to shut them out, but I definitely wanted to find my way and wallowing in things that are beyond my control was not helpful to me. And, as I say, I felt like the fight was on for survival.Shankar Vedantam: Lucy thought back to her days as a graduate student studying resilience at the University of Pennsylvania. At one point, her professors worked with the U.S. military to develop a resilience training program for a million soldiers. That program was based on the same underlying idea, "Pay attention to where you pay attention."Lucy Hone: There was very much that cognitive focus that you need to be aware of the way your thoughts and actions are combining. And really question whether the ways you are thinking and acting are working for you or working against you. And so they did lots of that sort of took positive psychology, this field of being strengths-based and put that into a package so that they could train the drill sergeants, who then in turn could train all of the rest of the army.Shankar Vedantam: And I love the phrase that they used in this training, which was "Hunt the good stuff." And I love that idea, because you're speaking to your audience in a language they can understand, but it's the same idea that's being preached in cognitive behavioral therapy.Lucy Hone: Absolutely. So they actually created the hashtag HTGS, Hunt the good stuff. And actually somebody, after Abi died, gave us a poster that said, "Accept the good." And I think these two phrases, "Accept the good," and "Hunt the good stuff," speak to the fact that language is really important here. That's what we're talking about is that we want to encourage people to tune into what is still good in their world, despite everything that's happened. But we are also encouraging them to find language that fits with them. So for me being told to count my blessings or asked to do random acts of kindness, it's just not language that sits well with me, but having this great big pink floral poster in our kitchen that says, "Accept the good," seemed to do the same job. So I think it's important for people to find the language that works for them.Shankar Vedantam: Lucy also realized that language could help her. She was not just a grieving mom and a researcher, but a writer. And she found that putting her experience on the page gave her both perspective and comfort. Her writing eventually became a book titled Resilient Grieving. One of the ideas she explored in the book had to do with how many people deal with grief by asking, "Why me?" Lucy came to see that this was counterproductive. She once gave a TED Talk to illustrate the idea. She asked people in the audience to do something for her.Lucy Hone: If you're comfortable, please stand up if any of the following have happened to you, whether it is dementia, or whether it is a physical impairment, or whether it is cancer, or divorce, or redundancy. And actually of course, within 30 seconds, we've got the whole room standing. And the point is to make people realize that adversity doesn't discriminate. As much as we don't want this to be true, terrible things happen to us all. And knowing that makes it so important to understand how you react in tough times and to understand the ways of thinking and acting that can help you navigate your darker days.Shankar Vedantam: You say that resilient people understand that bad things happen, that suffering is a part of life and that knowing this keeps them from feeling like victims. Can you expand on this idea, Lucy? What do you mean by that?Lucy Hone: So I think understanding that everybody suffers in parts of life, that actually very often daily, we struggle and suffer and that is absolutely part of the universal existence, stops you from feeling singled out and discriminated against when something goes wrong. But critically, it also stops you from beating yourself up when things go wrong. And so when we live in an era of perfectionism, it's so important for people to understand that "Yeah, we all stuff up and do things wrong all day long and that doesn't mean we need to be punished. It doesn't mean we are useless. It just means we are human."Shankar Vedantam: And this idea actually goes a really long way, Lucy. Hidden Brain is a show that's primarily about science, but I can't help but make the connection with the origins of Buddhism. According to the story, the Prince Siddhartha is supposed to have seen people age and suffer and die and, as a result of seeing that, internalize the very idea that you're talking about, which is that suffering is inevitable. And so in some ways the lessons that you're talking about here might be, in some ways, confirmed or backed up by modern, empirical, scientific tools, but there really are really age-old ideas.Lucy Hone: I couldn't agree more. And even there's elements of stoicism in there as well, isn't there?Shankar Vedantam: Yeah. We did an episode about stoicism with a philosopher, William Irvin, and he had this great line, "Do what you can with what you have, where you are." And it's the same idea, which is: We can only do what we can do, but if we pay attention to what we can do, that's not nothing.Lucy Hone: Yeah, absolutely. And in all of our work, we always encourage people to focus on the things that matter and the things that they can control. And that's very similar.Shankar Vedantam: As Lucy looked for ways to apply these insights in her day-to-day life, she started to seek opportunities to find serenity, pride and awe.Lucy Hone: I do remember taking myself off into the hills to do a walk one day and standing there in the really big mountainous landscape of New Zealand. And that made me feel better, because I felt like when you're surrounded by majesty on that grand scale, it makes you feel smaller and I found that really helpful. And somebody recently in one of our courses was just saying to me, "I've done exactly the same thing by visiting a cathedral or a park." So getting out there into nature. I also used to attend my boys' rugby matches to go and be inspired and feel proud of them. And I used to listen to Desert Island Discs, which is a BBC radio podcast, because that kind of checkered life journey that people go on would give me hope. So just different little ways of bringing those positive emotions back into my everyday life.Shankar Vedantam: Is it possible that some people resist doing those things, because they almost feel guilty about doing them. They might worry "Are other people going to say she's just lost her daughter, what is she doing at a restaurant? Or what is she doing watching a movie?" that, again, we are compelled to follow the scripts presented to us about how we're supposed to grieve and deal with loss and trauma.Lucy Hone: Exactly. That is what people say and experience, that they feel judged and feel guilty for experiencing any form of positive emotions, for laughing with friends or wanting to go out and see a movie, or just be out enjoying themselves. Isn't it a shame that so much of what is out there and expected of grief is that you just have to be miserable for a long time. And that if you're experiencing positive experiences, there's something wrong with you, when actually we know that is so far from the truth.Shankar Vedantam: So your work has attracted a lot of interest, Lucy, and obviously there are people who are deeply moved by your story and your insights about healthy grieving. But some people might hear you saying that you want people who are at the lowest point in their lives to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that grieving people need to be responsible for their own emotional recovery. Is that an accurate representation of your work?Lucy Hone: Oh, I certainly hope not. No. I think I really do make a very deliberate point in resilient grieving to say to people never am I trying to put more pressure on the bereaved. Wow. That would be further-est from my intention. All of our work is created for people who come to us saying, "Thank you for validating my desire to be an active participant in my own grief journey." And so we know that so many people now are looking for ways to support them through that adaptation to loss. And so we are not forcing people. And we always say to people, "These are all of the theoretically sound and scientifically backed strategies that we've come across. Try some of these out for yourself. See what works for you. Be your own personal experiment and find the grief journey that works for you." So I think that giving people a prescription for hope, I think, is the number one aim of our work.Shankar Vedantam: You lost your daughter, Lucy, in 2014 and you've written about how it's a mistake to think that time shrinks grief, but time does do something else. Can you tell me your insight about the circles around your grief?Lucy Hone: Yeah. So this came from a local grief counselor and her theory is that the bereaved often think that their grief, or they're told that, their grief will shrink over time. But yet what really happens is that your grief stays the same and your world, your life grows around it. Seven years we are on now from Abi's death and I can notice how our world has grown beyond her. As much as I'd love to have her with us, there are new experiences and new people in our world who weren't around when she was here. And so I can see that life literally has grown around her and her loss. And her, she will always be in my heart, all of our hearts. And we carry her forward. We'll never forget her, but life grows and goes on. And as long as she's with us and we have her legacy, then I don't want to say that's okay, because it's not, but I guess it's good enough.Shankar Vedantam: Lucy Hone is a public health researcher and practitioner in New Zealand. She's the author of Resilient Grieving, Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss that Changes Everything. Lucy, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain.Lucy Hone: Thank you so much for having me, Shankar, and for all you and your listeners' time.Shankar Vedantam: Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Brigid McCarthy, Annie Murphy Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brains executive editor. Our unsung hero today is Lisa Turner. Lisa is a content strategist at Facebook. We were recently having some problems making tweaks to the Hidden Brain Facebook page. Lisa came up with a solution, even though our request was outside her area of responsibilities. She also followed up several times to make sure the problem was solved. We are so grateful for your help, Lisa. If you like Hidden Brain, be sure to check out our sister cast. It's called My Unsung Hero. Each episode is about a time when an unsung hero came to the aid of someone in need. I promise it will renew your faith in humanity. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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We've all heard about the five stages of grief. But what happens when your experience doesn't follow that model at all? Resilience researcher Lucy Hone began to question how we think about grief after a devastating loss in her own life. She shares the techniques she learned to help her cope with tragedy.

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My sister was a third grade teacher at the elementary school right next to the Aurora Movie Theatre where the infamous Batman Shooting occurred. She had two students who had family members that where in attendance, one of the students actually lost his aunt to the event. Since the event shook the entire community, she had to navigate how to teach her class with this heavy event always looming in the background. This article includes several strategies for teaching after a devestating event and for teaching students who are struggling with their own personal traumas.

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Vol. 77

No. 2

Abstract

1. Expect Unexpected Responses

2. Employ Thoughtful Interactions

3. Be Specific About Relationship Building

4. Promote Predictability and Consistency

5. Teach Strategies to "Change the Channel"

6. Give Supportive Feedback to Reduce Negative Thinking

7. Create Islands of Competence

8. Limit Exclusionary Practices

Fostering a Feeling of Safety

Small changes in classroom interactions can make a big difference for traumatized students.

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Credit: Shannon Fagan

Abstract

1. Expect Unexpected Responses

2. Employ Thoughtful Interactions

3. Be Specific About Relationship Building

4. Promote Predictability and Consistency

5. Teach Strategies to "Change the Channel"

6. Give Supportive Feedback to Reduce Negative Thinking

7. Create Islands of Competence

8. Limit Exclusionary Practices

Fostering a Feeling of Safety

Up to two-thirds of U.S. children have experienced at least one type of serious childhood trauma, such as abuse, neglect, natural disaster, or experiencing or witnessing violence. Trauma is possibly the largest public health issue facing our children today (CDC, 2019). Traumatized students are especially prone to difficulty in self-regulation, negative thinking, being on high alert, difficulty trusting adults, and inappropriate social interactions (Lacoe, 2013; Terrasi & de Galarce, 2017). They often haven't learned to express emotions healthily and instead show their distress through aggression, avoidance, shutting down, or other off-putting behaviors. These actions can feel antagonistic to teachers who don't understand the root cause of the student's behavior, which can lead to misunderstandings, ineffective interventions, and missed learning time.

Neurobiologically, students can't learn if they don't feel safe, known, and cared for within their schools (Aupperle et al., 2012). When teachers are proactive and responsive to the needs of students suffering from traumatic stress and make small changes in the classroom that foster a feeling of safety, it makes a huge difference in their ability to learn. Here are some examples.

1. Expect Unexpected Responses

First, teachers must learn to put students' reactions into context-and not to take them personally. Students with trauma histories can react and behave in seemingly unexpected ways, such as having a sudden outburst during a favorite activity or crying out of the blue one second after laughing. Teachers may be taken by surprise. They say things like, "But he was fine this morning, I didn't see that coming!" or "She normally loves playing the drums in music class. I have no idea where her reaction came from." This uncertainty leaves the teacher in a constant state of hyper-alertness when interacting with the student. This in turn can result in fatigue, as the teacher is guarded and unable to predict what will happen from one moment to another.

One way to understand these reactions is to think of the student as a soda can, and events that may trigger their trauma stress as shaking that can. We can't tell by looking if the can was recently shaken, but if it was, opening the can results in an unexpected explosive, messy reaction. If a student is triggered and experiencing heightened emotion, even a benign direction such as, "Please move over to make room for Jenny" could result in an "explosion" that the teacher never saw coming. By using trauma-sensitive strategies in the classroom, we can help reduce the times our students are "shaken."

2. Employ Thoughtful Interactions

Traumatized students often behave in ways that may interfere with teaching and learning, which can be frustrating. Teachers are in a position of power, and these students may be overly defensive, anticipating adult criticism, or defiant, as a way to assert control (Jennings, 2018). Yet for traumatized students, the ability to learn and behave appropriately can be person-dependent. When they are with a safe and supportive adult, their behavior reflects that.

Consider this scenario drawn from schools I've worked with: Trevor, a 6th grader whose father overdosed on heroin two years ago and who has witnessed ongoing domestic abuse throughout his childhood, was in Ms. Carlton's class for part of the day and Ms. Finch's class for the other part. Ms. Carlton had a reputation of working well with hard-to-reach kids, and sure enough, Trevor behaved in a stellar way in her class. When he was with Ms. Finch, however, he was sent to the office nearly three times a week for explosive behavior.

The teacher is 50 percent of every interaction with a student: By changing the way we give a direction or respond, we can reduce problematic behavior. Ms. Carlton had taken the time to build a trusting relationship with Trevor and learned to give directions in a way that he would respond well to. Interaction strategies are a type of accommodation that typically go unnamed and unwritten, but they were the reason that Trevor could feel safe and access the curriculum (Minahan & Rappaport, 2012).

If Ms. Carlton had written down the successful strategies she used with Trevor, the list might have started with avoiding authoritative directives such as, "Pick that up." To give Trevor a sense of control, Ms. Carlton always embedded choice in her directions, asking, "Do you want to be in the front of the line or the back of the line?" instead of simply telling him to "line up." This helped prevent a poor reaction (Minahan, 2019).

Ms. Carlton also conveyed respect and transparency by providing the reason behind each direction. Instead of saying, "No backpacks on the floor. I don't want to trip and fall!" Ms. Carlton would say, "Oh dear, I hope I don't fall. I have a bad knee! Could you please move your backpack?" Stating the reason first assured that Trevor knew the context (and necessity) of the demand.

Conversely, Ms. Finch would often go up close to Trevor, tower over him, and say in front of his peers, "Stop tapping your pencil!" This typically ended in a power struggle and Trevor's escalating behavior. Trevor, like many traumatized students, had experienced a loss of control in his life, and power struggles with an authoritative figure were particularly triggering. Ms. Carlton instinctively knew that a more private nonverbal direction could be less confrontational for a student in "fight or flight" mode. She would write, "Please stop tapping" on a piece of paper, put it gently on Trevor's desk without his peers noticing, and then give him space by walking away quickly. When possible, she also gave Trevor extended time to comply with directions to avoid power struggles, asking, for example, "Can you please pick that up before lunch?" rather than, "Pick that up now" (Minahan, 2019). This allowed Trevor time to decompress and respond rationally.

3. Be Specific About Relationship Building

At one point in the year, Ms. Carlton told Ms. Finch that building a relationship with Trevor was key to her success with him, and she suggested that Ms. Finch do the same. Unfortunately, saying, "Build a relationship" is too vague and leaves too much up to the teacher's instincts. Instead, Ms. Carlton could have told Ms. Finch that she greeted Trevor every day at the classroom door and asked him about the Avengers or basketball. She could have told Ms. Finch how she used the "two by ten" rule; she talked to him for two minutes a day for 10 days in a row about topics unrelated to academics or behavior. Whenever Ms. Carlton could see she wouldn't have time for this in the 10-day period, she asked the counselor or special education teacher to cover her class for two minutes so she could go for a walk with Trevor. She repeated this trust-building strategy several times throughout the year, especially after he exhibited anger or frustration and after school vacations and long weekends.

Ms. Carlton skillfully used relationship-building and interaction strategies to work with Trevor. Yet the impact could have been greater had she written and shared those strategies with Ms. Finch and the rest of Trevor's team via a shared document, behavior plan, or student success plan (Minahan, 2019). Likewise, if counselors, school nurses, and psychologists write and share such techniques with each classroom teacher, kids like Trevor, when triggered, wouldn't always have to leave class to find a safe adult.

Not knowing what is coming next can put anyone on high alert, especially traumatized students. Providing predictability through visual schedules of the class agenda or school day can help. Ms. Carlton was adamant about previewing any changes to the normal routine ahead of time (saying, "We are going to have indoor recess today because of the snow," or "The DVD player isn't working so we can't watch a science video at the end of class today"). This prepared Trevor and thus elicited a calmer response.

A teacher's behavior can also feel unpredictable to traumatized students. When students are working independently and quietly-doing what they are supposed to be doing-they don't know when they will get the teacher's attention. But when students are doing the wrong thing-like drumming on the desk with a pencil in each hand or swearing-teachers are more predictable and react quickly! Because predictability is comforting to students with anxiety and trauma histories, they may resort to getting the teacher's attention through inappropriate means. Trevor could get Ms. Finch to react immediately by flipping his water bottle noisily, but could go 20 minutes without so much as eye contact from her when he was quietly reading.

To counter this imbalance and create an overall feeling of safety, teachers can use predictable positive attention (Minahan, 2014). During independent work time, if a teacher says to a student "Great work! I'll be back to check on you," the student has no way of predicting how long they need to wait-and from past experience they know that the teacher may forget to return altogether. Using predictable positive attention, however, the teacher can say, "I am going to check on you in 10 minutes," put a timer on the student's desk, and add, "Come tap me on the shoulder when the timer goes off." If the teacher has many students in the class that could benefit from this, she could transfer the strategy to small groups: "I will check on this desk group at X time."

Another strategy for providing predictable attention, especially for middle and high school students, is to hand an anxious or traumatized student a sticky note with a time on it as they walk into class each day. The first time, the note will need to be explained: "If you don't understand something in class, please don't worry-I am going to check on you during independent work time at 11:45, and I will answer any questions you have then." Ms. Carlton found this strategy comforting to Trevor. This predictable check-in pairs the negative thoughts the student may have ("I don't know how to do this") with a reassuring thought ("But my teacher will be here in seven minutes!"). The student can better tolerate uncomfortable feelings when they know help and a positive interaction are coming. Telling the student what will happen and when and always following through establishes the teacher as a consistent, reliable adult.

5. Teach Strategies to "Change the Channel"

Traumatized students often engage in inaccurate thinking, tending to focus on the negative. Common classroom management strategies often only exasperate this tendency. How many of us have seen frequent movement breaks on a student's IEP or student success plan? It is one of the most common accommodations that we offer to students who seem dysregulated. Unfortunately, during these breaks, students can ruminate on negative memories, current stressors, angry thoughts, or worries. If we ask a high school student who is getting angry and becoming agitated to take a walk, he may ruminate the whole time and return just as angry. Sending a 1st grader to a "calming chair" can leave her to perseverate on worrying thoughts. Instead, we need to help them "change the channel." Both Ms. Carlton and Ms. Finch used breaks with Trevor, but in vastly different ways.

When adults can't sleep, we often read a book or watch TV, which distracts us from uncomfortable thoughts so we can fall back asleep. Teachers can use the same principle for kids with trauma and anxiety: Teach students that their brain is like a remote control that they can use to "switch the channel" to help them calm down (Minahan & Rappaport, 2012). These switching activities are called cognitive distractions or thought breaks and are incompatible with negative thinking. A listening center or "find the picture" activity can be helpful to young children. For older students, you might try Mad Libs, trivia, or more abstract strategies such as counting all the green items in the room, saying the alphabet backwards, or thinking of the first 10 lines of a favorite movie. Ms. Carlton taught Trevor to do Star Wars trivia when he was upset, which helped him calm down quickly. Conversely when Ms. Finch had Trevor go for a walk, his negative thinking would escalate, and he would often not return to class.

6. Give Supportive Feedback to Reduce Negative Thinking

Many traumatized students interpret information through a negativity amplifier. When a teacher says, "Please correct the first problem," the student might hear, "You are stupid." Or a student might report that the teacher screamed at her when the teacher was really using a calm tone, as even neutral facial expressions can be misinterpreted. It is helpful to smile and explicitly say when you are happy with the student, a strategy Ms. Carlton utilized. When giving negative feedback, teachers can use the positive sandwich approach-starting and ending with a positive comment: (1) "I love how you remembered the formula," (2) "You made a small calculation error there," (3) "Great job getting problem #3 correct."

7. Create Islands of Competence

Recognizing areas of strength in students is a powerful way to combat the poor self-concept and negative thinking associated with trauma (Jennings, 2018). To support a more accurate self-concept, teachers can provide what Robert Brooks calls "islands of competence" for students swimming in a sea of inadequacy (2003). When a student thinks negatively, the negative moments during the day tend to weigh more heavily than the positive moments. We need to counter this effect with positive experiences. Educator teams need to ask themselves, "Does the student feel competent during the day?" If the answer is no, contriving an island of competence for the student is in order. Ms. Carlton often asked Trevor to help a younger student or a peer who was struggling in an academic area Trevor was strong in, or had him fix the stapler when it was malfunctioning. She would also point out in a written note to Trevor that he was the first student to finish a math activity. In high school, educators may want to foster students' talents by never letting them drop electives (which might require creativity in scheduling academic support in core classes).

It is important that students experience competence to develop a more accurate self-narrative and to begin to create a positive future picture of themselves. We want them to say, "I really helped that student with her artwork. When I grow up, I could work with kids." Or "I am good at fixing things. I could be a mechanic someday."

8. Limit Exclusionary Practices

Behavior is communication, and we've looked at how traumatized students often communicate feelings through their behavior. Teachers' behavior is also communication-and it may not be communicating the message we are striving to send. Common teacher practices such as ignoring inappropriate behavior, sending students to the office, or sending younger kids to sit alone at a back table or in the hallway can unintentionally trigger students who have experienced abandonment or neglect. We need to remember that when some of our students were young and cried, no one came. Ignoring them can trigger a trauma response and make them feel the teacher doesn't like them or is even happy that they are upset.

Ms. Finch would ignore Trevor when he was expressing anger, such as by crumpling up a paper, growling, or slinging a book from his desk onto the floor. On the other hand, Ms. Carlton responded to such moments at the beginning of the year by validating Trevor's feelings ("I am sorry you are upset" or "I see that you are angry"). This is a much more empathetic approach, will preserve the relationship, and will avoid triggering a trauma response in the student.

Another practice to be cautious about is using time with a preferred adult as an incentive. For example, a principal might say, "If you get all your homework done this week, you and I will have lunch together!" The problem with this is that if the student doesn't get all their homework done, then the principal withholds their attention and time. This implies the relationship is conditional and can trigger an abandonment trauma response for some students. It is better to use one-to-one time with students in a noncontingent way. This way adults are communicating, "I like you for who you are," not "I like you when you behave the right way."

Fostering a Feeling of Safety

Students can't learn unless they feel safe. When it comes to student trauma, there is much that is beyond educators' power, but there is also a great deal they can do to build a supportive and sensitive environment where students feel safe, comfortable, take risks, learn, and even heal.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ As Minahan writes, "Students can't learn if they don't feel safe." What small changes are you willing to try in your classroom to foster a sense of safety among traumatized students?

➛ Think about one of your students who struggles with behavior. How could you help him "switch the channel" when he is upset?

➛ Do you routinely share-and exchange ideas about-what's working with a traumatized student? How could you better improve lines of communication across the whole support team?

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Small changes in classroom interactions can make a big difference for traumatized students.

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The CASEL website provides a ton of resources for Social Emotional Learning. If I go to a district which does not already implement the protocol then the website has a discussion strategy for getting it to be implemented.

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence;

Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development.

Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

Use our reflection protocol to facilitate a discussion on implementation efforts in your school, district, or other setting.

Read more about the 2020 update to our framework, which highlighted the potential of SEL in promoting educational equity and excellence.

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Communities

Communities. Community partners often provide safe and developmentally rich settings for learning and development, have deep understanding of community needs and assets, are seen as trusted partners by families and students, and have connections to additional supports and services that school and families need. Community programs also offer opportunities for young people to practice their social and emotional skills in settings that are both personally relevant and can open opportunities for their future. To integrate SEL efforts across the school day and out-of-school time, school staff and community partners should align on common language and coordinate strategies and communication around SEL-related efforts and initiatives.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Community Partnerships

Families & Caregivers

Families & Caregivers. When schools and families form authentic partnerships, they can build strong connections that reinforce students' social and emotional development. Families and caregivers are children's first teachers, and bring deep expertise about their development, experiences, culture, and learning needs. These insights and perspectives are critical to informing, supporting, and sustaining SEL efforts. Research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home, and families are far more likely to form partnerships with schools when their schools' norms, values, and cultural representations reflect their own experiences. Schools need inclusive decision-making processes that ensure that families-particularly those from historically marginalized groups-are part of planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL.

Schools can also create other avenues for family partnership that may include creating ongoing two-way communication with families, helping caregivers understand child development, helping teachers understand family backgrounds and cultures, providing opportunities for families to volunteer in schools, extending learning activities and discussions into homes, and coordinating family services with community partners. These efforts should engage families in understanding, experiencing, informing, and supporting the social and emotional development of their students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Family Partnerships

Schools

Schools. Effectively integrating SEL schoolwide involves ongoing planning, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement by all members of the school community. SEL efforts both contribute to and depend upon a school climate where all students and adults feel respected, supported, and engaged.

Because the school setting includes many contexts-classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, bus-fostering a healthy school climate and culture requires active engagement from all adults and students. A strong school culture is rooted in students' sense of belonging, with evidence that suggests that it plays a crucial role in students' engagement. SEL also offers an opportunity to enhance existing systems of student support by integrating SEL goals and practices with universal, targeted, and intensive academic and behavioral supports. By coordinating and building upon SEL practices and programs, schools can create an environment that infuses SEL into every part of students' educational experience and promotes positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes for all students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL

Classrooms

Classrooms. Research has shown that social and emotional competence can be enhanced using a variety of classroom-based approaches such as: (a) explicit instruction through which social and emotional skills and attitudes are taught and practiced in developmentally, contextually, and culturally responsive ways; (b) teaching practices such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; and (c) integration of SEL and academic curriculum such as language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and performing arts. High-quality SEL instruction has four elements represented by the acronym SAFE: Sequenced - following a coordinated set of training approaches to foster the development of competencies; Active - emphasizing active forms of learning to help students practice and master new skills; Focused - implementing curriculum that intentionally emphasizes the development of SEL competencies; and Explicit - defining and targeting specific skills, attitudes, and knowledge.

SEL instruction is carried out most effectively in nurturing, safe environments characterized by positive, caring relationships among students and teachers. To facilitate age-appropriate and culturally responsive instruction, adults must understand and appreciate the unique strengths and needs of each student and support students' identities. When adults incorporate students' personal experiences and cultural backgrounds and seek their input, they create an inclusive classroom environment where students are partners in the educational process, elevating their own agency. Strong relationships between adults and students can facilitate co-learning, foster student and adult growth, and generate collaborative solutions to shared concerns.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Effective SEL Programs

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Such as:

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Identifying one's emotions

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Linking feelings, values, and thoughts

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Self-Management

Self-management: The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Such as:

Managing one's emotions

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social Awareness

Social awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Such as:

Taking others' perspectives

Recognizing strengths in others

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Such as:

Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness

Learning how to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, and facts

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside and outside of school

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Such as:

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural competency

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Resisting negative social pressure

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Standing up for the rights of others

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

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Our SEL framework, known to many as the "CASEL wheel," helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students' learning and development.

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ASCD is a resource available for teachers with many articles about instructional strategies and teaching techniques. Some articles are specific for content-areas while other articles can be applied to any classroom. They are articles written for teachers so there are many concrete tips found in them.

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We create practical, timely, affordable professional learning to help educators and instructional leaders provide students with a modern, equitable, and quality education.

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This is a list of strategies teachers can use to facilitate better discussions in the classroom.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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An article that is helpful in identifying warning signs in students in the midst of emotional distress.

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Signs and Symptoms of Distress in Students - Wellness Center

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Your Observations Social isolation, withdrawal, lethargy Inability to focus on a specific topic in a conversation or activity Disorganized thinking and speech, feelings that are inappropriate to the situation, lack of affect, or other evidence that student is "out of touch with reality" Expression of feelings of persecution, strong mistrust of others Violent outbursts Signs Find out more "

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A podcast on Hidden Brain that discusses the idea that our culture glorifies pain and suffering as a growth mechanism. It challenges the idea that this is an effective coping mechanism.

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What We Gain From Pain | Hidden Brain Media

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We’ve all heard the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But is there any truth to this idea? This week, we explore the concept of post-traumatic growth with psychologist Eranda Jayawickreme. He finds that suffering can have benefits — but not necessarily the ones we expect.