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.  

Learning and the Brain Reflections - Using Anxiety for Good

I didn't plan for this post to fall on the day after Christmas, but given how anxiety-producing holidays can be, it actually might be kind of appropriate.  Some of you make New Year's Resolutions, and while I am on record as thinking that's kind of dumb, perhaps this will help you in keeping those.  

In my last post, I talked about how neuroscientists don't think of anxiety as a negative thing, simply an inevitable one (except for two scenarios - when it is chronic or traumatic - those come with accompanying difficulties that are certainly problematic).  Normal anxiety, however, can be used for good.  Not only is it a gift from God to help you survive (too little = no response to the danger of a knife-wielding attacker), your response to daily anxieties can be a catalyst for you to do something beneficial.  They do, after all, identify what is important to you.  Once you have identified that, you can turn your fears into plans.

People with high anxiety spend a lot of time asking "What if?"  What if someone breaks into my house?  What if I get attacked while walking to the store?  What if I have a heart attack at a young age like someone I know did?  Adolescent girls spend much of their time on social what-ifs.  What if I tell my friends that I like a certain kind of music and they think I'm weird?  What if I don't drink with them and it makes them not like me anymore?  What if I fail a test?  There are potentially an infinite number of what-ifs, and the anxious person's brain will endeavor will find them all.  The first step in using anxiety for good is to recognize that each of these what-ifs reveals something we are afraid of losing (the security of my house, my physical health, a relationship).  

The second step is to turn those what-ifs into plans.  If I am concerned about someone breaking into my house, that can spur me to invest in better locks or a security system.  If I am concerned about a physical attack, it can prompt me to sign up for a self-defense class (and then perhaps teach one for other women).  If I am concerned that I'll lose friendships because of certain behaviors, it might open me up to making friends with people that make me feel more secure.  If I am fearful about failing a test, I might be motivated to put better study habits in place.  When what-ifs become plans, we have a better sense of control and can take positive action in our lives and those of others.

For students, school is a series of building stressors, and for some, those stresses lead to academic anxiety.  Part of the responsibility for that lies with adults who put too much pressure on grades and college admissions, leading students to take on AP and honors classes for which they may not be suited.  It may lead them to take on more extracurricular activities than they have time for.  Then, they experience sleep deficits that create a vicious cycle.  As a Christian teacher, I want my students to understand that God is preparing them for His plan and to match their academic (and non-academic) pursuits to that plan.  

No analogy is perfect, and they all break down somewhere, but the one comparing mental training to muscle training is pretty close.  Other than the reality that the brain is not, in fact, a muscle, you can beat this analogy to death.  It is also helpful that most students have an understanding of physical training either from sports they play or their PE classes.  

Dr. Lisa Damour, the author of Untangled and Under Pressure, says that students often feel better just knowing that there is a design to the stress level of school.  She talks to them about how you start muscle training with small weights and then build intensity by increasing the amount of weight and number of reps, and she tells them that school is like that.  In kindergarten, we give you the mental equivalent of one-pound weights.  When those get too easy, we give you the three-pound weights in first grade.  By the time you get to high school, you are doing some high-intensity "lifting" and a lot of reps.  Knowing that it is meant to get progressively more difficult can reduce anxiety because they know we aren't going to throw a hundred-pound weight at them when they are just getting good at reps with thirty pounds.

I don't get the question "When am I ever going to use this in real life?" very often, but I got it a lot early in my career.  This was when I found the benefits of the weight training analogy.  I would ask them if, while lifting weights, they ever asked "When am I ever going to need this weight to be six feet in the air in real life?"  They knew that was a silly question because the purpose of weight training isn't to put the weight at a certain height.  You lift the weight to that height because the process puts appropriate strain on the muscle to strengthen them.  Academic content is the equivalent of using the correct form to lift a weight.  It puts the appropriate amount of strain on the brain to strengthen it.  Unless you are dealing with a very grade-focused system, this knowledge can help a student recognize that a good amount of stress is useful for future learning.

We seem to be in a perpetual state of questioning traditional pedagogy and assessment.  There is value to these discussions, but I fear that, more often than not, we are simply implementing change for the sake of change.  We assume a newer method is a better method without asking what the purpose of time-tested techniques was, to begin with.  Semester exams are one of those things.  Because people don't like the stress of exams, they assume we shouldn't have them.  These same people will tell you how valuable a marathon is.  They'll tell the value of pushing the body to its limits; they'll tell you how training for a marathon is valuable because you are working toward a goal and training harder than you would have if there weren't an upcoming marathon.  They get that strain on the body is good, but they don't want to apply that to the mind.  Exams are like marathons, and studying for them is like training for a marathon.  You prepare better because of the coming challenge and push yourself.  In the end, you recognize that the strain is good for you and didn't kill you and learn that you are stronger than you previously thought.  When students experience test anxiety, I remind them that they have felt this before and they got through it.  I remind them that no one has ever died from an exam.  Relying on past and vicarious victories can reduce their anxiety to a good level, the level where they are spurred forward and finding new strength.

When you join a gym, you have a number of options.  You can work out on your own, designing your workouts around things you like or things you believe you need (treadmills, stair climbers, weights).  You can take group classes (step aerobics, spin classes, yoga).  You can pay extra for personal training.  There are academic analogs to this as well.  Prior to the pandemic, there had been a lot of discussion about whether internet access would eventually supplant teachers.  Using YouTube, Khan Academy, Crash Course, Wikipedia, etc. to learn is fantastic but it is a lot like walking into a gym and designing your own workout.  You do the things you like, but you may not know what you need or what would be the best way to progress in order to maximize your training.  What you do is beneficial, but you might get more out of it if someone with expertise and/or experience guides the process.  I have taken a couple of step aerobics classes, and when I do, it has some benefits.  Social pressure keeps me from stopping mid-workout, which I sometimes do when I am working out at home.  The teacher designs a progressive routine that keeps me from overdoing it in the beginning but also pushes me into an intensity level I would not have pursued on my own.  When I am flagging, I get encouragement from the instructor or the music on the woman on my left.  Normal school classes are the academic analog, designed by a professional to build at the appropriate pace and take students to an intensity level they wouldn't pursue on their own with the online tools they like.  The expert designs methods and pacing, and there is motivation and encouragement from the group.  If, in the gym, you want to push a little harder or find that you have difficulty with things in a group class, you can pay extra to hire a personal trainer.  They diagnose your weaknesses and give you customized training to help you overcome them.  The academic equivalent is hiring a tutor.  The group classes may give you most of what you need, but if you want to progress farther or compensate for a weakness the class helped you discover, you might need a little more individual attention.  A tutor can give you that, but it isn't something you need every day.  When students realize this is all intentional, they may not love the stress they feel, but at least they know there are options in the plan.

The previous paragraph describes a pretty ideal situation, but we all know that humans are messy, and the education system is made of humans.  For that reason, it is important to help kids recognize when something is wrong and give them tools for how to handle that.  While I've never hired a personal trainer, my understanding is that one of the things they do is teach you how to differentiate good pain from bad pain.  It is not their job to make you feel comfortable; in fact, if they don't make you uncomfortable, they are wasting your money.  It's their job to get you to lift one more pound and do one more rep than you want.  The adage of "no pain, no gain" is true.  However, there is pain, and there is PAIN.  The type of pain that leaves you sore at the end of a workout is good.  The kind of pain that indicates injury is bad and will ultimately slow your progress.  The academic equivalent of this is to recognize the good kind of mental tiredness that comes from a good, long study session and differentiate it from overwhelming burnout.  We should teach a student how to stop before that breaking point, how to change techniques or subjects at the right moment, how to advocate for themselves with their teachers, and when it is appropriate to take a rest day.  In pedagogical terms, we want them to experience desirable difficulty because if we don't strain, we don't retain.  There's a right level, and learning to operate within that level can reduce fear and use the stress to accomplish more than we know

This post is a lot longer than I anticipated, but if you would like to know more, I recommend Dr. Wendy Suzuki's book, Good Anxiety in addition to Dr. Damour's books.  Don't let our culture sell you another coloring book.  Instead, use your stress for the benefit of yourself and others.  

Learning and the Brain Reflections - Turning Down the Volume on Anxiety

We might as well face it.  Anxiety is going to be the word we hear most for the next few years.  We were already on our way there prior to the pandemic, but 2020 and 2021 have broadened the scope because more people have more to worry about.  For that reason, the theme of this year's Learning and the Brain Conference was "Calming Anxious Brains."  There were several speakers on this topic, so this post is my attempt to synthesize several speakers into a cohesive message.  There will also be a second post on using anxiety to accomplish good because of I put all of that in one post, it will be way too long.  As Andrew Watson wrote, "our students aren’t little learning computers. Their emotional systems — when muddled by the stress and anxiety of Covid times — influence learning profoundly."  Anxiety will influence more than a student's personal life.  It will affect his learning, so as teachers who care about a student as a whole person, we will have to address it.  

Let's start with this.  Anxiety isn't always bad.  To neurologists, it is not considered good or bad, simply inevitable.  Change, whether a good change or a bad one, is stressful.  Without stress, living things die, so don't read stress as bad either.  Change also bring uncertainty, and uncertainty makes us fearful.  

Another important thing to note is that we call a lot of things anxiety that are not that.  Anxiety is persistent fear and worry, but we tend to label any feeling that isn't perfectly calm as anxiety.  The semantics of that may not seem like a big deal, but identifying our emotions is helpful in responding to them.  We respond differently to anger than we do to sadness, and we respond differently to sadness than we do to fear.  If we can't describe our emotions, it is difficult to choose a proper coping strategy.

It is generally only considered to be a negative thing if it is chronic (never able to take a break from it) or traumatic (severe enough to break the dams of your coping mechanisms).  So, in spite of what the wellness industry tells us, our goal should not be to eliminate anxiety, but to turn the volume down on it so that we can function in our daily lives.  The worst thing isn't to be stressed.  The worst thing is to be numb.  

Fear serves a purpose in our lives.  We need only look to those with a rare pituitary dysfunction that leaves people without the ability to experience fear to see how dangerous a lack of fear is.  It alerts us to danger and helps us prepare to respond to it (the well-known fight, flight, or freeze response).  It's how our ancestors stayed alive in the face of bigger threats than we face.  One difference between us and them, however, is too much access to fear-feeding information.  A prehistoric woman who experienced fear when she saw movement in the grass, fearing a saber-toothed tiger, would return to her calm state after finding the sound was caused by a bird or rodent.  A modern woman who experiences fear when she hears a sound in the back yard does not return to a calm state after seeing that it was a rabbit because she thinks about the news report she saw earlier on local burglaries, googles crime statistics in her area, reads a blog post written by a rape victim, and texts a friend who affirms her fear and tells her that she can't help her feelings (which is not true, but that's for another time).  So, this thing that is meant to be a gift for our safety becomes a source of crippling worry. 

So how do we turn down the volume on our anxiety and help our students turn down the volume on theirs?  It's a complicated answer, so I'm not going to address everything here.  I would recommend a couple of books - Dr. Lisa Damour's books Untangled and Under Pressure, are based on research with teenage girls, but the strategies in them would help anyone.  Dr. Wendy Suzuki's book, Good Anxiety, has some great ideas as well.  What I will talk about below are some of the simpler things we can do and possibly implement in our classrooms, but it is by no means a comprehensive list.

1. Limit News - I know we all want to be informed, but there is a difference between being informed and doomscrolling.  As I mentioned earlier, the difference between the good anxiety our ancestors experienced and the ability we have to stew over a situation for hours is largely caused by our access to scary information.  For them, danger was a binary situation - "tiger - not a tiger," but we find ways to turn "not a tiger" into fifty hypothetical tigers by continuously linking from one fear to another.  Choose a time period in which to get your news, and be rigorous about staying to that time.  Don't read the same story on three different platforms, or your brain will think it happened three times, leading to a belief in higher frequency than in reality.

2. Recognize Reality - Anything that can be monetized can be used to manipulate us.  The Wellness Industry is heavily invested in our belief that something is wrong if we don't spend all of our time feeling great.  Since that is not possible for anyone, we will then look for something to "solve the problem," whether it is an oil, an herb, a weighted blanket, an adult coloring book, a scent diffuser, they make billions of dollars every year by perpetuating the idea that we must always be caring for ourselves as though the biggest problem in the world right now is selflessness. (By the way, none of those are bad things, but they aren't solutions to a problem.)  One of the best things I heard at the Learning and the Brain conference was when Lisa Damour said, "It is healthy to expect our emotions to represent reality.  When things are bad, the healthy response is that we feel bad about it."  We and our students have bought into the idea that we should never feel anything bad, and it leads us to pretty unhealthy responses.  Perhaps, a good approach would be to write down the trigger of our feeling and decide if our emotion matches the reality.

3. Write it Down - One of the things our brain does when anxiety is chronic or traumatic is to over-estimate the threat and underestimate our ability to cope with it.  This is due to a stress hormone called cortisol.  Our brains are only meant to experience a quick rush of cortisol during the fight, flight, freeze response, so when it is in our brains long term, our brains don't respond appropriately to the degree of the threat.  This is where writing is helpful.  It forces us to slow down long enough to think about the threat rather than just feel about it.  Write down exactly what the threat is and rate its level of danger (not everything is a level 10, but sometimes respond to everything at that level).  Sometimes, the identification alone is helpful because we don't always know what we are responding to.  

Second, write down any tools you know you have that you could employ in response to the threat.  You will then respond with more confidence.  Teaching students to do this will give them a skill they can use for the rest of their lives, so it is worth the investment.

4. Recognize the Worst-Case Scenario - We are often pumping up the power of positive thinking so much that we only allow ourselves to expect the best.  The problem with that is that the reality is rarely only the best-case scenario.  It seems counter-intuitive, but it is also valuable to consider the worst-case scenario.  For one thing, having a mental dress rehearsal of the worst-case might give us a chance to practice using our tools and figuring out what the consequences of that case would be (I often ask kids if they think I will stop loving them if they fail a test.  They giggle a no, so I remind them that their parents won't stop loving them either and that Jesus won't stop loving them even if they make a zero.)  The other benefit of considering the worst-case scenario is that we give ourselves a chance to realize that it is as unlikely as the best-case.  Reality is usually somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, so realizing that the worst might not happen can be calming.  Talking through this with students can break a worry spiral, and rehearsing it can help them break their own future spirals.

5. Breath Control - Much of our stress response happens in the autonomic nervous system.  That's difficult to consciously control, but we do have one connection - breathing.  Intentionally slowing your breathing (four-count inhale, hold, four-count exhale, hold) lowers your heart rate and blood pressure.  Counting the inhale and exhale gives you something to think about besides the trigger.  The best part is that it can be done in any situation without anyone knowing you are doing it.  Two or three rounds of breathing control during a test or a stressful conversation can be enough to turn down the volume on your anxiety to a manageable level.

6. Express and Contain - I remember an episode of Mr. Rogers in which he sang a song about expressing our anger.  It was called "What Do You Do with the Mad You Feel?" and advised punching a bag, pounding some clay, playing tag, running as fast as you can.  It acknowledges that you might have planned to do something wrong and tells you it is great to stop and do something else.  In other episodes, he talked about drawing pictures and writing our feelings.  He was a big believer in healthy expression.  We need to help kids with finding healthy expression.  For some, it may be talking, but for others, it might be throwing a tennis ball against a wall for a few minutes.  A good cry might work for some while a nice loud, controlled scream might be what others need.  It is, however, unhealthy to express all the time and in every place.  Learning when and where and for how long to express leads to healthy containment.  Dr. Damour defined containment as "pulling yourself together" in order to do what needs to be done.  She advised that we identify what the student needs help with by observing what they are doing.  If they are expressing a lot, they need help with containment.  If they are too contained, they need help with expression.  Both are needed.

7. Movement - Our brains were designed to operate in rhythms.  Morning and evening, class periods, the cycle of a week, mealtimes, etc. keep us all in a kind of sync with one another.  One of the things that happens to the brain of a traumatized person is that those rhythms are broken.  They suffer sleep disruptions, appetite changes, and disruptions in their understanding of time (We've all experienced this during the pandemic).  Helping students re-establish a sense of rhythm isn't as hard as you might think.  Having students do some synchronized movement at the beginning of the day can bring them back into sync with their surroundings.  It doesn't have to be a big involved yoga experience.  It can be as simple as having everyone take a deep breath at the same time, a stretch we do together.  You can connect it to your content by doing hand motions to show the particle movement of solids, liquids, and gases, having them show you the shape of a graph using their arms, or having a little chant about parts of speech with a hand clap attached.  Any movement that everyone does together will be helpful.

8. Routine and Predictability - One of the best gifts we can give to our students is a predictable routine.  For me, that looks like starting class the same way almost every day.  I run through the plan for the day, read a scripture, and pray before we start.  I continued to do that during remote teaching because it was one thing I could keep predictable.  In some classes, it looks like ten minutes of reading.  In other classes, it may be a quiz every Friday.  Schedules may not seem like a big deal to most of us, but for a kid experiencing anxiety, it means security and safety.  During the summer, I am the photographer at a camp for children in the foster care system.  One of the things we do for them is to post the schedule in a lot of places and ask the counselors to carry the schedule with them at all times.  Kids ask to see it frequently because it is calming for them to know what is coming next.  It doesn't mean there won't sometimes be changes or that you can't surprise your kids, but those should be interruptions to a regular routine, not a constant state of upheaval.  

Coping with anxiety is part of being human, and we should treat it that way.  We should teach our students to treat it that way.  It can even spur us to good action when it is not excessive.  I'll talk about that in another post.   It's hard in our culture not to feel like we are "failing at wellness," leading to an even higher state of unrest, but we should remind them that responding to reality is healthy.  Bringing anxiety to a productive level, not trying to eliminate it altogether, will help our students know they are human.  And that's something the wellness industry will never give them.

Renewed Traditions Renew Gratitude

I am interrupting the Learning and the Brain Reflections series because I am compelled to talk about the power of what I experienced last week.  

I went into the week prepared for exhaustion because I was looking at the number of events and how late each would be.  It was also the week where a few days are devoted to exam review, and of course, it is also the time to get grades finalized before heading into exam week.  What I didn't know was how powerful those late-night events would be and how much I needed them to happen.

School is a lot of things.  Among everything else school is, it is a series of traditions.  From the senior breakfast on the first day of school to middle school letters to graduation, the year is filled with traditions.  Traditions are important because they anchor us psychologically to a time and place and culture, giving us a sense of belonging and predictability.  Whether it is something small like the way you greet kids every Monday (or the Brown Rabbit thing our English teacher does that I don't truly understand but has staying power with some of our students long after they've graduated) or something big like having your students create a piece of artwork for the school, traditions give kids a sense of stability and safety.  

One of the most difficult things about Covid was that it upended almost all of our traditions.  Starting in the spring of 2020, school plays were canceled all over the country (I thanked God so often we had already had ours).  Yearbook signings were digital, which was a nice touch, but let's admit isn't as good.  Every school was faced with figuring out graduations, which were handled in a variety of ways, from a simple drive-in diploma pickup to individual graduations for each student.  Even though I was teaching face to face (hybrid) in the 2020-2021 school year, most of our traditions either couldn't happen (Grandparents Day, Christmas programs, basketball games with fans) or had to happen in a modified way.  We were all physically exhausted, so I'm not sure how much time we spent reflecting on the impact of each of these lost traditions.  For me, that happened last week, when two of them returned.

Monday night, our theater and dance programs had their Christmas productions.  As kids danced to "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" and "Mary, Did You Know?" the audience got to experience beautiful movement in a way they haven't in quite a while.  We sat together and giggled at silly jokes in a faux news report about Christmas.  We held our breath together while I sixth grader's eyes filled with tears because she had forgotten her lines and were collectively proud of her as she persevered through it.  It has been a while since I have laughed as hard as I did at the Star Wars Nativity skit, where a senior with Yoda ears walked around on his knees, saying the lines of the angel Gabriel.  (What most of the audience didn't know was that a few of those students filled in for a sick classmate and found out mere hours before they stepped on the stage.)  We all left feeling more cheerful than when we arrived, in part because the skits were fun and Christmasy, but also because we were once again experiencing this tradition together.

Friday night, our band and choir were back on stage for the first time since Christmas 2019.  While we had school plays last year (the fall one virtually presented and the spring one in person), band and choir were hit especially hard because students could not stand together to sing and wind instruments were, in the words of our band director, pressurized germ cannons.  They did their best to keep the power of musical arts in the lives of our students.  Our choir director sent out a zoom-style performance at Christmas and graduation, and while that was helpful, it just doesn't have the same power as students standing next to each other harmonizing.  Our band director turned every student into a percussionist, and they got to enjoy playing music together, but they really only got to hear each other because we couldn't have concerts.  Friday night, I stood in the corner with my camera, taking photos of girls in pretty black dresses again for the first time since the start of the pandemic.  When five high school students began to sing, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Silent Night," I cried with relief that this program was still here, even if it is a small group that will anchor future growth.  When they sang "Carol of the Bells," I cried until the top of my mask was soaked (I don't know if you have experienced masked crying, but it's pretty gross.  I knew that from experience, but I made no effort to hold back these tears because they were joyful.) because that has been my favorite Christmas tradition for many years, and it was back!  When the band played a song with three drum solos (each of the three students taking over for the last without missing a beat - literally), they had the entire audience in awe.  In spite of how physically tired I was, I left that night with so much joy because we were able to experience traditions again, and we were able to do it together.

Is it normal yet?  No.  The audience was masked, and the kids took them off to perform and put them back on.  The choir didn't get to do their usual performances at the governor's mansion and the state capitol building.  We are still getting periodic news of students in quarantine.  While the world seemed to shut down at all at once, re-opening is slow and staggered and challenging and messy.  But, every time something returns, we have more gratitude for it because of having lost them for the past 21 months.  Whatever you are able to do this year that you couldn't do last year, enjoy it, and be more grateful for it than you might have been in 2019.

Learning and the Brain Reflections - Tutoring

The theme of this year's Learning and the Brian was "Calming Anxious Brains."  Because there were a lot of speakers on that topic, it is going to take some time and mental effort to synthesize that into a good post.  With a yearbook deadline yesterday and exams coming up, I don't have that time and must reserve most of my brain's power, so I'll wait until Christmas break for those.  Among all the seminars about anxiety, however, there were a few simple and practical sessions (like this one on tutoring), so I'll begin with those.

This presentation was taught by John Almarode.  He is, hands down, my favorite session speaker at Learning and the Brain.  To say that he is engaging doesn't do justice to his energy.  He is an education professor at James Madison University, and I am always thrilled to know that he is out there training the next generation of teachers (BTW - something to consider if you are going to major in education).  If you have the chance to attend a John Almarode seminar, do yourself a favor.  You won't regret it.  He also does some webinars through Learning and the Brain.  I have not attended those, but I cannot imagine him trying to limit himself to the confines of a screen.  He must have to tie himself to the chair.

Okay, all that said, let's get on to what I learned from his session.

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There's been a lot of talk during the pandemic about "learning loss."  While students did not make the same gains they would have in a normal year, he felt it was important to point out that no learning was actually lost.  As he put it, "Eight times seven didn't just fall out of their shoe."  (You have to imagine this being said in a charming Virginia drawl.)  Tutoring isn't meant to be remedial.  According to some studies, in fact, it has a negative impact when viewed that way.  Rather, tutoring offers us the opportunity to extend learning and address unrealized potential in our students.  If we view it as a way of moving learning forward, regardless of their starting point, it has the potential to do students a lot of good.

If you are familiar with John Hattie's work on the "effect size" of various practices, you know that 0.4 is considered an effective skill ( because it represents making one year of gain in one year of time - For the statistics nerds, he may have said it was one standard deviation, but I don't actually remember).  Anyway, for everyone, any practice that ranks higher than a 0.4 is something to explore.  He was careful, however, to point out the effect sizes are about potential.  The technique itself has no power, so you still have to think about how to do it well.  

Some of the ideas for addressing "learning loss" have had little to no benefit because they assume that more time is better time.  Summer school has only a 0.19 effect size (because of working memory overload - something I'll address in a future post).  Extending the school year has been talked about in many district, in spite of the fact that is a 0.01 effect size.  Doing more of the same will not work.  A well-designed and effective tutoring program, however, has an effect size of 0.51 so it is worth talking about what it looks like to be well designed.

A good design for a tutoring session should involve the following:

1. Investment in relationship - A student learns better from someone with whom he has a relationship.  There is an opportunity to develop trust and a sense of safety, so the student is more engaged, less afraid to answer a question wrong, and more likely to take on the suggestions of the tutor.  If you have found a tutor your student likes (or there is an established relationship with a peer, neighbor, or family member), stick with them.  Credibility is built on trust and competence, so the relationship helps student develop intrinsic motivation.
2. Address confidence as well as learning challenges - Every teacher has sat in a tutoring session where the student has no confidence.  He came there because he was having trouble understanding the material, so he's afraid to be wrong when you ask a question.  A students' self efficacy (the believe that he can learn with effort) has a 0.71 effect size, which is second only to the teacher's belief that they can help the student learn.  That means we need to get them a "win" early in the session.  After that, you can move them forward much more quickly.
3. Goal setting - If you don't know where you are going, it can be hard to get there.  How you do this may depend on the nature of your session.  If you are meeting with a student weekly, you may be there to clarify whatever they have learned that week.  You may have a goal for the session, or the student may have a goal.  Regardless, it is important to establish the goal at the front of the session.  The goal should be immediate (something we can finish during this hour) and concrete (something we can know if we have achieved).   Saying something like, "We're going to go over some chemistry" doesn't really feel concrete.  On the other hand, if you say, "Today, we are going to balance chemical equations," it establishes an attainable goal and allows them to know when they have reached the goal.  After they have confidently balanced a few equations in a row, they know they have succeeded.  It is also a good idea to have the student state the goal in their own words.
4. Teaching them how to learn - The best tutors will eventually become unneccessary to the student they are tutoring.  That's because the goal isn't just to learn this week's math skill.  It to learn how to tackle any math skill.  It isn't to analyze the novel they are reading for their English class; it is to teach them the strategies needed to analyze any novel.  Tell them how helpful it would be to summarize their learning from memory.  Teach them how to use a graphic organizer, not just for today's content, but for any content.  You aren't teaching the content as much as you are teaching study skills using the context of the content.
5. Teach success criteria - I was honestly stunned at the effect size of this.  Simply establishing for a student how they will know when success has been achieved has an effects size of 0.88!  If tutoring is compared to a hiking path through the woods, success criteria is a bit like knowing the path ends at a waterfall.  I've been on these hikes in national parks.  When your legs are tired, and you are breathing so hard you want to quit, it is helpful to remember that the end goal is a waterfall.  When you start feeling the air get cooler, you know you are close.  When you hear the sound of rushing water, you start walking a little faster in spite of the pain in your calves.  Evidence that you are near your goal is motivating, so give your students that simple power.  "Hey, the goal is to identify the subject and verb of the sentence.  I got the subject of that one, so I'm half-way there," will keep a student going when a teacher's prodding might not.
6. Deliberate practice - Practice matters.  We all know that when it comes to music.  We all know it when it comes to basketball.  We seem to have forgotten it when it comes to education.  We've downplayed it by giving it names like "drill and kill," but intentionally practicing that which is difficult to do has an effect size of 0.79.  To be deliberate has to be challenging, but not impossible, a concept known as desirable difficulty.  ("To retain your brain has to strain.")  Desirable difficulty causes myelination of neurons and promoted dendrite growth in your brain cells.  Repeating something easy over and over does not; in the same way lifting a one pound weight over and over would do little to nothing for my biceps.  Doing something far too difficult can been damaging to learning in the same way attemtping to lift a weight to heavy for me would be damaging for my muscles.  Choose problems carefully that fit into the Goldilocks zone, and you can give your student the tools they need to learn anything.

Thanksgiving - Colleagues

Every November, I use this blog to express my gratitude for those people in my past who have formed the educator I am today.  These have mostly been teachers I had in middle and high school.  I am continually thankful for formative people, but this year, I want to express my gratitude for the people who are currently in my educational life.  I will do this in three posts because I am thankful for my current administration, the parents of my students, and the colleagues with whom I share my daily life.  This post will be about the teachers of GRACE Christian School.

This is the most important post of the Thanksgiving series.  While admin is important, they do not necessarily set the tone of your day.  While supportive parents matter a lot, you don't see them or hear from them that often.  Your colleagues are the closest people to you and the ones who can make your day better.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of the teachers right around you.  When you have a problem, you turn to them for support and advice.  When you have good news, you want to share it with them because you know they will understand it more fully than anyone else.  When you step out into the hall and make eye contact with them in their room, volumes are spoken without words through a smile or the raise of an eyebrow.  While I love all the teachers at GRACE, I want to express my gratitude specifically for a few.  

My art teacher friend, Elizabeth, is the friend you want to have.  She'll tell you what you need to hear, but she'll do it in the most loving way.  She'll celebrate with you, help you with whatever scheme you are hatching, and give you a hug just when you need one.  In the 2019/2020 school year, I ate lunch in her classroom every day, with a small group of senior art students.  She made me part of the class (except I didn't get graded for doing art projects).  When we went into remote learning, she sent me the link so I could continue to eat lunch with them.  It was one small bit of "normal" that helped me maintain my sanity.  She has always framed it as my doing her a favor, but it meant more to me than she could know.

My room is placed in an area of the hall where the walls are blue, so we have called ourselves "Blue Pod" since moving in.  There have been a number of great blue pod members (and some that just moved on through), but I would say the best total group is there today.  

- Zane, a biology and anatomy teacher, was higher standards than anyone I know.  He challenges students at a high level, but they also know he will support them in meeting those standards.  His room is always hopping with students asking questions, attending help classes, or studying a skeleton.  He's been at GRACE the same number of years as I have, so we've been through a lot together.  I can say just a few words or a name, and he knows exactly what story is associated with it.  I am grateful for our history together.

- Julianne is the most encouraging person I've ever met.  No matter the situation, she's always looking for the good or the lesson God is teaching her or the part she should be thankful for.  She's not a Pollyanna; she doesn't silver-line your pain.  She is just purely encouraging.  If a student has complimented you in her class, she will track you down to make sure you know about it.  She always challenges me to find a more Godly perspective, and I am thankful for that.

- Melanie is the friend who checks on you.  Once, I left not long after school got out.  That night, I had an email from her, asking if I was okay.  She thought perhaps I was sick or upset about something and wanted to check-in.  During the lockdown, she was the one who said, "Let's figure out a way to safely eat lunch together or go for a walk.  Near the start of this year, when I was especially down, she said she was concerned about me and suggested that we laugh together on Friday afternoons.  

- Meagan is the person I go to for wisdom.  She wants to make sure she doesn't live in an echo chamber so she reads and listens to podcasts that offer a differing perspective from her own.  When I have a complex issue to deal with, she's the one who can help me analyze it from all sides.  Hers was the room I went to on January 6th, and she's the one I ask to read a reply to a parent email if I want to make sure I'm not being rude.  She takes on responsibility with grace and poise.  Even though I am over a decade her senior, she is who I want to be when I grow up.  

There are others who I could talk about for specific events, and there are a Latin teacher, Bible teachers, and an English teacher who have moved on to other jobs; but the ones mentioned here are the people who impact my life each and every day.  It's an embarrassment of blessings, and I am grateful for them all.  Thank you, Lord for my co-laborers in education.

Thanksgiving - Parents

  Every November, I use this blog to express my gratitude for those people in my past who have formed the educator I am today.  These have mostly been teachers I had in middle and high school.  I am continually thankful for formative people, but this year, I want to express my gratitude for the people who are currently in my educational life.  I will do this in three posts because I am thankful for my current administration, the parents of my students, and the colleagues with whom I share my daily life.  This post will be about the parents who send their students to GRACE Christian School, especially those who I have taught during the pandemic.

If you asked teachers to rank their challenges in educating students, dealing with parents would likely rank high on the list.  We all want to view the parents of students as partners in their child's education, but it can be hard because our perspectives are very, very different.  Parents have a small number of kids to deal with, but they are their own.  They have to deal with the homework meltdowns and the lost games and the sibling relationships.  They know their individual child's strengths and weaknesses, which they have feelings of pride and guilt about (even if they shouldn't).  Teachers have a large number of kids to deal with, but we get to send them away from us at the end of the day.  While we love them a lot, it is folly to pretend that our relationship with them is the same as that of their parents.  We have some pretty specific goals for them, but we haven't had those goals since they were in diapers.  Neither of these perspectives is wrong, but because they are different, it can lead to conflict in a meeting.  When I was younger, I was often told, "You're not a parent, so you'll never understand."  (Side note:  That's a fundamentally mean thing to say to a person who is has chosen a career in which understanding kids is crucial, so you should find a different way to express to the teacher that you have different perspectives.)  What I wanted to respond was, "You have one kid.  You'll never understand." (but I didn't because, you know, professionalism)  Twitter is where a lot of educators go to vent their frustrations (which I'll never understand because, you know, professionalism), so if you look at their posts, you will often see a lot of complaints about lack of support and unrealistic expectations and even some fringe-y people who basically think they should be able to take over for the parents entirely.

This wasn't meant to be a post about why parents and teachers sometimes have conflicts.  I said all that to set up my gratitude in contrast to the adversarial relationship and lack of trust that shows up in a lot of these online discussions.  The vast majority of parents I have dealt with (especially in the last three years) have been supportive and helpful.

While the world looks at 2020 as the year the world fell apart, I am reminded that for GRACE, 2019 was no picnic either.  When we lost one of our students that February, the GRACE community showed what it does best.  They rallied around each other, engaging in a time of corporate grief.  Flowers were sent.  Love and grace were extended from every direction.  Weeks later, a parent of a senior wrote to me and said, "I wanted to let you know that I am specifically praying for you.  I'm praying for all the teachers generally, but I am specifically praying for you."  What do you say in response to that level of kindness?  She recognized that the lost student was in my class, and even though her son (who I taught) didn't know the girl, she was supportive of me.  In April of that same year, we were on the 8th grade Washington DC trip, when we received some sad news.  Again, the parents on that trip rallied to support us.  One mom just pulled three of us into a circle and said, "We're going to pray now."  A dad on the trip said, "I just want to fix it for everyone."  

When we went into lockdown in March of 2020, our culture praised teachers for their response as parents realized how challenging it was to teach their own children.  In the general public, that support lasted about a month.  Then (again on Twitter, which I recognize isn't a random sample of the population, but it is what I see most), I began seeing teachers talk about unrealistic expectations from their parents, demands at all hours of the night and day, complaints about the teacher's expectations, methods, and practices.  It seemed that a month is what the world thought was a good amount of time to have "figured this out."  While I was reading all of this from far-flung educators, I went to my mailbox and found hand-written notes of support from parents.  I got thank you emails for the efforts we were making for kids.  At last year's graduation ceremony, parents applauded when the teachers stepped into the aisle for the recessional.

It's not like a never get an unreasonable request or a parent whose perspective rubs against my own.  That's always happened, and it is always going to.  What I have considered, however, as I compare my experience with those of others is that they view their relationships with parents (and administrators) as adversarial.  Those teachers don't trust the parents of their students, and they assume those parents don't trust them.  My experience is far different because, for the vast majority of my students and their parents, there is a basis of trust. Even when conflicts arise, we are able to engage in problem-solving with a belief that the other wants what is best for the student.  Four years ago, I met with a parent because her daughter's paper appeared to be plagiarized.  The mom pointed to the introductory paragraph and said, "Yeah, I wrote that part."  I fell into laughter because you can't stay mad at someone who is that willing to own the problem.  We talked for a long time that day, and I made a friend.  When she asked if her child should re-write the paper, and I said, "How about I just don't give her any points for the first paragraph (because she actually had written the rest of it herself, which was obvious from the change in level), she said, "Yes, that sounds right."  That's not how I expected that meeting to go, but I've always been grateful that it did.

Parents of GRACE students.  We know that you are sending us your best kids and trusting us to do right for them.  We take that responsibility seriously, and we are so grateful for your extraordinary level of support.