Our Role in Their Anxiety

Look at any psychological study, and you will find that we have been in a pandemic for a while.  No.  Not that one.  We are in an anxiety pandemic.  It started before Covid, but the events of 2020-2021 certainly didn't help.  

The blame is usually laid at the feed of the smartphone and social media.  And I don't disagree.  That is certainly a large part of it, which I will address later in this post.  But I also think we, as adults, like to blame the phone so that we can avoid the hard work of taking a look at ourselves.  As long as it is the phone's fault, it's not my fault.  But that's not going to fix anything.  We need to look at what WE can do to help reduce the anxiety in our teens, and that cannot happen until we look at the role we unwittingly play in it.

They need adults to be parents and teachers, not friends - A few decades ago, there was a weird shift in parenting.  Parents started referring to their kids as their friends and said their goal was that their kids would be happy.  This is a big contrast to the previous generation who said their goal was for their kids to be good citizens.  Teachers sort of adopted that attitude too, and we started seeing changes in classroom management as well as parenting.  It sounds loving, but kids don't respond well to this approach.  On the surface, they would probably articulate that they want easygoing adults who don't tell them what to do, but deep down, they know that parents and teachers are supposed to be the safe people who set loving boundaries.  Without that, they are left to figure out what this beneficial and what is dangerous about the world on their own, and that is scary.  As for happiness, it's too elusive to be a goal.  There are objective measures that can be observed to know if you have achieved the goal of being a successful citizen, but there isn't a way to know if you have "achieved" happiness.  If I accomplish something,  I'll likely be happy about it, so setting achievable goals might be the way to lead to happiness rather than making happiness the goal.  Not knowing whether or not they are happy increases their anxiety.

Too Much (Adult) Information - Since parents viewed their kids as friends, they started talking to them like they talked to their friends, including adult topics to big for kids to handle.  Prior generations worried about having the money to send their kids to college, but they didn't tell their kids about that worry.  People started placing such value on authenticity that they stopped recognizing that kids' brains aren't able to handle adult problems.  They can't help you with your marital problems, so they don't need to know about them.  The phrase "age appropriate" used to be a thing, and we need to restore that concept because treating them like short adults is only serving to increase their anxiety.  

Overpacking Their Schedules - I hear adults complain frequently about the amount of chauffering they have to do, taking their kids to music lessons, dance lessons, and practice for their year-round soccer team.  They get their kids home in the evening and then complain that the school has assigned homework because now their kids don't have time to ride their bikes and play.  Some of these same parents want to have their students dual enrolled in high school and college simultaneously.  The common phrase is "there's not enough time to . . . "  Yet, we have the same 24-hour days and 7-day weeks that people had back when they had to do everything by hand.  We have made choices for ourselves and our kids about how to spend time.  Extracurricular activities are good.  Pursuing passions is good.  But, time is like money; there is only so much of it, and it must be spent thoughtfully.  If you have spent time on one thing, that time is no longer available for something else.  Ask yourself why they are involved in so many things.  Is it because you think they HAVE to be involved in everything to get into college.  Let me tell you some stories of very happy kids who got into college without packing their schedule full of everything under the sun.  Recognize that there is no prize for finishing college early, and let them be in high school while they are in high school.  If all of this scheduling is about pursuing their passion, chances are they care a lot about one of the things, not all of them.  Prioritize that one.  Your child will graduate with better mental health and head into adulthood just as well as those who are frazzled.

Pressure - Watch the news.  The world is not in good shape.  From environmental issues to acts of mass violence to political division, things are very much not as they should be.  Kids know this more than we did at their age because they have access to so much information.  They also know this is the world they will inherit, and they see that adults are more concerned with their own rights than they are about fixing anything.  Kids feel that they are going to be required to "save the world" and know they don't have that capacity.  Teachers, we must be careful not to communicate to them that it is their job to fix it.  That's not fair, and it's not good for their developing brains.

Limit Phone Use - The phones and screens are, in fact, a problem.  Prior to Covid, a lot of parent and teacher discussion was about limiting screen time.  That went completely out the window during lockdown (and understandably so).  It's time to revive that discussion.  Kids cannot buy themselves a phone, and you have the ability to resist giving them one.  I know it is hard to think they won't have what other kids have, but the evidence of every study shows that delaying their access to phones and social media is best. Perhaps a group of parents can get together and make a pact to delay purchasing phones for them until 9th grade.  Then, you wouldn't have to worry about your child being "the only one."  At the very least, get it out of their bedrooms.  Back when computers were larger, we put them in public areas of the house and installed filters for accountability.  The same should apply to the small computer in their pocket.  Boundaries are healthy.  

None of this is easy.  I'm not going to pretend otherwise.  But it is necessary.  We cannot keep raising kids steeped in anxiety.  We just can't.

Change, Loss, and Why Your Brain Hates It

According to recent surveys, the most common sources of stress include divorce, the death of a loved one, job loss, marriage, retirement, having a child, starting a job, losing a job, and moving.  Some of these are obvious.  The death of a loved one and divorce involve irreplaceable loss, which leads to heartbreak as I wrote about earlier.  Others seem inconsistent - losing a job and starting a job produce fairly equal stress.  Getting married, having a child, and moving all seem like they should be good things, and they are, yet they make this list.  

Why?

Because change is stressful.  All change.  Even the best changes in the world.  

Again, why?

Your brain has thousands of functions, from processing sensory information and telling your diaphragm to move regularly to thinking about the sentence coming out of your mouth to planning for dinner.  

While it has thousands of functions, it has only one job.  Keeping you alive.  

As such, your brain really likes the status quo.  Whatever may be going on your life right now, you are alive.  To quote Dr. Deborah Gilboah, in her 2021 Learning and the Brain Conference Keynote speech, "When change happens, even good changes, your brains say, 'Cool. Cool.  Could ya' die, though."  So, moving is stressful, even if you have the money to pay for your dream house, because you brain is wondering why you would move out of your current house when you are alive in it.  You could be standing at the altar, looking at the best thing that has ever happened to you, heart totally full of love, and your brain will be screaming, "But as a single person, you were alive! Why are you messing with that?!?"

There are a few things you can do to help yourself through the stress of change, and it is not to say something like, "The only thing constant in life is change."  It's not even necessarily to think about the good things that could result from the change.  That's not going to help your change-resistant brain because those are changes too.  

• One thing is to minimize how much dwelling you do.  You have to think about the changes sometimes because they require planning, but it is helpful not to persevere on the fearful thoughts that take you down the rabbit hole of what happens six steps down the road.  When that enters your mind, have healthy distractions (music, crossword puzzles, knitting - whatever works for you).  Setting boundaries on what you think about is possible, but it requires discipline.
• Another option is to minimize how much change happens at one time to the extent that you can control it.  If you are buying a house, it might not be the best time to take on a promotion at work, even one that would lead to more money.  Perhaps find out if one of those things could be put off for six months or so.  It's not always possible to prevent some of the changes from happening, but where you can, you should prevent them from piling up.
• Even when a lot of things are changing, a lot of things aren't.  Remind your brain of the things that will remain consistent.  I'm changing careers right now, and much is changing; but I can remind my brain that we will still come to the same house at the end of the day to the same cat we've had for years.  Reminding my brain that much of what I have in the state where I am currently alive will remain.
• The best thing you can do when change is stressful is to remind yourself that the last change you experienced didn't kill you.  That change had a neuroplastic effect on your brain cells, and reinforcing that can help your brain remember that there is a range of variables in which it can and has remained alive.

With all that said, your brain is going to find the change stressful no matter what you do to help it out, so you may just have to grit your teeth and hang on tightly through it, knowing you won't die even when your brain thinks it might.

 

 

Who Knew I Loved Kickboxing? A Tribute to Matt and His Class

I joined the YMCA on March 1, 2023.  I tried a number of different types of classes.  I liked indoor cycling, but yoga wasn't for me.  I enjoyed Zumba, and I hated Barre.  I was just trying as many things as I could to find what I might want to do regularly.  On March 8, I left school and said to my friends, "Well, tonight I try kickboxing.  That should be interesting."  

I approached Matt, the instructor, as I did in all new classes, and said, "I've never done this before.  What do I need to know?"  His response was, "Well, first of all, don't take yourself too seriously."  This was good advice for someone who was trying new things and likely to be pretty bad at most of them for a while.  What I found was not just a workout, but a source of joy.  It was the first class that I knew I would return to every single week.  When I called my mom that night, I said, "It turns out I love kickboxing.  Who knew?"  This class quickly became and has remained the highlight of my week for the past fourteen months.  When Matt was out of town, I took something else and enjoyed it, but I always felt that week was missing something.  Every Wednesday night, I looked forward to jabbing, crossing, uppercutting, kicking, and grinning from ear to ear while Matt bounced around the room, shining glitter down on every member of the class.  

There is something truly special about watching a person do what he loves, and you can tell Matt loves teaching this class.  He feeds off of the energy in the room.  I also have Matt in a weightlifting class, and he is fantastic in that one too, but I have told him before that watching him teach kickboxing is like sitting in a window with sunlight coming through it.  There is just a warmth and joy in it that is exceptional. 

This week, we had the last kickboxing class we are likely to have for a while (although I'm still trying to write the perfect comment card to get it back), and I am so sad I don't really have words.  I plan to write next week about the neurological reasons your brain finds all change stressful, so I won't go into that here; but we all know that some changes are more painful than others.  I've been thinking a lot about why that is.  Here's the conclusion I've reached.  If your heart is broken by a loss, it indicates that the thing you had was irreplaceably special.  (I have the Coldplay song running through my head - "Tears stream down your face. When you lose something you cannot replace.")  This class was just that - an irreplaceably special source of joy, love, and confidence in my life. While I am not losing Matt because I will still have him in the weightlifting class, the joy of his kickboxing class is not something that can be replicated.  I am so grateful to have had it for the last fourteen months.  Multiply that joy by the 20 years he has been teaching it and the number of "mes" there have been, and there is a lot of joy in the world now that there would not have been if it had not been for Matt's faithful service to the Y.

Thank you, Matt, for the love you put into teaching.  Thank you for being an amazing educator.  Thank you for putting up with me when I am clingy and possessive and "a little much."  Thank you for being a reference for me.  Thank you for the twenty years you have taught such a beautiful class.  

This is Your Brain on Change

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change." 
- Mary Shelley in Frankenstein

Change is stressful.  All change.  Even good changes are stressful.  Knowing why the brain reacts to change the way it does won't prevent it from being stressful, but it might help you deal with it.

A few years ago, Dr. Deborah Gilboa said this at a Learning and the Brain conference. - "Your brain has many functions but one job, to keep you alive.  Whatever difficulties you may be going through, you are alive.  Any change, no matter how good, might change that.  So you could be ecstatically happy about a marriage proposal, and your brain will respond with, 'Cool, but could you die, though?' That is why change is stressful."  Your brain prefers to keep things the same as much as possible.

And yet, that's not how life works.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the idea that the only constant in life is change.  You change as you learn; so do others. Friends get married and have children, changing both their lives and yours.  Students graduate, and co-workers leave the company. Bosses change, and inflation happens. You get the idea. 

So, if the reason for the stress is that your brain is trying to maintain your current state of "aliveness," it makes sense to trick your brain into thinking of changes as smaller than they are. No matter how irrational it sounds, in terms of your brain, the bigger the change, the more significant the chance of death.  The reason most New Year's Resolutions fail (aside from them being stupid, as I've discussed before on this blog) is that we set goals requiring huge and immediate change. In the misguided belief that dropping a ball in Times Square will renew us overnight, we suddenly take our calorie intake from Christmas level to third-world level; and our brain freaks out.  The popularity and success of smoking cessation helpers like nicotine gum and patches show that stopping cold turkey is expecting too much change too fast.  

Small changes are more doable because they scare your brain less. A smaller change might carry a smaller risk of death with it, so your brain doesn't cause you to fear it as much.  Adding a nutritious item to each day or removing one serving of junk food won't make your brain think you are experiencing a famine, making you crave every calorie you see.  That change is sustainable, so it will soon stop feeling like change.  If you have decided you spend too much time on social, your brain will accept it more if you go down by 15 minutes every day this week and then 15 minutes again every day next week than it will if you go down by 30 minutes overnight.  The less "change-y" it feels, the less anxious your brain will be.  Unless your bad habit is immediately dangerous, stepping down is better than a sudden stop.

I teach a study skills class, and two weeks ago, we talked about the organization of study materials and environments.  Some of them are natural organizers and others are a hot mess.  I told those who were a hot mess that I wasn't asking them to become like "the color-coded matching folder" people; I was just asking them increase by one level - perhaps one folder for things to hand in tomorrow.  This is a small change that can last the rest of the school semester.  Perhaps, then, you can step it up one more level in the future.

Some things, of course, cannot be done in steps.  If you are moving from one house to another, having a baby, or leaving a job, you cannot really do that in small doses.  In those times, it would be most helpful to remind yourself of the things that are not changing, no matter how small or to focus on the ways in which that change will improve your life (to remind your brain that you aren't likely to die).

Change is inevitable, but you can, as the great Daniel Willingham put it, "Outsmart Your Brain."  So, be realistic in your goal setting, and give your brain time to adjust and remind it that some changes are good.

Open to Change

Last night, I was drinking from my Wikipedia water bottle.  (Yes, there is a Wikipedia store, and they sell a pretty great metal water bottle.). What I love about that bottle is that it reminds me how much I have changed my opinion about Wikipedia.

Like most teachers, when Wikipedia first started, I hated it.  Students would sit in the computer lab, writing nonsense on pages, and the nonsense would stay for weeks or months.  I warned students against using it and took points off if they did.  Now, I have links to Wikipedia in my textbook, send students to it for some of my lessons, and donate to it every year.  So, what changed?  Well, Wikipedia changed for one, but I did too.  As it became more used, the people at Wikipedia recognized their need for a better error detection system.  They tightened up on who could contribute to their pages and created a system for flagging errors that was more efficient than they had once had.  I also watched a TED talk by founder Jimmy Wales in which he describes their structure.  He says something along the lines of "If you don't think our people care about accuracy, just remember that they volunteer to edit an encyclopedia in their free time."  I thought that was a very good point, and it changed the way I viewed Wikipedia as well.  (Listen, I'm not saying I let students use it for everything.  It still isn't the place to do formal research for academic essays - although, depending on the topic, it can be a good place to find sources.  But if you want to learn more about something as personal enrichment, it is often the best place to start.)

As a science teacher, I frequently use the phrase "our current best understanding" because that is what science is.  For hundreds of years, our best understanding of gravity was Newtonian.  Then, Einstein proposed some new ideas, and we think of it differently.  Our understanding of the atom has experienced five major changes between Dalton and the Quantum model, but each time it changed, it was based on new evidence or a new observation of behavior.  Most things aren't discovered all at once, so we must be open to change when new evidence is available.  When I was a child, we were taught that the brain didn't change after you reached the age of ten (which I found confusing because we were at school), but we now know the brain is plastic and can be changed by learning and experience.  While science is a search for answers, it can also be a search for the next question.  It is all our current best understanding.

I would like to submit that we apply this to our understanding of people and situations as well.  One of the best things about teaching 8th grade is that I have more chances to watch students change than most people get.  A student that started unmotivated and misbehaved can become a great student by the end of the year.  A new kid who begins the year socially awkward sometimes ends the year a leader.  Since I also teach juniors and seniors, I have the privilege of writing college recommendation letters.  Often, the theme of a letter is how much that student has changed since I first met them.  

When we think of growth mindset, let's not just apply it to learning math or studying for tests.  Let's recognize that experiences cause change in humans, and humans are having new experiences all of the time.  Just like science and Wikipedia, be open to changing your opinion about people when you observe new evidence.

Pressing On to What Lies Ahead

The proofreading sweater is now in retirement.  Yesterday was my final yearbook deadline - not just of the year.  It was my last ever yearbook deadline.  In my Thanksgiving post last November, I wrote about 18 years of being the yearbook advisor and why it was time for me to hand it over to someone else.  In that post, I promised to talk about what happens next.  

Let me go back to April of 2022 when I began thinking about this.  Our school has grown dramatically over the past 18 years, and when we got an email about our growing enrollment, I recognized that the methods I have used to make the yearbook all these years were not going to be scalable to this size.  One sleepless night, I had the thought, "In a few years, it may be time to pass this on to someone who can delegate better than I can."  Within a few weeks, I was thinking that perhaps this should happen sooner rather than later.  I wanted to make sure I stopped while I still loved doing it (If that sounds strange, listen to this episode of the TED radio hour in which Daniel Kahneman discusses the Peak End phenomenon of our memories).

But I am not a person who walks away from things easily, and I'm a pretty reflective person (hence this blog).  So, I started thinking about what I have loved about doing the yearbook all these years.  What things do I get from it that I don't want to lose?  There are a number of small things, but there were ultimately two major ones.  

1. Connections with many teachers - Our school is currently on two campuses, with our TK through 6th grade located down the hill about a quarter of a mile from our 7th through 12th grades.  While we have occasional large group meetings, most faculty are not well-connected with those on the other campus.  Because I might pop into a room with my camera at any time and send email requests for photos, I have more knowledge of what is happening in classrooms than most, and it is part of why I love the school so much.
2. Legacy contribution - Teaching is about projecting something into the future.  While we obviously do that with our students, it is important to think about the future of the school itself.  I have been at GRACE for 20 years, and preserving our memories in the yearbook has made me feel that I was making a tangible contribution to the school's legacy.

These were both things that I didn't want to lose, but I was uncertain about how I would maintain those things as I moved forward.  In the midst of all of this musing, I was having an email conversation with our academic dean about doing some presentations on cognitive science with our teachers for professional development.  It was then that the penny dropped, and I realized that this was how I could keep dual campus connections and make a contribution that would carry forward.  

I ran this by a couple of colleagues to see if they thought I was crazy, and they were excited about it.  I carefully crafted an email to my principal with all of these notions, thinking she would be shocked.  Her reply was two sentences - "Sounds great. I'll start working on it."  I ended the year with a pep in my step as I was having new ideas about how to pursue this new role - even though we haven't fully fleshed out what it will be.

This will begin, in part, after spring break.  I will spend six Tuesday afternoons presenting professional development sessions based on the things I learned at a Learning and the Brain conference about the science of learning, and the librarian and I are going to purge and reorganize our professional development books to make the shelf more user-friendly.  Since I won't constantly be heading out to games and events every afternoon, I have joined the Y (I've been going for two weeks now, and I sense blog posts with fitness class analogies in the works).

Next year, I will begin making resource recommendations to my colleagues (and by "begin," I mean "continue" because I've been doing that for years - it will just be official now).  I will teach a study skills elective using the works of Barbara Oakley and Daniel Willingham.  I will observe anyone who will let me and talk through cognitive science-based pedagogy with them.  I hope to make monthly presentations in faculty meetings on a variety of topics, starting with Working Memory and Cognitive Load.  I was also thinking it might be a good idea to send parents some tools to help their kids with studying.  There may be a few other things in the works as well.  If you think that sounds like a lot, I assure you, it won't add up to the amount of work I've been putting into the yearbook.

I will always be grateful for the 18 years I have spent advising the yearbook, but I am happy to press on to what lies ahead, empowering teachers in their decisions with knowledge of research and making kids better learners by showing them how their brains work.