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| Group 3
| Nguyen Tuyen Lam
| Hoang Van Lam
| Nguyen Tien Khoa

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. When dealing with slow learners, patience and grace are important virtues to remember. Instead of being ashamed, leaders, teachers and parents must help them reach their true potential. If we are to support students and faculty as connected learners and instructors, we must rethink our approach to academic technology architecture.

Connections enable the construction of pathways. The myriad of personalized and individual pathways is assuming an importance equal to that of the traditional pathways predetermined by higher education institutions.1 These new pathways are built out of the interplay of learners, faculty, and support teams-all on the foundation of IT infrastructure. Much like social networks, the new pathways and communities form organically, they come and go, and they often form in ways that can't be anticipated, requiring new levels of agility by all participants in order to take advantage of the opportunities they offer.

Not every child learns the same way or at the same pace. Not every child excels in the same areas; some are better readers while others are fascinated with numbers. Does this make one child smarter than another? Definitely not!

Seems like a lifelong tag suggesting that such children are non-achievers. On the other hand, slow learners are being a part of regular schools, thus only proving that they are not physically or mentally disabled but only pace disabled. The only problem with them is that they learn concepts and achieve developmental milestones at a pace slower than their peers if they do not suffer from any other disabilities.

There are, however, instances in which some children are slower to mature and develop both fine and gross motor skills and comprehension and retention skills. Often times these children are labeled 'slow learners'.

Personally, I despise this term. To label children as anything at all is deplorable, but to label them as 'slow' is demeaning and degrading-not to mention telling them they are not as good as others.

But nevertheless, there are children who do need extra help and who do need specialised teaching to allow them to learn and grow. Does this make them a slow learner? Maybe, but remember-if you tell someone they are something long enough and loud enough they will become just that.
Telling your child he needs extra attention
One of the most difficult tasks of parents and educators is to determine if a child is learning more slowly because they cannot keep up with others or because they choose not to keep up with others.

Children who are labeled 'slow learners' are those that:

Reach normal infant and toddler milestones later than the average child on a consistent basis. These milestones include crawling, walking, speech and vocabulary and motor skills such as clapping, hopping, skipping, recognising eyes, ears, etc.

Have trouble concentrating-all children have limited attention spans. but those who have trouble concentrating for more than two or three minutes at a time and are unable to recall what they did in that time and/or repeat what they did without instruction or prompting later on, will likely be in need of specialised attention and be labeled 'slow learners'.

Struggles with the simplest of concepts and has difficulty retaining what they learn. This is a true indicator of a child with a learning disability. But rather than focusing on the disability, focus on finding how to work with the disability to make it less of an issue.

Is socially immature or reclusive. Children who are labeled 'slow learners' will a) notice the fact that they are 'slow' or learning at a different pace or b) be singled out by the teacher and/or their peers as being 'slow'. This is embarrassing, humiliating and demeaning to a child. Their self-esteem and confidence levels suffer tremendously and they withdraw in an effort to shield themselves from the pain-holding it inside themselves.

A parent's responsibility
If indeed your child does have a learning disability, don't try to explain it away or hide it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Well, nothing unless you are making your child feel less than cherished, loved and important.

If your child is labeled a 'slow learner', then slow things down for them. Give them the grace and time they need and deserve to reach their potential. Provide for them the environment and tools necessary to excel.

Think about it-if your child was a gifted musician, wouldn't you do whatever you could to make sure they were able to develop that talent to the fullest? No child deserves any less of a chance.
What you can do to help your child

Provide a quiet work/study area. Distractions are detrimental.

Keep assignments and homework sessions short. Again, it's the attention span thing.

Be accessible. Help your child. Help doesn't mean do the work for them, but help them work through the assignment giving clues, having them repeat the process or concept with similar questions and problems, etc.

Ask questions such as 'what does that word mean?' 'do you see how that works?' 'why did you choose that answer?'.

Read to your child.

Be patient and consistent.

Do not allow them to give up on their work or themselves. If necessary, take a break, but always come back to the task and see it through to completion.

Don't be overprotective. Labelling your child as a 'slow learner' only makes them feel slower. Don't ever tell them they can't accomplish something. Instead, help them find a way to get it done-in their own time.

Be their advocate. Stay connected with their teachers and make sure your child doesn't fall through the cracks of the system.

Every child has potential. Not every child will be a doctor, nuclear scientist or college professor. But who cares! If they were, we'd be hungry, naked and wouldn't have a cell phone to chat on, now would we.

Teachers and parents play pivotal roles in a slow learner's life. Their support and motivation go a long way to help such children overcome their hurdles. This duly signifies that teachers and parents have added responsibility from schools and society toward them.

Creating a healthy and conducive environment for a slow learner is of utmost importance to improve their pace. Often teachers who have a slow learner in their class face grave problems: keeping up with the term syllabus, fear of losing empathy toward such students, and many others. We have put up a few motivation tips for teachers alike to help them cope with at least the basic issues.

STRATEGIES FOR "SLOW LEARNERS"

Contrary to common belief, slow learners in the regular classroom are neither rare nor unique. The student commonly called a slow learner is one who cannot learn at an average rate from the instructional resources, texts, workbooks, and learning materials that are designed for the majority of students in the classroom. These students need special instructional pacing, frequent feedback, corrective instruction, and/or modified materials, all administered under conditions sufficiently flexible for learning to occur. Slow learners are usually taught in one of two possible instructional arrangements:

1) a class composed mostly of average students, in which case up to 20%may be slow learners, or 2) a class specially designed for slow learners. Whether you meet slow learners in a regular class or special class, you will immediately feel the challenge of meeting their learning needs.

Their most obvious characteristic is a limited attention span compared to more able students. To keep these students actively engaged in the learning process requires more than the usual variation in presentation methods (direct, indirect), classroom climate (co-operative, competitive), and instructional materials (films, workbooks, co-operative games, simulations). If this variation is not part of your lesson, these students may well create their own variety in ways that disrupt your teaching. Other immediately noticeable characteristics of slow learners are their deficiencies in basic skills (reading, writing, and mathematics), their difficulty in comprehending abstract ideas, and most disconcerting, their sometimes unsystematic and careless work habits.

1.Compensatory Teaching-

Compensatory teaching is an instructional approach that alters the presentation of content to circumvent a student's fundamental weakness or deficiency. Compensatory teaching recognizes content, transmits through alternate modalities (pictures versus words), and supplements it with additional learning resources and activities (learning centers and simulations, group discussions and co-operative learning). This may involve modifying an instructional technique by including a visual representation of content, by using more flexible instructional presentations (films, pictures, illustrations), or by Shifting to alternate instructional formats (self-paced texts, simulations, experience-oriented workbooks).

2.Remedial Teaching

2 .This is an alternate approach for the regular class room teacher in instructing the slow learner.Remedial teaching is the use of activities, techniques and practices to eliminate weaknesses or deficiencies that the slow learner is known to have . For example deficiencies in basic math skills are reduced or eliminated by re-teaching the content that was not learned earlier. The instructional environment does not change, as in the compensatory approach. Conventional instructional techniques such as drill and practice might be employed.

3.Instructional Strategies for Slow Learners

While no single technique or set of techniques is sufficient teaching the slow learner, the suggestions that follow are a starting point for developing instructional strategies that specifically address the learning needs of the slow learner. Develop Lessons that Incorporate Students' Interest s, Needs, and Experiences.

This helps address the short attention spans of slow learners. Also, these students should be made to feel that some of the instruction has been designed with their specific interests or experiences in mind. Oral or written autobiographies at the beginning of the year, or simple inventories in which students indicate their hobbies, jobs, and unusual trips or experiences can provide the structure for the lesson plans, special projects, or extra-credit assignments in the year. Frequently Vary Your Instructional Technique Switching from lecture to discussion and then to seat work provides the variety that slow learners need to stay engaged in the learning process. In addition to keeping their attention, variety in instructional technique offers them the opportunity to see the same content presented indifferent ways. This increases opportunities to accommodate the different learning styles that may exist among slow learners and provides some of the remediation that may be necessary.

4.Incorporate Individualized Learning Materials

Slow learners respond favorably to frequent reinforcement of small segments of learning. Therefore, programmed texts and interactive compute r instruction often are effective in remediation of basic skills of slow learners. In addition, an emphasis on frequent diagnostic assessment of the student progress, paired with immediate corrective instruction, often is particularly effective.

5.Incorporate Audio and Visual Materials

One common characteristic among slow learners is that they often learn better by seeing and hearing than by reading. This should be no surprise, because performance in basic skill areas, including reading usually is below grade level among slow learners. Incorporating films, videotapes, and audio into lessons helps accommodate the instruction to the strategies learning modalities among slow learners. Emphasizing concrete and visual forms of content also helps compensate for the general difficulty slow learners have in grasping abstract ideas and concepts.

6.Develop Your Own Worksheets and Exercises

Textbooks and workbooks, when written for the average student often exceed the functioning level of the slow learner and sometimes become more of a hindrance than an aid. When textbook materials are too difficult, or are too different from topics that capture your students' interests, develop your own. Sometimes only some changes in worksheets and exercises are needed to adapt the vocabulary or difficulty level to the ability of your slow learners. Also, using textbooks and exercises intended for a lower grade could ease the burden of creating materials that are unavailable at your grade level.

7.Provide Peer Tutors for Students needing Remediation

Peer tutoring can be an effective ally to your teaching objectives, especially when tutors are assigned so that everyone being tutored also has responsibility for being a tutor. The learner needing help is not singled out and has a stake in making the idea work, because his or her pride is on the line, both as a learner and as a tutor.

8.Encourage Oral Expression Instead of Written Reports

For slow learners, many writing assignments go un - attempted or are begun only halfheartedly because these learners recognize that their written product will not meet even minimal writing standards. A carefully organized taped response to an assignment might be considered. This has the advantage of avoiding spelling, syntax, and writing errors.

9.When Testing Provide Study Aids

Study aids are advances organizers that alert students to the most important problems, content,or issues. They also eliminate irrelevant details that slow learners often laboriously study in the belief that they are important. The slow learner usually is unable to weigh the relative importance of competing instructional stimuli unless explicitly told or shown what is important and what is not. Example: test questions or a list of topics from which questions may be chosen help focus student effort.

10.Teach Learning Skills

You can increase learning skills by teaching note-taking, outlining, and listening. These skills are acquired through observation by higher ability students, but they must be specifically taught to slow learners. Unless your slow learners are actively engaged in the learning process through interesting concrete visual stimuli, there will be little contact emotionally and intellectually with the content you are presenting. This contact can be attained most easily when you vary your instructional material often and organize it into bits small enough to ensure moderate-to-high rates of success

11.Be patient with slow learners

The foremost aspect of teaching a slow learner is that the educator should be patient and consistent throughout the entire process. The core problem of slow learners' education is their weak cognitive skills coupled with the slow speed learning. A teacher has to be understanding and patient toward their ability to get distracted easily and having a low attention span. Moreover, teachers must find creative ways to cope with this situation so that the entire class is not affected. One of them is patient repetition. Try repeating every basic instruction, keyword and concept time and again without being boring. Do not over speak, but over teach.

12. Seek school management's help

Request the school to arrange special classes for slow learners after/before school. Also, check whether you can get a co-teacher or an assistant teacher for your class. This will help you concentrate better on them.

13. Engage fellow classmates in your efforts

Teach the other students to empathize with the special students. Specially ask them not to bully or tease slow learners. Inform them about their condition and how they could make a difference. Ensure you have these timely sessions in the slow learner's absence.

14. Provide minimum homework

We all agree that homework although with its benefits is more of a burden for a child and her parent. Slow learners, in particular, find it difficult to be attentive throughout the school day, let alone coming home and completing homework assignments. For such children, quality matters over quantity. Having minimum homework would help them understand learning and reduce their anxiety. This, in turn, would maintain their enthusiasm toward school. An educator can assign and alter homework personally and leave out small details that may be of little importance. For example, a homework of writing an essay on an English chapter could be modified to reading the chapter twice, and telling the summary to the teacher would be a better idea.

15. Let a buddy teach

Peer tutoring works better for slow learners. When their teachers are of the same age, they get encouraged. Let them select 1 or 2 of his friends to form a study group. Assign the study group the task of reiterating the new teachings of the day and assisting with homework.

16.Encourage and Teach the right things

Invite them to come forward during art classes, school activities, or volunteering. Recognize and reward their participation. This would do wonders to their self-confidence. Teach special skills rather than unnecessary skills. This may include following the correct instruction words (count, color, circle, etc.) or listening and focusing on keywords. Remember the main goal is to make them self-sufficient.

17.Give them special takeaways

Hand out special cheat sheets, mini dictionaries, or visually graphic information sheets. One good idea is to give lesson pamphlets for pinning them to their soft boards so that they are surrounded by constant reminders of lessons and activities. Do check out our stash of Math tips and tricks to help motivate them.

18. Praise and raise them

Always praise every tiny effort of a slow learner in front of the class or in public. This would raise their self-esteem and confidence.

19. Encourage constant Parent-Teacher Association

Work very closely with their parents. Ensure the homework and tasks assigned are successfully completed on a daily basis. Be accessible and open to communication. Make sure to listen out to parents' problems and help to solve them. Conduct special meetings for their parents of apart from the general PTA meets.

20.MOST IMPORTANTLY

Demonstrate effective teaching, classroom organization and management skills in order to ensure that students' learning needs are appropriately addressed

*

Monitor the effectiveness of their instructional methods as well as the learning profiles (preferences, characteristics, strengths, interests,talents, tyles, etc.) of the students they teach*

.Adjust or change their teaching methods as required to meet the learning needs of each of their students

*As part of their responsibilities as professional educators, engage in appropriate professional development and in-service activities, particularly in the areas of literacy and mathematics, in order to gain new knowledge, skills and attitudes that relate to teaching students who experience difficulties

*Maintain an awareness of the performance level of all students in their classes so that the school-based student services team can discuss those students experiencing difficulties.

Lastly, a few don'ts:

Do not reprimand in front of the class. You may do that in private.

Do not emphasize on writing, concentrate on reading. Oral education is more beneficial for them.

Do not let them quit trying. Encourage them to continue their hard work to complete their tasks even if it means postponing it.

Do not be overprotective. Let their slow learning not become their introduction.

We all need to remember and timely remind ourselves while teaching slow learners that it is okay to let them learn things slowly than not learn at all. If you find this post beneficial, please leave us a comment.Also, do read our posts by our experts in Child Psychology and behavior. Remember, no student should be left behind. Best of luck!

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STRATEGIES TO HELP SLOW ACHIEVERS SUCCEED.

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When dealing with slow learners, patience and grace are important virtues to remember.

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Do’s & Don’ts for Teaching English-Language Learners

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Do’s & Don’ts for Teaching English-Language Learners

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

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We've learned a lot about talk and the English Language Learner (ELL). We know that early on, the ELL may not produce much talk. We know that an opportunity to engage in conversation with peers during lessons is an essential practice in developing academic language. We know that building a safe and supportive learning community in the classroom will help keep affective filters low, allowing ELLs to take risks to share their ideas aloud, making adjustments in their talk as they become more proficient. But exactly how can we adjust our talk to support the ELLs who enter our classrooms with limited experience speaking English?

Some very practical suggestions can be found in a short article from the February 2016 issue of Educational Leadership. In the article, "Let Them Talk," the author, Wayne E. Wright, suggests a few practices that are familiar to those implementing lessons that are part of CCC Collaborative Literacy. One effective practice is increasing wait time. ELLs with limited proficiency may need additional time to think; they may need to process and translate in their heads before responding. Another effective approach is to begin with short probes that lead to open-ended questions, allowing ELLs to elaborate, such as, "What else did you notice?" "Why do you think that was?" "What do you think is going to happen next?" "Tell us more about that." "How do you know that?" "Do you agree with...? Why not?" This type of questioning encourages more student talk during discussions and creates opportunities for ELLs to think deeply about academic content, to tackle complex texts, and to express and elaborate on their ideas orally. Use of this practice also shows recognition that students' ability to speak a second language has nothing to do with their ability to think abstractly.

Taking into account the differences in students' proficiency levels, teachers may also find it helpful to adjust their talk in the following ways:

Slow down. Use a steady, but slower rate of speech when talking to beginning level ELLs than you would in normal conversation with proficient speakers. Increase the pace as students progress to higher levels of proficiency.

Speak clearly (but don't over enunciate to the point where the words sound unnatural).

Speak at a normal volume. Shouting does not make English more comprehensible.

Use simple sentence structures with beginning-level ELLs (subject-verb-object). Avoid long, complex sentences with embedded clauses. As students make progress, increase the complexity of the vocabulary and syntax appropriate to their English language proficiency.

Emphasize key vocabulary through frequent repetition of these new words throughout the week and across subject areas.

Avoid idioms, unless they are explained or were previously taught.

Avoid cultural references that may be unfamiliar to ELLs, unless they are explained.

Use gestures, facial expressions, objects, and materials from everyday life, and other visual clues.

Repeat, paraphrase, or use other techniques when ELLs do not understand something said by you or another student. (For example, during a class discussion-"Thank you, Miriam! So you are saying sprinklers provide the flowers in your garden with the water they need. Yes, plants need water to grow. Patricia, what else do plants need to grow?")

Teachers are also provided suggestions about other ways to adjust their language, such as how to make questions more comprehensible for ELLs, in the Introduction of our Collaborative Literacy programs as well as the ELL Notes featured across the lessons.

One last suggestion (based on my own experience as a second-language learner): Smile when you talk. It is an humbling, often anxiety producing experience to change cultures and learn a new language. The kind and warm manner in which we speak will put the new learners at ease and show them that we care first about them and then, about how they learn.
Wright, W.E. (2016). Let them talk! Educational Leadership, 73(5), 24-29. Read Wendy's previous blogs, "Building Vocabulary through Learning the Language" and "The Power of Images for the English Language Learner."

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Adjusting Our Talk with ELLs - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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We've learned a lot about talk and the English Language Learner (ELL). We know that early on, the ELL may not produce much talk. We know that an opportunity to engage in conversation with peers during lessons is an essential practice in developing academic language.

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Best Practice for ELLs: Small-Group Interventions

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Best Practice for ELLs: Small-Group Interventions

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

August, D., & Siegel, L. (2006). Literacy instruction for language-minority children in special education settings. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 523-553). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cirino, P. T., Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., Cardenas-Hagan, E., Fletcher, J. M., & Francis, D. J. (2007). One year follow-up outcomes of Spanish and English interventions for English language learners at-risk for reading problems. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Denton, C. A., Anthony, J. L., Parker, R., & Hasbrouck, J. E. (2004). Effects of two tutoring programs on the English reading development of Spanish-English bilingual students. The Elementary School Journal, 104, 289-305.

Franklin, E. A. (1986). Literacy instruction for LES children. Language Arts, 63, 51-60.

Gunn, B., Smolkowski, K., Biglan, A., & Black, C. (2002). Supplemental instruction in decoding skills for Hispanic and non-Hispanic students in early elementary school: A follow-up. The Journal of Special Education, 36, 69-79.

Haager, D., & Windmueller, M. (2001). Early literacy intervention for English language learners at-risk for learning disabilities: Student outcomes in an urban school. Learning Disability Quarterly, 24, 235-250.

Limbos, M., & Geva, E. (2001). Accuracy of teacher assessments of second-language students at risk for reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 136-151.

Quiroga, T., Lemos-Britton, Z., Mostafapour, E., Abbott, R. D., & Berninger, V. W. (2002). Phonological awareness and beginning reading in Spanish-speaking ESL first graders: Research into practice. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 85-111.

Shanahan, T., & Beck, I. L. (2006). Effective literacy teaching for English-language learners. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 415-488). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Vaughn, S., Cirino, P. T., Linan-Thompson, S., Mathes, P. G., Carlson, C. D., Cardenas-Hagan, E., et al. (2006). Effectiveness of a Spanish intervention and an English intervention for English language learners at risk for reading problems. American Educational Research Journal, 43, 449-487.

Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., & Hickman-Davis, P. (2003). Response to treatment as a means for identifying students with reading/learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 69, 391-410.

Vaughn, S., Mathes, P., Linan-Thompson, S., Cirino, P., Carlson, C., Pollard-Durodola, S., et al. (2006). Effectiveness of an English intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading problems. Elementary School Journal, 107, 153-180.

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Best Practice for ELLs: Small-Group Interventions

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Providing small-group reading instruction in five core reading elements (phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) can really help English language learners in the elementary grades.

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How to Deal with being a Mediocre Student?

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How to Deal with being a Mediocre Student?

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| Group 2 - Average
| Le Vy  |
| Mai Thy Van
| Ngo Van Tai
| Le Tan Tai

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In early elementary school, Louise (all names in this story have been changed) was a sweet child who never caused trouble. She was also an average student who was rarely chosen for special duties or called on in class. Louise's parents were concerned about her progress in school, given that her siblings were exceptional students. The school principal assured them that she was a bright little girl, but she would never get an ulcer worrying about school achievement. Children like Louise are often described as underachievers.

But this description of Louise began to change in third grade under Mr. Stevens. He was a stickler for neatness, organization, planning, paying attention, and punctuality. He referred to himself as "Hurricane Stevens" because, without warning, he would check students' desks for disarray or confiscate potentially distracting items. One day, Louise was admiring a yo-yo she had won during recess when the yo-yo suddenly became part of Mr. Stevens' "cyclone stash" of toys and comic books. These items were all returned each Friday with a wry smile and gentle warning that sometimes objects get lost in cyclones. "Class time is your job," Mr. Stevens extolled her, "you can think about recess during recess. During class, you need to focus on learning."

"Fun Facts"

Mr. Stevens also had a memory game he called "fun facts." He started each day with a list of new history or science facts, vocabulary words, or current events details that would end up relating to class, and more information about the fun facts would be part of the daily lessons. Students were told to pay close attention, but they were not permitted to write anything down. Mr. Stevens would later quiz the class on the fun facts and how they applied to that day's lessons. The first student called on who answered correctly got to wear a prized star pin the entire day.

In September, Mr. Stevens began with five facts each morning. By October, none of the students he called on missed any of the questions. So, Mr. Stevens increased the list by one fact each month, and the curricular application became less predictable. Mr. Stevens would ask students how they were able to remember. One student said that she pictured what the facts would look like if she had written them down. She would then recognize them if she encountered them later or could read them back to herself in her mind. Another boy noted that, when names were involved, he imagined how the people looked. Later, when he learned about their role in historical events, he could visualize them. Louise also developed her own strategies for fun facts success. She found herself listening carefully throughout the day for more information. Like most of the students in the class, she couldn't wait to participate. Later in the year, she too won the star pin every time she was selected to answer one of Mr. Stevens' questions.

Disrupting the Myth by Developing a Growth Mindset

Mr. Stevens understood that children need to take an active role in the learning process. Some children are natural students; they focus easily on content, stick to one task, and retain information without effort. Other children, like Louise, do not instinctively grasp the "how" of learning. Their minds wander, or they are easily distracted. They don't realize they should try to remember information. They might seem lazy because they have trouble sticking with a task when it is repetitive or boring. Some educators may even buy into the myth that these students-the so-called underachievers-are destined to mediocre academic achievement.

On the other hand, teachers like Mr. Stevens approach learning with a growth mindset. They know that students like Louise have the potential to be over achievers if taught the right skills. Louise learned to focus on relevant details in class, predict how they might apply to school lessons, and hold that information throughout the day. After a year with Mr. Stevens, his students were not just better at reading, math, and writing; they were active learners.

Building Executive Function

Mr. Stevens' approach is an example of developing students' executive functioning. Executive function refers to the mental processes that foster skills of attention, memory, and distraction-filtering, all of which are crucial to learning.

Mr. Stevens' pedagogy was years ahead of its time. Educational research now emphasizes the learning process as well as mastery of content. Many state standards do include critical thinking skills like application of knowledge and drawing inference. But most state curriculum standards do not include underlying learning processes, such as the executive function skills of attending to relevant information, sticking with a task to completion, or developing retention strategies.

How Technology Can Help

Fortunately, neuroscientists have studied these underlying learning processes for over a decade. As a result of this research, breakthrough technologies like the Fast ForWord® program are available to supplement classroom instruction through curriculum-based attentional and memory training. Teachers therefore don't have to devote as much classroom time to the kinds of activities "Hurricane Stevens" employed.

For example, Reading Assistant Plus is a component of the Fast ForWord program through which students independently read aloud to a computer, and a virtual tutor gives real-time corrective feedback. This program component:

1. corrects students' errors through speech recognition software,

2. provides vocabulary definitions on demand, and

3. quizzes for application while also measuring reading fluency.

These classroom technologies enable teachers to do what they love: imparting knowledge and encouraging application to other lessons and to students' daily lives.

Next time...

The next time you stand in front of a class, assess your own mindset. Do you recognize every student as a potential active learner? Do you provide tools and training to foster students' executive functioning skills, which can turn a seemingly "mediocre" student into an attentive overachiever? A growth mindset can make all the difference.

By the way, with Mr. Stevens' help, Louise eventually became a prodigious student and teacher herself. You might even know who she is. (Hint: My full name is Martha Louise Stoner Burns.)
Dr. Martha Burns is a noted neuroscientist, author, and leading expert on how children learn. A practicing speech and language pathologist for over 40 years and a professor at Northwestern University, Dr. Burns has authored over 100 journal articles and 3 books on the neuroscience of language and communication. Watch her on-demand webinars on dyslexia, "bad" behavior, social-emotional learning, rewiring the brains of struggling readers, and more here.
A version of this blog post originally appeared on the Science of Learning blog on January 15, 2013.

You might also like:

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Disrupting the Myth about "Mediocre" Students - Scientific Learning

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How one teacher turned an underachiever into an overachiever by teaching executive function. In early elementary school, Louise (all names in this story have been changed) was a sweet child who never caused trouble. She was also an average student who was rarely chosen for special duties or called on in class.

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| | Group 1
| Tien Van Lau
| Mai Thy Van
| Ngo Van Tai
| Nguyen Tien Khoa

| Group 2  |
| Do Tai Lam
| Le Vy  |
| Le Tan Tai
| Hoang Van Lam
| Nguyen Tuyen Lam

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The mixed-ability classroom was born from a desire to promote greater equity among students. Too often, tracking and grouping fall along racial and socioeconomic lines, creating disparities between students that exacerbate achievement gaps. The mixed-ability classroom, in theory, creates equal expectations for all students and provides them with the same resources. It eliminates the possibility that lower-income and racially-diverse students will miss out on hearing academic talk and engaging in higher-order thinking.

"Often, because of test-score pressures, diverse students are placed in classes that emphasize quiet practice of isolated skills and facts. Several studies have shown that teachers tend to give students from low-income backgrounds fewer opportunities to talk about content and engage in critical-thinking activities than teachers of higher-socioeconomic students."

- Jeff Zwiers & Marie Crawford, Academic Conversations

However, the push for greater equity in the classroom results in challenges for teachers who must figure out how to cater to a diverse array of individual student needs. In a 2012 Metlife teacher survey, 83% of principals and 78% of teachers reported that meeting the individual needs of diverse learners was "challenging" or "very challenging." The struggle to differentiate instruction has driven some schools to rethink the benefits of the mixed-ability classroom altogether: a 2013 Brookings report found a resurgence of tracking and ability-grouping in elementary and secondary schools across the country. In schools that continue to promote diverse classrooms, teachers are increasingly creating ability groups by assigning separate texts and questions based on students' individual reading abilities.

Given the challenges of its implementation, is it possible to have a mixed-ability classroom where students of diverse backgrounds and reading levels engage in academic talk, higher-order thinking, collaboration, and rigorous reading? What would it take to have a student reading at a 4th grade level access the same text as his or her peers who are reading at an 8th grade level? Here are some guiding principles for educators grappling with the challenges of mixed-ability classrooms.

1. Collaboration and discussion benefit students of every ability

In a metanalysis of several decades' worth of research on cooperative learning, researchers discovered that collaboration benefits students of all abilities, improving academic achievement as well as motivation, time-on-task, self-esteem, retention, and metacognition (Slavin, Hurley, & Chamberlain, 2003). Discussion and collaboration give high achievers the opportunity to elaborate their thinking, while providing low achievers the opportunity to ask questions that they may not feel comfortable sharing with their teacher (Wiliam, 2011). It ensures that students of diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds have access to academic talk that is all too often the exclusive purview of their wealthy peers.

"Hardly ever would a student interrupt a teacher for clarification or to ask the teacher to go over something a second time. And yet, when working with peers, a student would ask the peer to slow down or to go over something again and again until it was understood."

- Dylan William, Embedded Formative Assessment

Giving students the opportunity to discuss a text as a diverse group is not only a matter of equity, but also one of improving learning outcomes. Differentiation does not need to result in students working on individual tasks; sometimes the greatest support is engaging in a task with a student who has understood the text more thoroughly, while the greatest challenge is conveying one's own understanding to a confused and frustrated peer.

"Several experimental studies have shown that groups outperform individuals on learning tasks and that individuals who work in groups do better on later individual assessments."

- Brigid Barron & Linda Darling-Hammond, Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods

Teachers need to create more opportunities for students to engage in these rich academic discussions. On average, time devoted to discussion in classrooms can be measured in seconds per day (Nystrand, 2006). Technology can support these collaborative discussions by giving more students the opportunity to participate as well as giving students more time to articulate their thinking. Students who are rarely heard during live discussion may share their ideas via an asynchronous discussion thread where they have the time to look up a word or see how their peers are phrasing their response. Teachers can also increase discussion time by giving students the tools to respond to one another: providing question stems and hanging them on the wall gives students the language to ask for clarification or respectfully challenge peers' ideas.

The first step, however, is to recognize that cooperative learning provides a great benefit to students and that learners of all abilities are better served with more opportunities to discuss and share ideas. This means that students should spend more time reading the same texts and engaging in the same material rather than being siloed into independent activities.

2. Higher-order thinking motivates and engages students of every ability

There is a pervasive misconception that higher-order thinking is a privilege reserved only for high-achieving students. While advanced students get to evaluate arguments, debate the merit of opposing viewpoints, and create solutions for complex problems, their lower-achieving peers are relegated to comprehension checks. This disparity is unfortunate, because higher-order thinking provides benefits in terms of motivation and engagement: Higher-level questions are typically more engaging for students and provide more interesting answers. These are the questions that lead to discussion and debate because they are more open to interpretation. So while students who engage in higher-order thinking get to be active participants in constructing knowledge, their peers see learning as merely consuming information and regurgitating it at the right moment.

"The first and most basic change needs to come in what we ask of students. By all accounts, the cognitive tasks posed to students are, on average, neither cognitively challenging nor personally engaging."

- Jay Mehta & Sarah Fine, The Why, What, Where, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools

Not only are higher-order questions more engaging, they are also more open-ended and provide students with more entryways into the discussion: Higher-level questions are sometimes easier for struggling students because they provide the flexibility to choose among different ways to answer and support one's reasoning. Lower-level questions typically have one correct answer, which narrows the approaches that a student can use to produce a response.

By encouraging students to dig into the same content and answer the same engaging questions, teachers share the privilege of higher-order thinking among all students. Granted, some students will need more support to digest the basic information in a text (more on that to come), but they should all be encouraged to do the meaty thinking that makes learning meaningful, memorable, and motivating.

3. Technology enables differentiated supports within the same rigorous text

What would it take for struggling readers to read the same rigorous text and answer the same higher-order questions as their higher-achieving peers? What would it take for the struggling reader to overcome gaps in background knowledge, limitations in vocabulary, and perhaps even trouble with reading fluency?

Let's tackle background knowledge first, as this is often the key roadblock to comprehension. Simply put, students need a basic level of context in order to make sense of rigorous texts. All writers make references to events, terms, and concepts that they expect their readers to know, and a student who lacks that basic understanding will be lost in the text, even if they implement every expert reading strategy.

Educators who know their students can often anticipate where students' knowledge gaps will lie. As they read through a current events article about the midterm elections, for example, they might expect their students to be confused by gerrymandering. One strategy they might use to overcome this gap in background knowledge is to discuss gerrymandering with students prior to assigning the text. This can be a very short, accessible overview that will prevent students from being completely confused when they encounter this term in the text. Educators can similarly frontload background knowledge for a scientific or literary text by previewing key ideas that students need to know as they read. Teachers can also include this information in a digital annotation embedded within the text using a platform like Actively Learn.

Giving students access to a digital dictionary, translation, and text-to-speech tool can remedy several other reading challenges that students face. The key is to make looking up or hearing a word as accessible as possible so that students do not have to interrupt the flow of the text to access an external resource. Some digital reading platforms can even embed images and videos inside the text to give students a visual aid as they make sense of literary scenes or scientific processes.

Best of all, technology can help to make these supports available only to those students who need them. While some students will need a summary to make sense of a scene from Shakespeare, others should be challenged to figure it out on their own. In Actively Learn, we offer a separate layer of "extra help notes" visible only to designated students. For example, as students are reading The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, they will all encounter the comment made by Mrs. Mitty to her husband: "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over." Some students will be expected to make the inference that Dr. Renshaw is a psychologist, while others will have this made explicit for them with an extra help note in the margins:

An extra help note in Actively Learn helps to clarify Mrs. Mitty's reference.

This enables educators to differentiate the scaffolds available to students an ensure that students are given the appropriate tools to read rigorous text.

Conclusion

The reasoning behind the mixed-ability classroom is that it gives students of various backgrounds and abilities access to the same high-quality instruction and resources. All students are held to high standards and encouraged to use each other as a resource. Struggling students benefit from the modeling of their peers, while higher-achieving students are challenged to articulate their understanding for their classmates. All students benefit from the opportunity to collaborate with one another and engage their higher-order thinking.

The mixed-ability classroom presents educators with both a challenge and an opportunity. It is no easy feat to differentiate instruction and scaffolding to support students of dramatically different reading levels. But finding ways to bring students together within the same assignment unlocks learning opportunities that students simply can't find in homogeneous groups.

Related posts:

Works cited:

Barron, B. and Darling-Hammond, L. "Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods."

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. A. (2016). Visible learning for literacy: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning: Grades K-12. Thousand Oaks (California): Corwin.

Mehta, J. and Fine, S. 2015. The Why, What, Where, and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools. Students at the Center: Deeper Learning Research Series. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future.

Nystrand, M. (2006). Research on the Role of Classroom Discourse as It Affects Reading Comprehension. Research in the Teaching of English, Volume 40(4), 392-412.

Slavin, R. E., Hurley, E. A., & Chamberlain, A. (2003).Cooperative Learning and Achievement: Theory and Research. Handbook of Psychology. doi:10.1002/0471264385.wei0709

Wiliam, D. (2018). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Zwiers, J. C. (2011). Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings. Portland: Stenhouse.

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How can students work together in a mixed-ability classroom?

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The mixed-ability classroom was born from a desire to promote greater equity among students. Too often, tracking and grouping fall along racial and socioeconomic lines, creating disparities between students that exacerbate achievement gaps. The mixed-ability classroom, in theory, creates equal expectations for all students and provides them with the same resources.

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| Do Tai Lam
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[Music]

Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence, and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and communities. This week on Critical Window, we're learning about the Pedagogy of Confidence and how educators use it to support adolescent learning.

Our guest today is Dr. Yvette Jackson. She's internationally-recognized for her work at assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. She applies her experience in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory to develop integrative processes that engage and elicit high intellectual performances from under-achieving students.

She's the author of many books, including her book on our topic today: The Pedagogy of Confidence. Dr. Jackson currently is an adjunct professor at Teacher's College at Columbia University and a senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education. She previously was a visiting scholar for the Panasonic Foundation, and a consultant for the Brazilian Department of Education.

She's also been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, Columbia University, and Stanford University, and has served as a member of ASCD's Differentiated Instruction Cadre. Welcome to the show, Dr. Yvette Jackson.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Thank you very much.

Hans Hermann: Before we dive into our conversation, I'd appreciate if you'd take a moment just to describe for those listening, the concept of the Pedagogy of Confidence.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Okay. Well, it all started with my own experience in being able to work with the same group of children for three years, and getting more and more confident about the intellectual ability they had by watching them grow through that time. And realizing that when you have confidence about the potential of students, you help to push them to the outskirts, the limits of their mind.

And what goes with that is a pedagogy, the art of your work and instruction that helps students feel, I can do this. Then they become more confident. And so I went into this work to show that when you take this kind of pedagogy, a lot of which I borrowed from gifted education because in gifted ed, they believe that students are coming to you with a lot of potential, they have confidence in those students.

And so I wanted to prove that same point that regardless of the child, regardless of where they are from, if you had this kind of gifted education mentality, you will walk and be more confident; the students will pick that up, and all of a sudden, learning becomes something that pulls their potential to the next level.

Hans Hermann: So then you started to describe what the Pedagogy of Confidence is. Are there some key components of it that people should be aware or?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: The first key component is what I call the high operational practices. And those are practices that I called from research, again, a lot from gifted land that said what are the kinds of things that move intelligence? The first is identifying and activating student strengths. Right. We know that we do that in gifted land, but we don't do that anywhere else.

And the question is why? In a Pedagogy of Confidence, we do. Building relationships, that a lot of people understand. But what they don't realize that I'm not just talking about social-emotional relationships, but students also want to know what does what I am learning, what is the relationship to me, as an individual, to my role, to my life from one subject to the next? They need to have those ideas.

The other one is the idea of focusing on high intellectual performance. Again, in gifted land, that's what they think. And in a Pedagogy of Confidence, high intellectual performance should be the target for everybody. Then there's the idea of enrichment. Once again, what do you do to cultivate the frames of references of students so they have strong ischemia, so they have been exposed to things that will peak not only their existing interests but maybe create more interests.

Then there's the idea of prerequisite, including prerequisites in the learning. You know, it's really interesting because I started as an early childhood teacher, and they always talk about readiness skills. What do you do to prime the brain for learning? And then you don't have here, prerequisites here again until college. You know, you have to take a prerequisite course.

And all in the middle, I am saying in order to move kids to the next level, what are the prerequisites? What's the kind of background knowledge they need to have? What are the kinds of skill-building they never to have? And the two last ones that are still part of the high operational practices is how do you situate learning in the lives of kids?

How do they see the connection between what you're teaching and what's happening in the world? What are the issues that are going on in the world? What are the trends? How come we're not talking about that? We want them to leave us and be able to thrive and flourish, but we don't talk about that. And the last is, we call it, student voice, but it really should be called student agency. So that's a main component.

The other two components I would talk about is the impact of culture, the idea on the learning process. Culture language and cognition, and how they become the real fundamental ischemia-buildings for students, but they can also be the kinds of things that can hold children back even in school. If the school culture doesn't represent the culture of the students, then you're going to get all kinds of dysfunction. So that becomes another part.

And the last part of the pedagogy of confidence is making every learning experience an opportunity for assessing a learning growth, and giving students the feedback on that learning growth so they'll go to the next level.

Hans Hermann: You've already mentioned it a couple times in different parts of your answers, but what was your journey to this concept and to writing this book? How did you get to this place?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Well, my journey started as, like you said, as I had in teaching, teaching the same group of children for three years in a row, and just seeing, firsthand, the kind of learning growth and obvious high intelligence that these students have, which wetted me, first, to the belief that all children have high ability. But then in the school that I was working in, there was a psychologist who was telling me that he didn't believe that everybody had the same potential. That, in fact, in this school, there were no gifted children.

So, now, I felt I had to write a book, not at that time because I didn't write it. This was many years ago. But I just knew that during my journey, I was going to have to put the kind of knowledge, the epistemology behind my work that would lead me to defend what I was saying about not only these children, but all kinds of children. Then I got into deeper studies about gifted education, literally. And during that time, I also met my teacher, whose name is was Reuven Feuerstein. And Reuven was a cognitive psychologist who really taught me that there was a science to the belief and this idea of unfettered type of possibilities in the mind of children.

And I started studying with him. What was so incredible that was he is known for his work, especially, with students who have down's syndrome. And his whole comment was if we can work with these children to bring out such high levels of work, there's not an excuse for that for any other child. And that is where he kind of dared me to put the rest of the research behind what I was saying and what he was exposing to show its applicability, especially for students of color.

Hans Hermann: You mention him often in your book...

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Yes, I do.

Hans Hermann: ...as a source of inspiration.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Absolutely.

Hans Hermann: And it seems that Dr. Feuerstein not only was a source of inspiration, but he embodied many of the principles of the Pedagogy of Confidence and how he worked with you as a young scholar. So if you could talk - you've already spoke about him a little bit, talk a bit about how he did that, and also were there other individuals that served as sources of inspiration as you were putting this all together?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Yeah. How he really did that, the interesting thing about his work was he started, as I said, as a cognitive psychologist who was in charge of assessing the learning potential of children who were coming out of WWII, specifically Jewish children, who had been either in concentration camps, lost their parents, or whatever.

And he came up with a learning potential assessment device that actually said that you cannot test students without actually introducing them to the cognitive tools or the content that would allow you to assess how they're taking this information in and being able to apply it. So his whole work was around what he used to call a test learning test situation.

But, really, it was starting with an assessment of where children are in their cognitive background in terms of their training, introducing new higher levels of those cognitive functions to students, meaning adding analogies, adding things like syllogisms, similes, and metaphors into the learning process because then you could assess how students were making meaning. And then you would assess them again to see how far they had come.

And when I was watching his work, really with students, like I said, either who had down's syndrome or not, who had other kinds of cognitive impairments, I would see, in one setting with him - one sitting, I should say; in one sitting with him, how it seemed like miracles were happening. All of a sudden, students were talking at a higher register because he was introducing new language while he was assessing the language that was connected to the content or to the type of thinking.

And I was mystified. I really was. And I said, all right, I have to try to do this within my work, and of course, I still had him in my life so I could go back to him and say am I approaching this the right way? How do you get more enrichment? That led me, also, to when you were saying who were some other people who impacted me, a man named Joseph Renzulli, who is out of Storrs, Connecticut, who had come up with something that was called a schoolwide enrichment program.

And Joe's belief was that when you take students and expose them to high levels of content that challenged them and gave them the tools they need but really put them in opportunities for moving this kind of information into real life experiences, then you would see incredible growth. So, now, I had this one man, Reuven Feuerstein, I had Joe Renzulli.

My third teacher, who was actually a best friend of Reuven Feuerstein's, another cognitive psychologist, whose name was Asa Hilliard. Asa's work took Reuven's ideas, but added a frame of what is the impact of culture on cognition, very much like Vygotsky, but really using a culture from more of an ethnic perspective, meaning looking at African-American students or other students of color. But they were very impactful.

In terms of women, who affected me, Linda Darling-Hammond's work. She was at Stanford for a very long time. But she was always bringing forward the idea of how do you look at the data, but not data just being numbers, but identifying student's strengths, identifying how they're thinking from a cultural perspective as part of data. And last is a Barbara Sizemore, who is very well-known for just this belief in changing schools to look at potential of students as being so important.

The last one I'm going to add in my journey, though, is James Comer. A lot of people know James' work. He was an EL, and he was one of the people who really talked about the need for community schools that had all the services students would need to be supported right there in the institution. So all of those people together are part of what is behind a Pedagogy of Confidence.

Hans Hermann: A central component of the Pedagogy of Confidence is this intersection between environment, culture, and the brain.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Right.

Hans Hermann: Could you take a moment, before we dive into that intersection between culture and the brain, could you take a moment to describe what you mean by culture, and how culture and environment relate to one another as terms?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Sure. Absolutely. Well, culture, for me, is whatever is meaning and relevant to an individual. Culture does not come in a color. Culture comes in how people take in interactions in their lives that become so powerful that they're usually associated with the group with whom they've grown up, or their families, religious institutions.

But that is not the end of culture. Culture is then whatever else you bring into that frame that has become so meaningful and relevant, that it affects how you see the world. That is really critical. And, again, that's not even something that I've made up. It's very much Lev Vygotsky talked about this in the last century, the importance of looking at how culture affects not only our language, but how we're making meaning.

Where environment comes into that is culture is directly related to an environmental situation. So my culture, if it's things that are relevant and meaningful or have impacted me, very much get affected by the environment within, or within which either I grew up either outside of a school. And this is where we get more specific, or what's happening inside of a school that means that environment, the kinds of experiences that I am having, how they can affect me on a cognitive level, meaning how I'm making meaning or how it's holding me back from learning.

Then I learned from a neuroscience perspective that there is a real deal about how those experiences can affect either neurotransmitters in my body that really - in my brain, I should say, that are affecting the neural connectivity, or those could be stressors that are coming from my environment that are now neuro-inhibitors. They are depressing my learning. They are adding this vicious cycle of habitual behavior that could really be impacting my academic performance.

So the culture can be the culture in a school. It can be very positive, like an oasis, where I see that I belong and that I fit in, or it can be very negative that, in fact, is inhibiting how I grow.

Hans Hermann: And you started to get to there, and that's where I wanted to go next, which is it's not necessarily intuitive to people how the environment, especially culture, shapes the brain. So could you describe it in, detail, what that looks like, how culture is shaping the brain?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Right. Well, culture - because I mentioned that culture affects how you're making meaning, the way that you make meaning, the way that you your brain makes connections, literally affects the synaptic wiring or the wiring across neurons. So another words, if I'm working with information that I am familiar with, and my environment happens to be a place where I am not in stress. It's an environment where I am feeling comfortable.

And there are things called endorphins and neurotransmitters that are helping the connectivity in my brain. Then the structure of my brain, really meaning the connection across neurons becomes fitted in a particular way and particular patterns, literal neuron patterns, or being constructed. The reverse could happen. I could be in a situation where there's so much stress, as I was talking about before, that it breaks down the connectivity across the neurons, which means there's a whole different structure to how my brain is working.

And I really mean that a neurological basis and how the neurons are not firing across themselves. Which means if I looked at those neurons in my brain through an MRI, I would see, in stress, a different structure, and especially if it's perpetual stress like post-traumatic stress disorder I'm looking at adverse childhood experiences. There are lesions that can actually form up across the layers of the neural connections that are going to affect how I'm thinking and then how I'm seeing the world. So literal lesions are going to affect how the brain looks.

Hans Hermann: Would you say - its accurate for me to say then that the neuropathways are formed by cultural experiences and create almost an architecture for the brains that serves as a foundation of learning then throughout our lives.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Absolutely. And that's a really good way of describing it. So when you look at different cultures and the way they transmit information to their young children can vary in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, the culture is a much more visual culture, meaning that it's more about observation. Sometimes, the culture in terms of the transmission, is more through narrative, through story, through ideas like that that cause certain images to come into the mind of students.

Then there are cultures that are just totally verbal. It's all about just how you give directions how you're moving a child to be pushed to boundaries or held back from boundaries. All of those things are culturally transmitted meaning they are seen in their values and different kinds of traditions, the activities of the engage their children in, that are really going to affect that how children are not only making meaning, but how they are showing the impact in terms of the actions that they're taking.

Hans Hermann: So some researchers talk about cultural mismatches in schools.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Yes.

Hans Hermann: So, now, we'll take it the school environment. And they're talking about this idea that a student's culture doesn't necessarily match the culture of the school or a background. Your book specifically focuses on African-American age adolescent students, although I do want to emphasize that the ideas that you put out in the book are for all students not just African-American adolescent students.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Hans Hermann: I do want to ask, though, how does being a low income student or student of color, or any type of historically-underserved student lead to cultural mismatches in schools. And then beyond that, do all students experience cultural mismatch in school to some extent?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Very good question. Well, let's start with looking at it in terms of ethnically. I'm not gonna say that racially because, first of all, the whole idea of race is such a social construct. That's for your next podcast, we'll talk about that. [Laughter]. But, ethnically, and I say that because you can be a person of color and your ancestry is really Jamaican, as it opposed to it being from Georgia, very different kind of cultural experiences that they have.

But the problem in the United States is when regardless of what your ethnic background is, you're looked at as a person of color, and especially if you have some African dissent, you know, they will look at, well, this person looks like they are of African dissent and so they all must have the same cultural background, and that's not true at all. But the question is where is the mismatch?

And the mismatch is often if I'm defining culture as being what's really relevant and meaningful to me, how I making meaning in the world, and I go into a school where teachers are using experiences or talking about information from just their perspective, then what happens is there's this mismatch so I can't literally make the same connections that I could if somebody was using more of the experiences that I had.

Now, notice, I keep saying experiences. So you can just pick up a book and say I'm going to now read about African-American kids, and now I've learned. No, because again, here you go, we have different kinds of cultural experiences. What I'm talking about is how a student shares those things that are meaningful and relevant.

So in a classroom where a teacher really wants to do a cultural match, all they have to do is really elicit from the students when they're introducing new concepts, what do these concepts mean to you? Where else do you see them in your life? What kind of connections can you make around this concept? Is there anything else this concept reminds you of? Just me listening into that allows me to get into the cultural head of students.

When I don't do that, then there is a cognitive misfire because my brain is trying to look for the file folder that it has that says, oh yeah, I got this. I can relate. So I'll give you an example. So I was working in a particular city and they were trying to do this thing about African-American males, and they were bringing boys of color into work. And tried to - they were eliciting from the boys what is that you would like teachers to I know about what is important to learning for you?

And it was so interesting. I won't go in through the whole story. But one of the little boys in the group, and I should shouldn't say little because their adolescents, so you have to get the image. They're not four year olds. We're talking about 12 to 13 adolescents. And he said well I wish my teachers would know that sometimes they have to go slower for me because we don't get it as quickly.

And I was so disturbed sitting there because that's not the issue at all. It's not that they are not capable of getting it quickly. What the child was experiencing as one of the only children of color in the room was that the teacher wasn't making connections that were pivotal for this child. So it's not that they need to go slower. What the teachers needed was the strategies that would elicit those kinds of connections from the student.

So, again, if you don't have it, it looks like they're not getting it. But it's not because structurally their brain is impaired. It's because, cognitively, they're looking for the connections that allow them to make meaning in the way that processes much more deeply.

Hans Hermann: So when students experience a cultural mismatch in their learning, and you started talking about this a little bit in response, what's happening in their brain? And when there isn't a mismatch, when there's a match, what is happening in there brain?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: So let's start with the match. Okay. What's happening there brain is, as I was saying earlier, is they already have ischemia. They are background that allows to make the connection to not only think more deeply about what's going on, but then to even do things like forecast further, to look at things more critically because there's this match between experience and what exists in their brain as background. So now they have a deeper foundation for moving to deeper levels of thinking.

When those kinds of connections cannot be made, then what happens is, first of all, the brain actually goes into stress. Which means when you're going into stress, cortisol gets put out your body because your brain is saying I don't get this. I don't get this. Why don't I get it? Is it because I'm dumb or is -? The brain is never thinking, well, it's not me, it's a teacher. You know, the brain is saying I need to have these connections.

I'm not finding them so I'm not going to make the kind of higher levels of thinking, let's say, in terms of, as I was talking about earlier. I'm not gonna make the mental analogies. I'm not going to be able to find the kinds of pushes that allow me to then forecast, as I said before, and comprehend more deeply. So, again, it looks like there's a cognitive impairment that's going on because the connections are not being made. And impairment is just that what they were given to use as data, as information, as content, just didn't connect for them.

Hans Hermann: At All4Ed, we focus on the developmental period of adolescence. You talk about, specifically, about adolescent culture and your book. What is the difference between adolescent culture and culture as we've been talking about it so far?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Well, one of the biggest differences, adolescent cultures goes totally across ethnic lines. It goes across ethnic lines, across not only ethnic lines, but if you look at it across-country. You know, in other words, you can pick up something that is geared on adolescents, whether it's clothing, a show, a song, and it doesn't matter where you are in the world, the children who are adolescents can relate to it.

Why? Because they're looking for things that engage them. They're looking for the idea of challenge. They're looking for a certain kind of feedback. They're looking for connections, as I said earlier, that is so profound that they look for those experiences that bring them together that way. That happens to really adolescent. Now, the interesting thing about it it's not only adolescents. But in adolescent, they are really thriving or I should say striving to try and find the kind of relational experiences is that allow them to fit and make them feel that they belong, that they fit in.

That's really, really important to adolescents. We really all feel that but they live it. And when the reasons they live it like that is because during adolescence, their bodies really crave a neuron transmitter that's called oxytocin. That, your body lets off when you are feeling like you're in a strong relational kind of a situation. We all kind of love that oxytocin, but they really crave it. So when they say we really want to work in cooperative groups, they're not kidding.

What they don't understand is that's because there's a neurobiological connection to that. So what I'm saying to you is that in adolescent culture, The idea of relationship is both cognitive and it's physiological. It's social, emotional; it's all those things connected. So an adolescent like I said, craves to be with other adolescents. And a good example as an adolescent cannot walk around without being in a posse. They got to be with four or five other students or other children, right. That is a cultural thing that is really reserved for adolescents.
And, you know, in other kinds of cultural experiences, is about traditions and rituals, the thing is, the interactions that an individual has grown up through that has affected them. But, again, they're not craving it the same way as adolescents crave to be together.

Hans Hermann: So you talk about as far as the Pedagogy of Confidence, as it relates to adolescents, these ideas of mediated cognitive formal connections and relationships with teachers. And these are two contingent factors on adolescent engagement. Can you take a moment describe what each of these are, and then why they're so critical to adolescents? And you start to talk about a second ago, especially with relationships.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Right. Well mediation is the interaction between a child and another adult, or an adult. It doesn't have to be a parent. It could be a teacher. But where that person is purposely setting up experiences that can help a child work through the thinking that they might have to go through, but by helping them be able to isolate a problem, to be able to use visual transport.

Help them use their brain to figure out images that we're going to move them forward. Help them connect ideas they're trying to teach to some personal kinds of experiences. That's what a mediator does. So a mediator is an intervener. A mediator becomes between the child has to learn, the stimulus, and how they process information. The thing about mediation is always interactionally and it's very purposefully. But mediation doesn't only have to be verbal. Mediation can be by example.

Students are always watching an adult, especially adolescents. Even though they might not be even be conscious what they are picking up. But a mediator is very intentional about if this is where a student is, this is where I want them to be able to say, I get it; I'm going to pick out all those kinds of connections experience that are going to give students the frame of reference to make that connection.

That's what I mediator does. How does a teacher become a mediator in a classroom? It's going through and thinking about if I'm going to teach this new content what some background experience I have to give to these students that put some on the same playing field by having that background experience? So to give you an example. Something like that like an electronic field trip.

You're teaching something on social studies and it's going to be you're studying Paris, that's going to be because you're going to be looking at the continents, and Europe, and you're going to go to France. Before I introduce that, I could take students literally into France or an electronic filed trip that will give them the ideas of what does it look like in Paris, What does it look like in France? What are the different geographic areas? In other words, I'm giving them - I'm building their ischemia.

So as a teacher, before I teach something new, what is going to need to be introduced that will help students say I got this. I can make a connection to it. What are the kinds of higher levels of thinking that they might need to go through the experience I'm about to give him? Is it more where it's going to be categorical thinking? Will they have to do more in terms of, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of forecasting or isolating problem?

I do that all before the new content comes in so that students can be familiar with the skills and have some frame of reference before something new is introduced to them. That is what a teacher there who is mediational will do to get students ready.

Hans Hermann: I'd like to dive into a specific topic that you talk about in the book around adolescents, which is autonomy. Particularly, you have two examples in there, a punishment, and you talk about voice. You use punishment as example of how we misdiagnosis adolescent behavior and then we react to it. Can you walk us through that?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Right. Well let's start, usually when we talk about behavior, we talk about some discipline that then is going to be enacted as a result of some behavior that is isn't considered the way we do things here. The problem is that in so many experiences, see, adolescents are at a point where they are thinking at high levels of reasoning

Except sometimes the reasoning is making them question authority because what they're either being asked to do, or expected, or how they're being expected to ask - act, I should say, doesn't reflect what they're seeing authority doing. So now with the discipline, the teachers are saying I'm going to discipline you because you did XYZ, or speaking loudly in the class. And then you go in the halls, and you've got teachers who are yelling to students, or yelling to each other, that kind of thing.

Now, you're saying, wait a second, the disciplinary actions to the student is so negative. And the student is saying this is not fair because their reasoning is saying that's not what I'm saying. And they're trying to infer why are the teacher saying I should be acting one way; they're acting another way. They're not being authentic with me. They're not making it so that I can really feel that what they're expecting, I've been led to get that same reality in my life because I see them doing the same kinds of things. It's that kind of thing.

So that becomes a really critical piece. The other is why not include students then much more on discussing discipline, in the sense that discipline is about order; making order so things can be safe. If that's the case, kids want to be safe. They like order. They really do like order. But they need to feel that the order makes sense and that the order is mimicked across the school send them up to whoever the adults are in school.

So that's why I talk about this idea of a discipline, especially with adolescents, and especially adolescents of color who are saying, Wait a second, this is not fair. And they were articulate that. And, all the sudden, because they said it's not fair, guess what? Go to the office. Go out. I'm dismissing you. So discipline becomes a real issue. The other issue, I forgot exactly how you stated this part of that. It was discipline and -?

Hans Hermann: And student voice.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: And student voice, which goes together because I just said it's very interesting. If you're going to cultivate students to feel it they can have voice, then you, first of all, have to be ready to hear their voice and they have to feel that they can hear their voice in a safe space. That you're not going to then be punishing them because they said this is not fair, what you're telling them. But the other thing that I mean by student voice is just not how they articulate.

It's really giving the students the opportunity to make decisions in school, to help meet with teachers and have a relational conversations about how we live in this school, the kind of rituals we put to practice. How we communicate in a way that shows that we belong together. That's voice where teachers and students or co-learning.

I have been in school where teachers and students work on projects together, not just peer-to-peer projects, the teachers are doing part of the project the students are doing the other part of the projects. They come together and really put this work as a collaborative piece. That's a whole level, a different level, of how we are communing our cultural relationship within a school.

Hans Hermann: You are talking about amplifying student voice within the decision-making process, and that's a big topic today in education. So my question for you is, and I think you used the term agency earlier, is voice enough? And I think the examples you were giving go beyond voice.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Absolutely.

Hans Hermann: But I guess is voice enough and in adolescents, especially, should we be talking more about agency?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: We should be talking about agency. And when I first wrote this book, I have been working with an organization. It's called National Urban Alliance. And we were just trying to come up with titles for the work, we were really looking at it in terms of where do you start? You start by allowing students to give their perceptions about things vocally, and surveys, in conversation.

That's why it started with voice, but it really should be about agency because, so what, they have voice. Now what? And how do they develop to see their voice is going to matter? Well, they have to be in authentic situations where they're asked their opinion. Their opinions then get used to make decisions about the school, about the functioning of it, about what's being learned, about how they learn together, I go on and on. But that's agency.

So, first, you hear their perceptions. That would be a voice, but the purpose is agency and get students to self-determination and to see you are so valued that you have a space in making a contribution here.

Hans Hermann: So you've given many examples throughout the conversation about how teachers can - in the book, you call them Islands of Confidence, where they're enacting in the Pedagogy of Confidence in their classroom. What I want to take in now is how can these Islands of Confidence that teachers are creating the expanded school-wise or district-wide? What should school leaders, superintendents and principals be doing to create what I might call an archipelago or a continent of confidence

Dr. Yvette Jackson: That was good. That was good. First of all, it all starts with a vision meaning the superintendent has to be very clear on what is your vision for the students because the vision is totally reflective of belief, right? Whatever your vision is, it's based on your philosophy or your belief. But for a superintendent, it's saying because we have this vision and philosophy, I have certain expectations that the way curriculum is written, the way instruction goes, the way we include families, the way that we include students in terms of agency, all should be reflective of this vision statement.

So I would say the superintendents, go back and look at your vision statements. Are they vision statements that exude belief in the innate ability of all students? If they don't, if they really say things even like we believe in equity and excellence. How come it's not equity through excellence? How come is it's not excellent through equity? The idea of putting excellence in equity as two sides means that one is not the other but they are parallel tracks.

And I am saying that is part of the problem because people will say, well, there's excellence here, but then, oh, that's right, there's also equity. No, in a vision statement, we talk about that idea that we go for excellence by having this kind of equitable understanding that all students have is kind of innate potential. Now, what that has to happen with superintendents, based on that as being the vision, let's look at language that we use.

Let's look at the way that we write literature that gets transmitted through the district. Literature goes to parents. How students are given disciplinary actions. The other is how do we set up the experiences that are either enriching or the opposite? In other words, with this vision of innate potential, I'll give you an example. So there's one particular school district that a superintendent really is committed to equity. He or she has changed the vision statement.

And then the summer comes, and it's time for summer school. All the kids that - I'm talking adolescents, all the kids that are going to go to a summer program go into the same building. The bell rings, all the kids who are now going to be in remediation, usually they've identified kids for remediation because there have been these kind of mismatches and then students really don't need remediation because they never got access to begin with.

But all these kids are going in one direction in the high school, and the other students are getting real enrichment. They're going to do drama. They're going to -. My issue is through the lens of our superintendent, that practice, the way I just described it, does not reflect the vision of belief or this vision that all students have. How comes everybody is not going to enrichment? And, yeah, there might be some other kind of supports that are needed, but you don't do that kind of a separation. So I would say the superintendents, let's look at the practices that you have going on in this school that are practices of belief. Where are the practices of disbelief? And how do you bring adolescents to the table to get their perceptions about these practices? How that starts getting this about equity.

And the last thing I'll say is let's look at assessment. Does the type of assessment you're using, I'm not talking about the federal assessments or the state assessments, I'm talking about how are students access within my school? Is it really part of the learning experience or is it the traditional way that just is another mismatch with them? That's what I would say as a beginning part. You could do a whole podcast and just what do you tell superintendents. And there are many superintendents out there that are doing phenomenal work and using these visions as a way to change the architecture and culture of their district

Hans Hermann: So then the last question we have for you today is what do you see the next steps for implementing large-scale policies and practices, and infuse the Pedagogy of Confidence throughout the US education system?

Dr. Yvette Jackson: That is such a great question because what do I see? I see possibilities. When I say that I mean the government is the one that comes out with its own vision. What are we going to be focusing on as a country? So as a country, I'm saying, we have incredible potential. We have students with all kinds of strengths.

The next level of policy is how does the government come out and say because we want to be the best out there, we're going to put forward this opportunity that really means the kind of enriching experiences that we would usually give when we're only labeling gifted. And what I'm saying is they have a different philosophy about the way we educate and bring forward the belief in the potential of our students.

So where do I see do I see - do I see that that's happening tomorrow in the government? Absolutely not. But I think the more that we realize, as a country, that our best resource is our children. And there's all kinds of things happening in the world. If we're going to stay ahead to really lead, we've gotta change how are presenting our ideas about our children.

Hans Hermann: Thank you so much for joining me today. It was a pleasure having you.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Thank you for having me.

Hans Hermann: Our guest is Dr. Yvette Jackson, who is currently an adjunct professor at Teachers College at Columbia University and a senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education. She is the author of many books, including the Pedagogy of Confidence, which we spoke about today. And she had an upcoming book.

You can catch more of her thoughts on education and everything else that we talked about today. It's called mindfulness practice. If you also enjoyed this, you can check out our webinar we recently had with Dr. Jackson highlighting a third report that came out from the Alliance For Excellent education on this same topic and same issues. Thank you, again, for joining us.

Dr. Yvette Jackson: Thank you very much for having me.

Recording: Thank you for listening to Critical Window, the Alliance for Excellent Education's podcast on how the research from the science of adolescent learning can inform middle and high school design and the work of school leaders. Tell your colleagues, friends and families about Critical Window and please subscribe on iTunes to Stitcher to make sure you catch future episodes. This podcast was produced by Aharone Charnoff, Hans Hermann, and Robin Harper. To learn more about the science of adolescent learning visit all4ed.org/SAL.

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Six Ways to Help Students Reach Their Potential

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Expand Transcript [Music] Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence, and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and communities.