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Coach D has sent out a google form for students to sign-up for tennis. It will be an exciting time, come join the team!

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Middle School Basket Ball Starts TOMORROW

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Middle School Basket Ball Starts TOMORROW

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All middle students are welcome to come join our basketball team. 3:15-4:45.

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MS Tech club will meet on Wednesdays during Co:Lab times (8:00-9:20) in Room 26 (FHB).  

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MS Tech club will meet on Wednesdays during Co:Lab times (8:00-9:20) in Room 26 (FHB).  

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Middle school picture day is  Wednesday, September 8th. Students will take their photos outdoors in front of Kahilu Hall (main hall).  All students, regardless of whether families purchase a portrait or not, must take a school photo for the yearbook, student IDs, and the class composite photo. Please complete the attached online registration form before picture day.  This will allow the company to email each family a link to their student’s online photo gallery to order pictures. Remote Learning Students: You are welcome to take your photo on-campus from 7:30-8:30 a.m. on picture days. If this date does not work for you, you may take your photo on retake day (TBD).

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Research shows that monkeys, like humans, choke under pressure. 

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Research shows that monkeys, like humans, choke under pressure. 

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An interesting study, curious how it might connect to the world of high-stakes testing, and the hyper focus on achievement?

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It's the most important game of the entire year. The moment you have been training for every single day. That one field goal, free throw, or penalty kick. On a regular day, you hit the mark every time. But, when it matters most, you choke; you are so far off the mark you can't believe it.

Humans are known to perform well when the reward is high (you are more motivated to win a ranked game than a normal game). But paradoxically, when the stakes are really high, we perform disastrously. But are humans the only animals evolutionarily cursed to do so?

A study by Adam Smoulder et al. suggests that rhesus macaques also choke under pressure. Researchers trained monkeys to do a "speed + accuracy" task, where the goal was to move the cursor on a screen to reach a target. The monkeys (N=3) were informed of the reward for successful completion prior to each trial. There were four reward sizes - Small, Medium, Large, or Jackpot. The Jackpot reward was 10 times the size of the Medium reward and available in only 5% of trials.

"Monkeys initiated trials by placing their hand so that a cursor (red circle) fell within the start target (pale blue circle). The reach target then appeared (gray circle with orange shape) at one of two (Monkeys N and F) or eight (Monkey E) potential locations (dashed circles), where the inscribed shape's form (Monkey N) or color (Monkeys F and E) indicated the potential reward available for a successful reach. After a short, variable delay period, the start target vanished, cueing the animal to reach the peripheral target. The animals had to quickly move the cursor into the reach target and hold for 400 ms before receiving the cued reward."

Researchers found that success rates (proportion of trials successfully completed) improved from Small to Large rewards for each subject, suggesting that the monkeys are more motivated to succeed, the bigger the reward. However, success rates fell from Large to Jackpot rewards: Monkey N's success rate fell by 25.2%, Monkey F's fell 9.6%, and Monkey E's fell 17.2%.

Researchers tried to pin down what it was about jackpot rewards - rarity or magnitude that made monkeys choke. You might recall that the jackpot was available only in 5% of trials (rare) and 10 times the size of large reward (magnitude). To isolate the effect of each of the two features on chocking, they made the jackpot in some trials rare but not crazy big (rare-large reward), and crazy big but not rare in others (common jackpot).

Researchers found that neither rarity nor magnitude, in isolation, caused significant choking, suggesting that both features play a vital part in the phenomenon. Furthermore, monkeys, like humans, choke under pressure regardless of how much experience they had performing a task.

"This effect is robust in that it does not go away with extended practice; it persists despite changes in satiation, and it occurs in challenging tasks with very different motor demands."

Read more about the study by Adam L. Smoulder, Nicholas P. Pavlovsky, Patrick J. Marino, Alan D. Degenhart, Nicole T. McClain, Aaron P. Batista, and Steven M. Chase here.

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Monkeys, like humans, choke under pressure - SapienJournal

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It's the most important game of the entire year. The moment you have been training for every single day. That one field goal, free throw, or penalty kick. On a regular day, you hit the mark every time. But, when it matters most, you choke; you are so far off the mark you can't believe...

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Weekly Testing - Now Happening at School

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Weekly Testing - Now Happening at School

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Thank you for all of your support with testing these last two weeks. This week, students will complete their COVID tests during Hui Malala time on Thursday’s.

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Check-in every Friday for updates. Newest items will be located at the top of each column. 

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Check-in every Friday for updates. Newest items will be located at the top of each column. 

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Students should wear hats and sunscreen for an outside service activity. 6th and 7th graders are asked to also bring buckets and scrub brushes. Looking forward to a day of fun and purpose.

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This Parker tradition will take a new form this year as we adjust to the confines of COVID. Students should be prepared for plenty of time outside (hat and sunscreen), and should bring a change of clothes (water balloon fight). Lunch and snacks will be provided.

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I had an interesting conversation with our school counselor Layla Schuster today, and one of the things that she said comes up most with teenagers that she meets with is "an uncertainty of whether or not someone loves them". As a parent myself this thought is nearly unimaginable, how could our children not know that we love them?

I wanted to encourage you to take this statement as a call to action, show them love. Take a look at the attached HuffPo article that shares some great ideas as to how we can show our kids some love.

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I've written about how to show kids you love them in quick little ways, and a reader requested that I write a piece about how to bond the same way with older kids or teens. The main idea is the same, you want to show your teenager that you prioritize your relationship, despite your (and their) busy schedules. It can be much harder to bond with teenagers than with little kids, as teens can be extremely challenging. But teenagers need love even when they act like they don't.

Many of my teenage clients consider their relationships with their parents to be very stressful, and proactively ask for ways to get along better with their parents. At this age, many clients feel that their parents are on their case all the time, and never talk to them about anything interesting or light-hearted. The parents would be shocked to think that their often silent and bored-acting kids are actually yearning for some more connection. Try some of these ideas to connect with your teenager when you have a few spare minutes, and see if your relationship improves.

1. Text them something funny.

Just like with spouses, often texting with teenagers can devolve into management of logistics. While texts like "Please remember to feed the cat and you have your SAT tutor tonight" are necessary, some kids feel like their parents have turned into humorless task-masters. Even if you and your teen don't necessarily share the same sense of humor, many kids will secretly feel good seeing a "mom/dad joke" and will even share the text (possibly with an eye roll) with their friends.

2. Buy them something small.

Even if spending money on your teenager is a sore subject, with fees for school and extracurriculars, clothes, mall trips, Spring Break, and whatever else, most people still have a couple of dollars per week or month to buy your teenager something cute that speaks to you. Even a new lip gloss or pair of sunglasses can show your kid that you were thinking of them, and that you know their unique taste.

3. Let them pick the music in the car.

You may hate what they pick, but you'll hate it more when they scream at you saying that you never respect them as a person or care about what they care about. Many teenagers identify very strongly with their musical preferences, and if you learn about what they like to listen to, you are showing that you truly care about what they feel and who they are.

4. Let them pick where you eat/shop/whatever.

While you can set the budget and the time constraints, try and allow your teenager to make choices about things that honestly don't really matter one way or the other. And if you really have strong preferences about where to eat or shop or what movie to see, consider the possibility that you need to be more flexible if you want to model flexibility and graciousness for your kid.

5. Book club, sort of.

If your teenager enjoys a book, try and read it. At the very least, cheat and look up the summary on Amazon or something, so that you can discuss it. As with music, kids can get really into what they read, and vampire novels may be exactly what you and your daughter can discuss for ten minutes in the car instead of fighting or watching her text her friends and ignore you.

For every teenager (or young adult) that begs her parents not to use social media, there are two who think it's kind of cute to give shoutouts to Mom or Dad on Twitter or whatever the newest social network is. Friend your kids' friends' parents on Facebook. If they are all posting their kids' prom pictures and talking about how proud they are of them, then you may want to get on the bandwagon and do the same. Some kids really value these virtually public displays of parental love and pride, even though they wouldn't ask for them outright.

7. Compliment your teen on what is important to THEM.

Almost every parent nowadays compliments their child on effort at school or sports. But what is genuinely important to your particular individual kid? For some who are into fashion, it is looking exactly like they stepped out of the 90's (for real, this is a goal now) or having makeup as perfect as whatever YouTube tutorial they watched till 1am. Parents often ignore what is genuinely important to their teenager and focus on what they feel is more "important." This leaves teenagers feeling disconnected and even manipulated, as they feel you're reserving your positive reinforcement for things on your own agenda. Take a couple of seconds and say something nice about whatever your kid is trying to do or be OUTSIDE of school.

8. Express faith in your kid.

Just a couple of quick comments here and there can make a huge difference in what your teenager thinks you feel about him. An offhand, "I know you can do it" or "I'm so glad I never have to worry when you watch your sister" can go miles in making your teenager feel confident and in maintaining your connection.

9. Share stories of your own mistakes at their age.

Don't give them all happy endings either. Sometimes it can be very helpful for kids to know that even the most put-together, successful parent used to be a normal kid who made mistakes. This is especially useful if you have a child who views you as completely out-of-touch with their own issues, like a girl who feels ugly and awkward who has a beautiful, poised mother, or a kid who keeps failing classes with his successful entrepreneur dad. Note: if you can't think of any stories from your youth in which you did something really dumb, you need to think harder.

Even if your teenager doesn't say it back all the time, make sure that you tell them that you love them frequently. This is something that they will remember, and as adults looking back, they do remember whether this was just "Love you" in cards or a genuine "I love you" after discussions. Tell your teenager that you love them every day, even if they aren't being that lovable in the moment.

Hope these tips are helpful, and write in with more that work for you and your teenager. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Teenagers Show Their Therapists Your Texts To Them, So Be Nice.

This post was originally published here on Dr. Psych Mom. Follow Dr. Rodman on Dr. Psych Mom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Learn about Dr. Rodman's private practice, including therapy, coaching, and consultation, here. This blog is not intended as diagnosis, assessment, or treatment, and should not replace consultation with your medical provider.

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I've written about how to show kids you love them in quick little ways, and a reader requested that I write a piece about how to bond the same way with older kids or teens. The main idea is the same, you want to show your teenager that you prioritize your relationship, despite your (and their) busy schedules.

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My name is Mr. Caenepeel (Mr. C) and I’m the Middle School Coordinator here at Parker Middle School. I’d like to welcome all of our 23 new students and families, and welcome back those 81 students and families who are returning.

Please take a look around this Padlet for useful information. You can always contact  me at pcaenepeel@parkerschoolhawaii.org.

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Coach Adrian will be holding a one-a-week after-school session to prepare students for MathCounts, either by holding practice tests, or by discussing problems and techniques. The actual official competition will start in February (dates to be announced). See the attachment for more information.

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What To Do And NOT To Do When Children Are Anxious

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What To Do And NOT To Do When Children Are Anxious

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When children are chronically anxious, even the most well-meaning parents, not wanting a child to suffer, can actually make the youngster's anxiety worse. It happens when parents try to protect kids from their fears. Here are pointers for helping children escape the cycle of anxiety.

None of us wants to see a child unhappy, but the best way to help kids overcome anxiety isn't to try to remove stressors that trigger it. It's to help them learn to tolerate their anxiety and function as well as they can, even when they're anxious. And as a byproduct of that, the anxiety will decrease over time.

Helping children avoid the things they are afraid of will make them feel better in the short term, but it reinforces the anxiety over the long run. Let's say a child in an uncomfortable situation gets upset and starts to cry - not to be manipulative, but just because that's how they feel. If their parents whisk them out of there, or remove the thing they're afraid of, the child has learned that coping mechanism. And that cycle has the potential to repeat itself.

You can't promise a child that their fears are unrealistic-that they won't fail a test, that they'll have fun ice skating, or that another child won't laugh at them during show & tell. But you can express confidence that they're going to be okay, that they will be able to manage it. And you can let them know that as they face those fears, the anxiety level will drop over time. This gives them confidence that your expectations are realistic, and that you're not going to ask them to do something they can't handle.

It's important to understand that validation doesn't always mean agreement. So if a child is terrified about going to the doctor because they're due for a shot, you don't want to belittle those fears, but you also don't want to amplify them. You want to listen and be empathetic, help them understand what they're anxious about, and encourage them to feel that they can face their fears. The message you want to send is, "I know you're scared, and that's okay, and I'm here, and I'm going to help you get through this."

Encourage your child to talk about their feelings, but try not to ask leading questions- "Are you anxious about the big test? Are you worried about the science fair?" To avoid feeding the cycle of anxiety, just ask open-ended questions: "How are you feeling about the science fair?"

What you don't want to do is be saying, with your tone of voice or body language: "Maybe this is something that you should be afraid of." Let's say a child has had a negative experience with a dog. Next time they're around a dog, you might be anxious about how they will respond, and you might unintentionally send a message that they should, indeed, be worried.

Let your child know that you appreciate the work it takes to tolerate anxiety in order to do what they want or need to do. It's really encouraging them to engage in life and to let the anxiety take its natural curve. We call it the "habituation curve." That means that it will drop over time as he continues to have contact with the stressor. It might not drop to zero, it might not drop as quickly as you would like, but that's how we get over our fears.

When we're afraid of something, the hardest time is really before we do it. So another rule of thumb for parents is to really try to eliminate or reduce the anticipatory period. If a child is nervous about going to a doctor's appointment, you don't want to launch into a discussion about it two hours before you go; that's likely to get your child more keyed up. So just try to shorten that period to a minimum.

Sometimes it helps to talk through what would happen if a child's fear came true-how would they handle it? A child who's anxious about separating from their parents might worry about what would happen if a parent didn't come to pick them up. So we talk about that. If your mom doesn't come at the end of soccer practice, what would you do? "Well I would tell the coach my mom's not here." And what do you think the coach would do? "Well he would call my mom. Or he would wait with me." A child who's afraid that a stranger might be sent to pick them up can have a code word from their parents that anyone they sent would know. For some kids, having a plan can reduce the uncertainty in a healthy, effective way.

There are multiple ways you can help kids handle anxiety by letting them see how you cope with anxiety yourself. Kids are perceptive, and they're going to take it in if you keep complaining on the phone to a friend that you can't handle the stress or the anxiety. I'm not saying to pretend that you don't have stress and anxiety, but let kids hear or see you managing it calmly, tolerating it, feeling good about getting through it.

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What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious - Child Mind Institute

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How to help a child with anxiety? We bring expert parenting advice on assisting children to escape the cycle of anxiety. Learn what to do and not to do, anxiety treatments, and behavioral modification techniques.

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If we want long-term change, we need to invest in providing tools for our families to be a part of this process with us! Our Family CharacterDares are simple ways to engage our community with low-burden, meaningful ways to practice character in the context of home.

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Take a look at our digital citizenship curriculum. It is our goal to prepare students to take ownership of their digital lives. Students learn about:
-Media Balance and Well-Being
-Privacy and Security
-Digital Footprint and Identify
-Relationships and Communication
-Cyberbullying, Digital Drama and Hate Speech
-News and Media Literacy

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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Take a look at these fantastic resources that highlight ways to support our young people in their digital lives.

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Resources for Engaging Parents and Families | Common Sense Education

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Valuable tips, advice, and recommendations for families on issues related to kids’ digital lives.

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Excess screen time impacting teen mental health

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Excess screen time impacting teen mental health

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Teens need to regularly switch screen time for physical activity for the sake of their health and mental wellbeing, according to a University of Queensland-led study.

Researchers have linked harmful effects on adolescents' mental health to screen time exceeding two hours a day for girls and four hours a day for boys.

UQ School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences researcher Associate Professor Asad Khan said the global study investigated data from more than 577,000 adolescents aged 13 to 15 years across 42 high-income countries.

"We found there were some benefits during the first hour of daily screen use, but detrimental effects of recreational screen use on mental wellbeing kick in after 75 minutes in girls and 105 minutes in boys," Dr Khan said.

"Excess screen time effects can include depression, obesity, poor quality of life, unhealthy diet and decreased physical and cognitive abilities.

"Whereas regular physical activity can improve physical fitness, cardiometabolic health, bone health, academic performance, executive function, mental health and can reduce weight gain.

"Combining increased physical activity with reduced screen time showed a gradual beneficial effect on mental wellbeing across genders.

"One hour of physical activity and no more than two hours of screen time a day provided optimal mental wellbeing."

The study findings support current recommendations in Australia of limiting electronic screen use to a maximum of two hours a day and physical activity of at least an hour a day for both boys and girls.

Screen time limits and guidelines refer to screen time for entertainment purposes and does not incorporate screen time in schools for education purposes.

"Screen use in teens has increased significantly over recent years and insufficient physical activity is highly prevalent among teens," Dr Khan said.

"We hope the strong association between levels of screen use and physical activity co-linked with mental wellbeing can be used to reduce global mental health burden.

"This work contributes towards global debate on 'how much is too much' for teen screen use and builds pressure to reduce recreational screen time and increase movement for the health and wellbeing of this paediatric population.

"More opportunities for families, communities and schools need to be created to encourage adolescents to alternate screen time with physical and outdoor activities, which also provides additional benefits such as social connections and skills."

The study was conducted in collaboration with Queen's University and University of Ottawa, Canada; University of New South Wales and Queensland University of Technology.

The study is published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (DOI:10.1016/S2352-4642(21)00200-5).
Media: Associate Professor Asad Khan, a.khan2@uq.edu.au, +61 434 532 151, @Asad _K88; Kirsten O'Leary, UQ Communications, k.oleary@uq.edu.au, +61 412307594, @UQHealth.

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Excess screen time impacting teen mental health

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Teens need to regularly switch screen time for physical activity for the sake of their health and mental wellbeing, according to a University of Queensland-led study. Researchers have linked harmful effects on adolescents' mental health to screen time exceeding two hours a day for girls and four hours a day for boys.

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For parents and children of a certain generation, the mantra was 'spare the rod, spoil the child'.

Some also believed that giving a child too much praise could potentially hinder them in the long run.

But according to recent findings, praise can have a positive impact on improving a child's academic performance.

Listen to the podcast

Life Matters is here to help you get a handle on all the important stuff: love, sex, health, fitness, parenting, career, finances and family.

"It is also just an orientation towards being positive towards your kids," adds Professor Philip Parker, one of the authors of the study that looked at the impact of positive reinforcement on a child's success and confidence.

"We now know, for instance, that teachers' expectations of kids, the kids will live up to them. And it's the same with parents. So, if you expect your kid to do poorly, they end up doing poorly," he tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

"It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Professor Parker is the deputy director of the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University.

His team collected data from more than 2,600 Australian children and tracked their academic performance through NAPLAN tests between grade three, five and seven.

Professor Philip Parker says your expectations of your child can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (
Supplied
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They also collected information from the primary caregiver - mostly the child's mother - as to whether they thought their child's academic performance was better than average, average or below average.

"What we found was that in year five, the kids whose parents overestimated their ability - they were optimistic - they did better in subsequent NAPLAN tests," Professor Parker says.

"And more importantly, [the children] actually grew in their interest. They were more interested in maths, they were more interested in reading than [those who had] parents who are more pessimistic."

The study also found that mothers who were not from English-speaking backgrounds had significantly more positive judgments than English-speaking mothers towards their child when assessing them on reading. This was not the case when assessing numeracy.

Professor Parker says there are many ways that a parent's optimism can benefit their child.

"We know, for instance, that parents who are more optimistic, they invest more resources in their child's education," he explains.

"So they might hire a tutor, or they ... buy one of those computer games for maths classes ... also they tend to be more motivating.

"And they tend to give homework help that is more positive and supportive, rather than controlling and detrimental."

Changing attitudes

Life Matters listener Dianne, who is based in Penrith in NSW, is a parent of four and grandparent of eight.

She was brought up in a family where the phrase 'spare the rod, spoil the child' was often embraced.

And she was encouraged to be a disciplinarian with her own children, rather than lavishing them with praise.

But these days, when her children and grandchildren visit, she's noticed a change in parenting styles across the different generations.

Raising confident girls

Some people believe girls have never really grown up liking themselves. But there are parents who are trying to change that.

"[It's] evolved considerably from when I was a young parent myself. And as you grow and learn, as a parent, you do change your parenting style with the different information," Dianne says.

"That's what I see in my kids, a better style of parenting or a more positive style of parenting than what I was taught and possibly what I handed on to them."

Warren Cann, CEO of Parenting Research Centre, says previous generations were reluctant to praise children too much for fear of 'spoiling' them.

"However, this attitude has evolved in more recent generations to recognise the positive influence encouragement and positive feedback can have on children's self-esteem, resilience and relationships," Cann says.

"Nowadays the conversation is more about how to deliver praise, not whether to."

Too much praise?

Encouragement and positive feedback can have a strong impact on a child's academic performance.(
Unsplash: Sigmund
)

But could giving too much praise or being overly optimistic be detrimental to a child in the long run?

According to Derek McCormack, Raising Children Network Director, there are several conflicting ideas regarding children and praise.

"People often ask the question: can you praise too much?" says McCormack.

"But if you're praising a child around their effort for what it is they're trying to do, then there's not much risk in overdoing it ... you're praising their good effort to do with the way that you'd like them to be."

Professor Parker also dismisses the idea that too much praise is detrimental, adding he didn't find evidence of this within his research.

"In our modern schools, our kids are bombarded by feedback, not just from teachers, but from fellow pupils.

"So we're pretty sure that the world will do a pretty good job of knocking your kid back down. And so there's probably going to be little danger from being a cheerleader for your kid," he says.

The better way to praise

Professor Parker says it's important to encourage children's ability to learn when praising them.(
Getty: Oliver Rossi
)

Importantly, it's not just about giving your child any kind of praise - you've got to give particular sorts of praise, Professor Parker adds.

"Try [to] instil a love of learning in your kids."

He explains that praising your child by telling them 'you're so smart' is not the most effective way to encourage learning.

Instead, take an interest in their homework or hobby and say 'that's so interesting' or 'I love that you chose to do that. Tell me a bit more about what you were thinking'.

"That's the sort of praise that can really promote in children ... a real love of learning that isn't contingent on your praise but is furthered by your praise."

More stories from Life Matters:

Remembering to praise is important when you give a child constructive criticism, McCormack says.

"It's a bit like with adults; we often say that it's good to offer criticism in between two compliments."

"Some people [suggest] praising your child four or five times ... every time you might say something negative or something that's not desirable. And having that kind of ratio can be helpful as a guide."

And lastly, praise works best when it's authentic, McCormack adds.

"So if you're feeling something real and you're very happy with what you're seeing in the child's behaviour, jump on it, say so and they will know that you mean it," he says.

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Can you praise your child too much? A recent study answers the age-old debate

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For parents and children of a certain generation, the mantra was 'spare the rod, spoil the child'. Some also believed that giving a child too much praise could potentially hinder them in the long run. But according to recent findings, praise can have a positive impact on improving a child's academic performance.

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No School Friday August 20th - Statehood Day

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No School Friday August 20th - Statehood Day

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Middle School students are welcome to come join a fun and competitive pick-up game of basketball. Every Wednesday @3:00. Who knows maybe I'll even jump in!

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For Families - Parker School Health and Safety Plan 3.29.21

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Impact of Enhancing a Childs Social Emotional Learning

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Impact of Enhancing a Childs Social Emotional Learning

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Abstract

This article presents findings from a meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students. Compared to controls, SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement. School teaching staff successfully conducted SEL programs. The use of 4 recommended practices for developing skills and the presence of implementation problems moderated program outcomes. The findings add to the growing empirical evidence regarding the positive impact of SEL programs. Policy makers, educators, and the public can contribute to healthy development of children by supporting the incorporation of evidence-based SEL programming into standard educational practice.

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Building Positive Relationships With Students - What the Brain Science Says

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Building Positive Relationships With Students - What the Brain Science Says

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Students' brains are hard at work every moment of the day, learning skills and connecting new information with old. Those same brains are also constantly processing information when it comes to their relationship with you, their teacher.

Positive student relationships are fundamental to success. When students feel supported, they're more likely to engage in learning and have better academic outcomes. Plus, when students have positive interactions with teachers, they have fewer behavioral problems. These relationships are more important - and more challenging - than ever in uncertain times, like during the coronavirus pandemic.

Neuroscience can help us understand what's happening in students' brains when they feel safe and understood. Here are four reasons why positive teacher-student relationships are important - and how you can build those relationships.

1. Positive relationships build motivation.

This creates a cycle. You provide positive feedback. The student's brain releases dopamine. The student feels good and is motivated to feel that way again. With this increased motivation, students spend more time and attention working on a skill. They build those skills. You give more praise - sparking the release of more dopamine. And the cycle starts all over again.

On the flip side, when students don't receive positive feedback, they're less likely to enter the positive cycle of motivation and learning.

How to do it: To build a positive relationship, you need to have more positive interactions than negative ones. More specifically, researchers recommend having five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Positive interactions could include greeting students by name as they arrive, giving praise for working hard, or asking about a student's pet.

Students who learn and think differently often have more negative interactions than positive ones. For example, students with ADHD may receive constant reminders from teachers to be on time and stay on task.

This doesn't mean that you should never provide students with corrective feedback and reminders. But make sure the positive interactions outweigh the negative ones. The more you get to know your students, the more you'll recognize when they need praise or encouragement, and when they're open to constructive feedback. You can keep a tally of how many reminders you give a student to complete an assignment. Try to find five times as many positive things to comment on and tally up as well.

2. Positive relationships create safe spaces for learning.

Think about how this applies to your own life. If you have a supportive principal who has established psychological safety in your school, you might be more likely to challenge yourself and try new ideas in your classroom. But if school leaders consistently give critical feedback, you might not feel psychologically safe enough to try something new. It's the same for students.

Building psychological safety is harder with some students than others. Think of the last time you saw a student seeming to overreact. This behavior may result from trauma or chronic stress in the student's life (such as having a learning or thinking difference or growing up as part of a marginalized group). This can cause them to feel threatened in situations that other students find harmless. The brain learns that the environment is not safe and remains on alert to potential danger.

For these students, when something is perceived as a threat, a region of the brain called the amygdala sets off an alarm. The amygdala is known for its role in detecting threats in the environment. Its job is to keep us safe and alive. Think of an animal that must decide whether to run or freeze when it sees a predator.

The amygdala triggers the release of cortisol (also called the stress hormone) and epinephrine (also called adrenaline). This sends extra energy throughout the body. The muscles tense up and the heartbeat quickens, preparing for fight or flight. When the threat detection system in the brain is highly activated, learning cannot happen. This is the opposite of psychological safety.

In students, this might look like:

Avoiding assignments

Putting their head down

Yelling or making negative comments

Walking out of the classroom or leaving a live video lesson

Acting out physically or aggressively

While building psychological safety may be even more difficult with these students, it is especially important for them. That's because oxytocin also helps keep the amygdala's threat detection system quiet. Over time, when students are surrounded by people they trust, their threat detection system is less likely to activate, and they're better able to learn.

For students who are at risk for a fight-or-flight reaction, your approach will need to differ slightly. Use strategies like when-then sentences so they can know exactly what positive outcome to expect when they complete a task, while giving students the power of choice. Expect that they may overreact sometimes, and provide the space and time needed to calm down. By remaining calm, you're not only reminding yourself to react to their behavior as a form of communication and respond appropriately. You're also building psychological safety and trust.

3. Positive relationships build new pathways for learning.

As you teach the new information, new neural pathways connect the old information with the new. If students don't understand the context or aren't able to link the new information to anything they currently know, they'll have a hard time understanding the lesson.

Ask students to share what they know about a topic. Every student has a different set of background knowledge. For example, if you know a student is a talented artist, you can leverage their knowledge of different kinds of paintbrushes to explain friction. Or you can make an analogy about the relationship between the characters in a student's favorite book and the domestic strife in the Civil War.

4. Positive relationships improve student behavior.

Neuroscience research has started to uncover why this imitation happens - and how it can be used to encourage positive behaviors. Studies have shown that when people observe an action being performed, it activates some of the same neural pathways that would be active if they actually performed the action. This is called the mirror-neuron system.

Essentially, our brains are practicing the action that we're seeing, even though our bodies don't move. Studies show that when people see an action first, they are able to perform the action more quickly than if they had not seen the action.

How to do it: Start by thinking through what behaviors and social skills you're modeling for your students. For example, you likely already model social skills like turn-taking, cooperation, and empathy on a daily basis. You can take it a step further and explain the behaviors you're modeling. The next time you're feeling frustrated, tell your students how you're feeling. Talk about how you deal with frustration, such as taking a few deep breaths.

For younger students, use pre-correcting and prompting as a classroom management strategy. It allows you to explicitly tell, show, and remind students how to approach tasks or situations.

Young children are even more likely than adults to imitate the behaviors they see. That's because they're still learning social skills and appropriate behavior. Plus, the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that allows us to choose where to direct our attention and to regulate our behaviors and emotions) isn't fully developed until we're in our 20s. Childhood is a prime time to model behavior and social skills for students.

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Building Relationships With Students: What Brain Science Says

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Brain science tells us why positive student relationships can lead to their success.

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Analysis of children and young people's proximity to woodlands has shown links with better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems, in research led by UCL and Imperial College London scientists that could influence planning decisions in urban areas.

In what is believed to be one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers used longitudinal data relating to 3,568 children and teenagers, aged nine to 15 years, from 31 schools across London. This period is a key time in the development of adolescents' thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, looked at the links between different types of natural urban environments and the pupils' cognitive development, mental health and overall well-being.

The environments were divided into what planners call green space (woods, meadows and parks) and blue space (rivers, lakes and the sea), with green space separated further into grassland and woodland. Researchers used satellite data to help calculate each adolescent's daily exposure rate to each of these environments within 50m, 100m, 250m and 500m of their home and school.

After adjusting for other variables, the results showed that higher daily exposure to woodland (but not grassland) was associated with higher scores for cognitive development, and a 16% lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems two years later.

A similar but smaller effect was seen for green space, with higher scores for cognitive development, but this was not seen for blue space. The researchers note though that access to blue space in the cohort studied was generally low.

Examples of other explanatory variables considered included the young person's age, ethnic background, gender, parental occupation and type of school, e.g., state or independent. The level of air pollution might have influenced adolescents' cognitive development, but researchers did not feel these observations were reliable or conclusive, and these require further investigations.

It is already estimated that one in 10 of London's children and adolescents between the ages of five and 16 suffer from a clinical mental health illness and excess costs are estimated between £11,030 and £59,130 annually for each person. As with adults, there is also evidence that natural environments play an important role in children and adolescents' cognitive development and mental health into adulthood, but less is known about why this is.

The results of this study suggest that urban planning decisions to optimise ecosystem benefits linked to cognitive development and mental health should carefully consider the type of natural environment included. Natural environments further away from an adolescent's residence and school may play an important role too, not just their immediate environment.

Lead author, PhD student Mikaël Maes (UCL Geography, UCL Biosciences and Imperial College London School of Public Health) said: "Previous studies have revealed positive associations between exposure to nature in urban environments, cognitive development and mental health. Why these health benefits are received remains unclear, especially in adolescents.

"These findings contribute to our understanding of natural environment types as an important protective factor for an adolescent's cognitive development and mental health and suggest that not every environment type may contribute equally to these health benefits.

"Forest bathing, for example (being immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of a forest), is a relaxation therapy that has been associated with physiological benefits, supporting the human immune function, reducing heart rate variability and salivary cortisol, and various psychological benefits. However, the reasons why we experience these psychological benefits from woodland remain unknown."

Joint senior author Professor Mireille Toledano (Director, Mohn Centre for Children's Health and Wellbeing and Investigator, MRC Centre for Environment and Health and Principal Investigator of the SCAMP study, Imperial College London) said: "It's been suggested previously that the benefits of natural environments to mental health are comparable in magnitude to family history, parental age and even more significant than factors like the degree of urbanisation around you, but lower than your parents' socio-economic status. Sensory and non-sensory pathways have been suggested as potentially important for delivering cognition and mental health benefits received from exposure to nature.

"It's critical for us to tease out why natural environments are so important to our mental health throughout the life course - does the benefit derive from the physical exercise we do in these environments, from the social interactions we often have in them, or from the fauna and flora we get to enjoy in these environments or a combination of all of these?"

Joint senior author Professor Kate Jones (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences) said: "One possible explanation for our findings may be that audio-visual exposure through vegetation and animal abundance provides psychological benefits, of which both features are expected in higher abundance in woodland. Even though our results show that urban woodland is associated with adolescent's cognitive development and mental health, the cause of this association remains unknown. Further research is fundamental to our understanding of the links between nature and health."

To arrive at the findings, researchers analysed a longitudinal dataset of 3,568 adolescents between 2014 and 2018, whose residence was known, from the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP) across the London metropolitan area. They assessed adolescents' mental health and overall well-being from a self-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) - covering areas such as emotional problems, conduct, hyperactivity and peer problems - and the KIDSCREEN-10 Questionnaire taken by each adolescent for SCAMP.

Limitations of the study include an assumption that living or going to school near natural environments means more exposure to them, which may not always be the case due to how easily they can be accessed by a child or young person or how usable they are.

Also, a considerable proportion of the participants (52.21%) were in the group whose parents had a managerial/professional occupation, so adolescents in less favourable socio-economic groups may be underrepresented and pupils requiring special needs may be differently affected compared with their peers. Crime rates, which may have influenced the results too, were not taken into account.

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The study was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research, and involved researchers from UCL, Imperial College London and Birkbeck, University of London.

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Living near woodlands is good for children and young people's mental health

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Analysis of children and young people's proximity to woodlands has shown links with better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems, in research led by UCL and Imperial College London scientists that could influence planning decisions in urban areas.