Sunday, January 30, 2022

We Don't Know Yet

Do you know anyone who grew up during the Great Depression?  Pause for a moment and think about that person.  Think about the ways in which they are different from other people.  Listen to their stories, and you will understand that their childhood experiences very much formed their current personality and way of living.  They save things the rest of us throw away.  They find joy in small things the rest of us don't notice.  While no one would have wanted them to endure the struggle they had to endure, it also made them the most gritty, resilient, and resourceful generation America has ever produced.

The 24-hour news media runs out of new ways to talk about the pandemic, so they have switched gears.  They are now bringing on psychologists to predict what our kids will be like when they are adults as a result of masking and remote learning.  Given that neuroplasticity takes time, there is no way to know what is happening.  They might as well bring on a psychic to have an argument with an astrologer to talk about what these kids will be like as adults.  

The truth is we do not know what impact this pandemic will have on our students.  For that matter, we don't know what the experiences they were having before the pandemic were having.  We know they are experiencing high anxiety, but I also remember that we were talking about their high levels of anxiety before the pandemic.  What we don't know is what effect living through that anxiety will have.  Perhaps, it will make them fearful adults, or perhaps the recognition that they persevered through it will make them strong adults.  We went into remote learning almost overnight, so it is possible this will produce adults that fear sudden change is always around the corner.  It is also possible that change won't be the scary thing for them that it has been for others because they have lived through adapting to them.  The biggest fear seems to be that masking will make them all unable to interpret facial expressions and social cues.  I suppose that is possible, but it could also be that they will be better listeners or people more adept at looking people in the eye to read social cues.  Perhaps they will care more about equity.  Perhaps they will be resourceful in ways we cannot imagine.

What is most likely is that there will be a mix of people coming out of this, some more resilient and resourceful, others more fearful.  There will be some who respond to change well and others who don't.  While we like to speak in broad generational terms (like I did while speaking of the kids of the Great Depression), the reality is that they are individuals.  They will respond, react, and adapt in their own individual ways, just as they would have to whatever might have happened if there hadn't been a pandemic.  

Let's stop pretending we know the future and deal with what is in front of us.  For now, masking is necessary to keep them safe.  Could there be mental health issues that result from that?  Certainly, there could be.  What gets left out of that discussion is the mental health effect that comes from the death of a classmate.  In some places, remote learning is still the norm.  Will there be long-term impacts from that?  Of course, there will be.  It's just arrogant for us to think we know what those impacts will be.

So, instead of attempting to predict the future, let's deal with the present.  If there is a student in front of you that is struggling, support them through it.  If there is a student who is fearful, encourage them.  If there is a student who is showing resilience, cheer that on.  Do what you would have done if a student had been fearful or struggling or showing resilience before the pandemic.  It's all you can do.

Sunday, January 23, 2022

Teachers, We Have to Support Each Other

This one is going to be short because I don't feel like I need a lot of words to make this point.  

I am tired of watching teachers boss around other teachers online.  

I know you think you are being helpful when you tell other teachers not to take stuff home with them, but you don't know what their school day is like.  They may not be in a place where they have any quiet in their day.  Perhaps they share a room with another teacher or have been subbing all day.  It could be that they do their best work when they are at home alone and feel more settled grading at home.  It's not your business, so let them make that decision for themselves.

You may have very strong opinions about homework and grades, but that doesn't mean another teacher has to have the same policies you do.  You aren't in the same school with the same parents and administrators.  You don't necessarily teach the same subject (The amount of homework needed in middle school math is different than it is in senior English).  You can disagree with another teacher's policies without thinking that teacher is evil.  You can even disagree without telling them you disagree.  Just because it is easy to berate someone on Twitter doesn't mean you have to.

Right now, when we aren't getting a lot of support from the public (Remember March 2020 when we were all angels?  Good times), we really need to support each other.  Right now, when we are doing our best to get our students to keep their masks on, it is not the time to give another teacher flack for giving students things to memorize.

You know how you are just doing your best to survive right now?  So is every other teacher.  Stop questioning their integrity because they still lecture.  Stop insisting that their boundaries be the same as yours.  Stop giving them a complex about their work/life balance because their balance is different than yours.  Start encouraging those who are doing things you like.  Start saying, "I see what you are doing, and I applaud you for it."  

Start giving encouragement and stop taking their energy.


Sunday, January 16, 2022

Focus on One

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I spend a fair amount of time reading what other teachers post on Twitter.  I spend less time interacting with them, but I will sometimes jump in if I feel I can add something substantive to a conversation (I will not jump into an argument about things like grades vs. no grade, but I will try to encourage someone or offer perspective).  

Yesterday, there was a sadness to teacher Twitter that's hard for non-teachers to understand.  We have just finished two of the craziest weeks of the pandemic (which is saying something) because Omicron has caused so many students to be virtual and teachers to be absent; subs are short, so there's a lot of covering for each other.  I had responded to someone with weird priorities who wanted some kind of awards to have something "to show for her career" and claimed her friend had won an Emmy yesterday (even though the Emmys were in September, so I haven't figured that out).  Anyway, one of the people who responded to me said she feels "demoralized and depressed."  Another said he had a "powerless feeling."  It all added up to we are exhausted. By exhausted, I don't mean tired.  Tired can be cured by a three-day weekend and a few good nights of sleep.  By exhausted, I mean depleted.  Teachers are used to pouring out, but we usually get refilled by a variety of things.  The last two years (two months from today will mark two years since the first day of virtual schooling) have required a lot more pouring out and included a lot less refilling.  What Twitter showed yesterday is that a lot of us are running on empty.

What occurred to me as I read all of this was that these feelings aren't new.  They are just more widespread and chronic than they have been in the past.  Before the pandemic, there might be one or two really demoralized teachers in the building, and those around them can lift them up.  Anyone who has been teaching for a while can tell you that you will have a bad quarter or a semester that makes you want to quit.  I have even had a year where I thought, "I just don't know how to do this well anymore."  The difference now is that the feeling of depletion is so widespread and has been going on for so long that it is hard to remember that this isn't our normal life.

So here's my advice.  Find an experienced teacher and ask them what they do when they feel demoralized.  They have been through it before, and they have developed coping mechanisms (I'm not talking about self-care; I'm talking about real strategies).  Here's what I shared with the teacher on Twitter who responded to me about feeling demoralized.

There is probably one student in each of your classes that seems "with you."  She is the one that makes eye contact.  He's the one who hangs around after class to ask a question or tell a story.  When you are feeling depleted, that kid is your bucket filler without even knowing it.  While you are teaching, focus on that kid.  Pretend you are teaching him and don't care about whether anyone else gets it (Of course, you do care.  This is just a mental exercise).  Make that kid the reason you don't just assign reading and go sit at your desk.  It is less overwhelming than thinking about big things we cannot fix.  As that student responds, you will get a little refilling of the energy you've lost.  When he stays after to share something, your momentum will increase a bit.  It doesn't take effect in one class period, but it does work (at least for me).  After a couple of weeks, you will find you have some of your motivation back.  

February is coming, which is often a time when we all feel a little low.  This year, we are starting it after a particularly difficult January caused, in part, by people who insisted on spending Christmas break as though we weren't still in the middle of the pandemic.  It's going to be hard, so: 

  • Support your colleagues.  Spend time with them in whatever way you are able.
  • Hang onto the notes or drawings kids might give you.  When you feel depleted, take them out and read them and have a good cry.
  • Pray for your administration.  They are tired too, and we tend to forget that.
  • Focus on one student.
  • Every once in a while, show a video.  It won't harm their future if you only do it occasionally.
  • Realize that you are not in control, and do what only you can do.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Tell the Whole College Story

When I was a kid, my dad liked to tell my brother and me stories about his college classes.  He told us about professors who wrote with their right hand while simultaneously erasing with their left with students just expected to keep up.  I remember thinking, "I'm a good student, but I'm not good enough for that."  I was warned about professors who didn't care and classes with 300 people in them.  I was told of oral exams with questions that couldn't be answered.  The end result was fear.  I wasn't sure I would be able to handle college.

Then, I went to college and found that, while there were a few oddball professors, they were a small minority.  The vast majority of them were normal people who taught in normal ways.  I had a class or two in a massive lecture hall, but I also had classes with only seven people in them.  I had a few professors who couldn't have picked me out of a lineup, but I also had professors who knew me well and loved me and rooted for my success in their class, and they used their office hours to help their students do just that.

The first week after Christmas break is alumni week at GRACE.  It's when we have the most visitors on campus (which was nice this year after not being able to have them last year).  We have a reception for them at the first basketball game after we return, which is a fun time to catch up with their lives.  And, in our chapel service this week, we had an alumni panel.  They did a great job answering questions that had been submitted by our juniors and seniors, but they also repeated what many before have done.  They told stories of professors who didn't care and talked about giant lecture classes where no one knows them.  As we headed back down the stairs, some members of my sophomore community-building class said, "Well, now I'm scared to go to college."  My plan for this week's community-building class is to balance things out a bit.  

It's fun to tell stories about the weirdos; it's not a good story if you tell about a normal person behaving in expected ways.  It's only a good story if it is unusual, but we should probably make sure we tell them that it is unusual.  If every one of my dad's professors had written and erased at the same time, he wouldn't have survived it.  I had a P-Chem professor who talked so quietly that we strained to hear him even though there were only seven of us in the class, and we were all on the front row.   I like telling stories about him and trying to mimic the things he said at the volume he said them, but if I couldn't hear any of my professors, that would cease to be an amusing story and become a tale of how I wasn't educated.  

Something can be true without being the whole story, a lesson a try to teach my 8th-grade students when I show them the website banddhmo.org, a site which tells a lot of scary things about a chemical called dihydrogen monoxide without ever mentioning that the chemical in question is water.  It's important that we give our students a more complete picture of college.  If we only talk about how great it is, they will be disillusioned when they have difficulty with a class or have a fight with someone in the dorm.  If we only talk about the struggles, they will be afraid to apply to college at all.

So here's the whole story.  Yes, you will have some professors who are only there to do research and don't want to teach at all.  But, you will also have professors who deeply care about education and work hard to make their lessons what you need them to be.  Yes, I had a chemistry professor who didn't know who I was when I bumped into him in the hall.  I also had Dr. Halsmer, a thermodynamics professor, whose tiny office was so packed with students he was helping that one was sitting on top of the file cabinet.  In the dorm, I had some of the stupidest fights I've ever had in my life, but I also bonded with people in a way that can't happen without sharing a bathroom during exam week.  Those are the extremes, but most days are just normal days.  You'll go to normal classes where you will learn in normal ways.  You will have normal meals with normal friends and have normal conversations.  You will have a mostly predictable life peppered with a few amazing moments and a couple of horrible ones.  It's important that when we tell kids stories about college that they know we are only sharing the dream moments and the nightmare moments but that those are only the extremes.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Learning and the Brain Reflections - Concerning Behaviors and Traumatized Kids

When I was in college, I took a class in Classroom Management, where I was told that the right set of procedures would prevent most behavioral problems.  While I believe procedures are important, it is naive to think that all behavior issues come from students not knowing what to do next (some are, and you should have good procedures, please don't mishear me).  We don't teach robots that will function exactly as expected as long as we program them correctly.  We teach humans, who each come to us with a personality (not a personality type or Enneagram number, but an individual personality), a family history, a culture, a personal history, and, unless you teach kindergarten, past experiences with teachers.  They will each respond differently to our classroom climate.  Smiling at some students makes them feel secure while smiling at others can make them feel manipulated.  And, of course, it is a room full of sinners led by a more experienced sinner; so occasionally, you will have to deal with students who behave in ways that are concerning.

While listening to Dr. Ross Greene describe the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model of handling student behavior and hearing his passion for kids as he talked about his organization, Lives in the Balance, I couldn't help but think about my camp kids more than my school kids.  That's because the majority of students he works with are kids from difficult backgrounds or who have experienced trauma.  In her book, The Connected Child, Dr. Karen Purivs called them "children from hard places."  While I have to filter some of what he says through a different worldview than his (my belief that some actions come from our sinful nature and his belief that all behaviors are formed by experience), his model is still a great approach, especially for kids who have experienced trauma.  

He starts with a simple paradigm shift in the adult's thinking.  We have often spent our mental resources asking "What's wrong with this kid?" when it might be more helpful to think "What happened to this kid?"  Dr. Purvis has a similar thought with different wording; she says to view their concerning behavior an expression of an unmet need.  Both of these approaches cause us to focus less on fixing the behavior and more on addressing the source of the behavior.  Rather than a short-term, aspirin-like approach; it is a long-term, antibioticesque approach.

He then recognizes that a person with a difficult past was likely not taught the same skills as we were, so it is likely that the student doesn't possess a skill he might need to help him self-regulate his behavior.  He might be lacking executive function (decision making), communication skills (including language processing), emotional regulation, or even some cognitive processes.  All of these can be influenced by childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse; so it is important not to assume they have the skills they need.  Dr. Greene's website, livesinthebalance.org has an assessment tool for identifying the lacking skills.

Once you know what you are dealing with, he recommends a three-step approach done in teamwork with the student.  

  • The first step is what he calls the Empathy Step.  It could just be called the Listening Step.  It means asking the student what they think the source of the problem is.  You may learn something you didn't expect.  Ask them what they find hard about meeting whatever expectation you have set that they aren't meeting.  
  • The second step is to define the adult's concern.  Explain to the child why the expectation you have set for them matters.  Sometimes, kids think we make rules just to make rules (and if that's the case, we should re-evaluate that).  They may not realize why a rule matters until we explain it to them, especially a kid whose experience with adults is one in which the adult has exploited their power.  While you may not feel you should have to explain your rules, it goes a long way in building trust with a child whose trust has been broken.  
  • Dr. Greene calls the final step The Invitation.  It involves asking the student "Might there be a way to accomplish (insert expectation) while taking care of (insert child's concern)?"  You then allow the child to make suggestions first.  This step may take a while because the solution must be realistic and mutually satisfactory.  It must result in the student meeting the expectation.  That's a lot to get out of one suggestion, so it may require some time.
If you are thinking, I will never have time to do this with every student every time there is misbehavior, don't fear.  This is not a suggestion for every student and every behavior.  There's a reason Dr. Greene's organization is called Lives in the Balance.  Most of your normal classroom management and relationship techniques will work for most of your kids.  This is to help with that one kid for whom those techniques have not worked.  Other kids will see the change in that one kid, and it will go a long way toward your overall classroom atmosphere.  Taking this approach will take a lot of time with one student, but it will ultimately save you time as the students with these problems almost always possess incredible leadership and superpower levels of observation (because they had to be able to read the mood of their abuser).

Some of the other speakers (Jimmy Casas and Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, MD) said things that my mind connected with this as well.  I would specifically credit them with each thing they said except I don't remember who said which thing.  (By that point on Sunday morning, my brain had taken in a lot of stuff and was blending it with other things I have read.)  
  • One of them talked about remembering the idealistic passion you had when you sat in the chair for your interview.  Chances are, you told them about how much you wanted to help students, not how you wanted to manage them.  You talked about wanting to inspire students, not just wanting them to comply.  When the day-to-day frustrations of the job cause you to lose sight of that, it is a good idea to revisit your core values.  You may have bad days, but what matters is that you never quit on your students.  As Manny Scott frequently says, "Even on your worst day, you may be a students' best hope." 
  • It is also is important to remember that uncertainty is stressful, and all of our lives have been filled with uncertainty for at least the last two years.  Be careful of implementing ideas from "the trauma-informed classroom" approach because it is a situation where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  While you want to be trauma-sensitive, you don't want to pigeon-hole kids into a place where their trauma becomes their identity (which is happening in much of the trauma-informed practice movement) and do well-meaning damage.  The worst thing you can do is lower expectations for that student because you unintentionally send him the message that he isn't capable of meeting your expectations.  Rather, you should be supporting him in acquiring the skills it takes to meet the expectation.
  • The best thing you can do for a student who has gotten into an anxiety loop is to "loan them your calm."  In my life, I have called it having the ministry of normal.  Think about the last time you were on a flight that had some turbulence.  If you look to the flight attendant, and she looks concerned or is doing something unusual, there may be something to worry about, but if she is still serving pretzels, everything is fine.  You are borrowing her calm.  The boy in this photo is a refugee, fleeing danger in his country, and yet you see the picture of resilience and joy because the women in the photo have been telling him stories and signing songs.  They have loaned him their calm.
  • Growth is not linear.  They will make encouraging progress and backslide at other times.  If you only tell them you are proud of them when they make progress, they won't want to come to you when they are having a problem.  Praise the work they are doing and the effort they are making to do better.  This doesn't mean that you don't address the problems, just that you don't communicate that you only love them when they are doing well.
  • Recognize that repeated experiences establish neural pathways, which then become automatic behaviors.  A child cries to get his mother's attention.  If he doesn't get it, all he knows to do is cry louder.  When that is eventually rewarded, the pathway is established that results in his communication becoming more and more dramatic until the need is met.  If you want to change the neural pathway, you must give them a different experience.  Don't reward the behavior you don't like.  
  • Risky behaviors often come from seeking dopamine, so give them healthy ways to get dopamine.  Start with establishing and reinforcing their strengths.
Finally, it is important to recognize that just because kids are resilient doesn't mean they are invulnerable.  The strong student who seems to be handling everything well, the one who never gets in trouble, the one who everyone else leans on, needs your attention too.  He is likely the strong friend for a number of students.  This can be exhausting for them, but they don't usually show it.  Check on the kids who appear to have it all together because they are often carrying the burdens of others.  

Faithful Leadership - A Tribute to Julie Bradshaw

While this post isn't about education (well, actually, it is - just a different kind of education), I wanted to publically thank a woman...