Critical Window

Alliance for Excellent Education
  • 4.5 (4)
  • EDUCATION FOR KIDS

A podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.

Episodes

  1. Navigating Literacy Development During Adolescence

    02/11/2020

    Navigating Literacy Development During Adolescence

    What factors contribute to the development of literacy skills in adolescence? On this episode of the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Critical Window podcast, Dr. Medha Tare breaks down what research on the science of adolescent learning says about the development of literacy skills during adolescence, and how educators can support this development. Tare is a senior research scientist for the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise, where she leads the synthesis of research on the cognitive, social-emotional, and student background factors that affect K-12 learning. Specifically, Tare studies the factors that affect how children and adults acquire new skills and knowledge including individual differences, learning environment, and the medium through which they learn. She shares these factors and how Digital Promise’s Learning Variability Project helps students, parents, and educators navigate literacy development on Critical Window. What is Learner Variability? “Recognizing learner variability is something many teachers have tried to do for decades,” explains Tare on Critical Window. “It’s understanding in a whole-child way a students’ challenges and strengths and then tailoring instruction to meet each learner’s needs.” What does this look like in practice? Tare shares an example: “One learner may struggle with working memory, their ability to hold information in mind and kind of manipulate it. But is this challenge a learning difference, or is it because they’re getting too little sleep? Maybe they’re taking care of younger siblings while their single mom works the night shift. So research supports both assumptions and we also show strategies for working with students in both situations.” Learner Variability vs. Learning Styles There is a difference between learner variability and what many know as “learning styles.” Research does not support the existence of learning styles, or “the idea that learners have a particular modality like visual or auditory where they learn best,” explains Tare. Instead, learner variability is steeped in research of factors that matter in learning. “These could be students’ attention abilities, how much exercise they’re getting, the safety of their neighborhood, and building block skills such as background knowledge,” says Tare. “We know that these factors interact with each other, so we know that greater physical fitness can improve attention and focus in the classroom.” Why Does Learner Variability Matter for Adolescents? There are specific learner factors that predict successful literacy outcomes, including argumentative reasoning, disciplinary literacy, and critical literacy, explains Tare. “Those are skills that are developing and really coming online for adolescents at this age.” But, there are also other factors at play for adolescents, including identity exploration, cultural lenses, and changes in motivation. “Students are now using those foundational reading and writing skills that they developed in elementary and middle school to build knowledge and then write and read authentic text and write for authentic audiences and purposes that are meaningful to them, that motivate them,” says Tare. To learn more, listen to full episode of Critical Window below. RESOURCES FROM DIGITAL PROMISE: Adolescent Literacy Learner Model: https://lvp.digitalpromiseglobal.org/content-area/literacy-7-12 Learner Variability Project: https://digitalpromise.org/initiative/learner-variability-project/ Designing for Learner Variability: Examining the Impact of Research-based Edtech in the Classroom: http://digitalpromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/lvp-examiningimpact.pdf Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents. Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript [Music] Hans Herman: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policy makers, and communities. This week on Critical Window, we’re learning about what the science of adolescent learning tells us about the development of literacy skills during adolescence and how educators can support this development. Dr. Medha Tare is a senior research scientist for the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise where she leads the synthesis of research on the cognitive, social-emotional, and student background factors that affect K-12 learning. With the goal of increasing educators’ and product developers’ understanding of learner variability. Medha studies the factors that affect how children and adults acquire new skills and knowledge including individual differences, learning environment, and the medium through which they learn. She’s published her research in The Journal of Cognition and Development, Language, Learning, and Technology and in numerous technical reports and presentations for non-academic audiences. Medha holds a BA from Rutgers University and a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan. Welcome to the show, Medha. Medha Tare: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hans Herman: So let’s start by talking about Digital Promise. For those not familiar, could you provide an overview of Digital Promise’s history and its core programs? Medha Tare: Sure. Digital Promise is an independent, bipartisan non-profit that was authorized by congress in 2008. Our primary mission is to accelerate innovation in education. So, our work is at the intersection of educators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to work together to tackle some of education’s biggest challenges. Primarily, we work to connect people and ideas through networks, we conduct research on learning science and technology, and we look to share stories that inspire action. Ultimately, we want to see that all learners have equitable access to powerful learning opportunities that are authentic, collaborative, and inquisitive. Hans Herman: That’s a lot of different stuff you guys work on. [laughs] So, Digital Promise, as you mentioned in there, you have a suite of work related to the learning sciences. Can you first share how Digital Promise defines “learning sciences” and explain why the organization is interested in this space? Medha Tare: Yeah, definitely. At Digital Promise, we consider learning sciences to be interdisciplinary. So, including research from psychology, education, sociology, cognitive science, disciplines that may not normally talk to each other. We don’t only focus on how people learn but also the resources and supports that enable learning and also how to design learning environments and instruction that help students reach their potential. One of our goals is to move this research out from behind the walls of academic journals and into the hands of those working up close in classrooms in schools so that it can be used. Hans Herman: Thank you. And what are the projects and specific programs at Digital Promise related to the learning sciences? Medha Tare: So all of our projects and programs are steeped in learning sciences. We really want to make research come alive in various learning environments and support practitioners and ed-tech developers who are looking for ways to apply the research in the classroom. So one example is Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools. It’s a premiere network of 114 districts nationwide. Many of the school leaders are interested in learning sciences topics such as social-emotional learning, real-world learning, and learner variability. One thing that Digital Promise does is to facilitate cohorts of district leaders from across the country, help them dig deep into these topics together, and then share out their successes and challenges. Hans Herman: And today we’re here to talk about one project in particular, the Learner Variability Project. Could you start by telling us what the Learner Variability Project is and tell us about the history and goals of the project? Medha Tare: Recognizing learner variability is something many teachers have tried to do for decades. So, it’s understanding in a whole-child way a students’ challenges and strengths and then tailoring instruction to meet each learner’s needs. The reason we say it’s whole-child is because it recognizes how learners variate in their academic skills, their cognitive abilities, social-emotional states, and their personal backgrounds. All of this is what research says has an impact on learning. In order to facilitate this understanding, we look at what the research says. One learner may struggle with working memory, their ability to hold information in mind and kind of manipulate it. But is this challenge a learning difference, or is it because they’re getting too little sleep? Maybe they’re taking care of younger siblings while their single mom works the night shift. So research supports both assumptions and we also show strategies for working with students in both situations. Hans Herman: So you mentioned the whole child. You mentioned social-emotional learning. I think sometimes in discussions around this area in the science of learning or the learning sciences, people who aren’t familiar can hear all these different terms and it seems like what you’re saying is the Learner Variability Project draws on these different areas and is connected to them, they’re not necessarily competing. Is that the case? Medha Tare: Absolutely. So we consider “w

    26 min
  2. Death and Disability Rates Jump Dramatically During the Teen Years—Here’s Why

    12/16/2019

    Death and Disability Rates Jump Dramatically During the Teen Years—Here’s Why

    Too often people think stereotypically about the period of adolescence as a time of vulnerability, risks, and problems. You may even be guilty of this. How often have you participated in or overheard conversations between parents that sound something like “my daughter is headed to middle school next year” and the response is “yikes, good luck!”? But the reality is that adolescence is the healthiest period of the lifespan, explains Professor Ronald Dahl, MD, a pediatrician and developmental scientist, on the latest episode of our Critical Window podcast. “Almost everything you can measure—if you go from elementary school across adolescence into early adulthood—gets better,” says Dahl. “Strength, speed, reaction time, reasoning abilities, cognitive skills, immune function, resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injuries.” This sounds like good news, but we also know that “the overall death and disability rates jump 200 to 300 percent between elementary school and early adulthood.” Dahl explains that those jumps don’t come from “mysterious medical illnesses.” Instead, such increases result from teens still learning how to control behavior and regulate emotion. Therefore, we see “increasing rates of accident, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance use, violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, health problems related to risky behaviors broadly, [and] worsening obesity.” Dahl calls this the “health paradox of adolescence.” In this episode of Critical Window, Dahl breaks down stereotypes and popular assumptions about adolescent health and focuses on the opportunities to support positive development and shape the future of young people. Here are some takeaways: Adolescent brains do what they are supposed to do. “Adolescent brains are very well adapted to the tasks and challenges of adolescence,” says Dahl. “They’re focusing and prioritizing learning about their complex social world and their place in it as an individual.” Dahl gives an example of how understanding this shift in priorities can shape learning environments. “If it’s a way to increase [their] social world, adolescents will master the learning very rapidly. If they’re being told that they need to learn something because it’s going to help them sometime in the future, then their brains may not look like they work very well. But it’s not because something’s wrong with their brain.” Adolescents are passionate. “We’re doing a disservice to the brain if we think that it’s all about rational thought,” says Dahl. The adolescent brain is figuring out what matters and what doesn’t matter and is establishing heartfelt goals and priorities that can lead to positive impact, especially when given proper support. “Feelings can be smart, wise feelings,” says Dahl. “We can have passions for good causes and purposes that guide our value systems, and shaping these systems are as important as shaping the ability for the thinking brain to suppress emotions.” Adolescents aren’t “just being impulsive.” Increasingly, adolescents seek sensation, something that Dahl describes as “having an appetite for, an inclination for excitement, arousal, novelty, bursts of unusual experiences and feelings.” This isn’t “just being impulsive.” This is what drives kids to learn and explore. “A huge number of kids are bored more than 50 percent of the time when they’re peeking in their sensation-seeking,” explains Dahl. “Sitting in a desk being told what is important often doesn’t tap into biological shifts.” To learn more from Dahl, listen to full episode of Critical Window below. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents. Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript [Music] Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and communities. Hans Hermann: In this installment of Critical Window, we present a conversation with Professor Ronald Dahl, MD. Dr. Dahl is a pediatrician and developmental scientist. He is committed to interdisciplinary team research with the long-term goal of improving the lives of children and adolescents. His research covers topics such as basic studies of neurobiological and psychological development. It also includes clinical studies in pediatrics and child psychiatry. Dr. Dahl’s research considers the social, family, and cultural contexts that shape neuro-behavioral development. While conducting this impressive body of research, Dr. Dahl serves as a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he is the director of the Institute of Human Development and director of the Center on the Developing Adolescent, both also at UC Berkeley. A few months ago, we sat down with Dr. Dahl to discuss his research on the topic of adolescent neurodevelopment and what the current research might mean for schools, teaching, and learning. Our interest in adolescent brain development is driven by our focus on closing long-standing achievement gaps for traditionally underserved high school students. Hans Hermann: Dr. Dahl, thanks very much for being with us today and for your work in the field of adolescent brain research. I’ll start off by asking if you can share with our viewers information about your latest research and what it tells us about adolescents and their neurodevelopment. Ronald Dahl: Thank you. A key part of what we are understanding about adolescence is that it’s a perfect storm of interacting levels of change. That is, it’s not simply changes in brain development. It’s a time of rapid physical growth. The second fastest growth of the lifespan. Only infants grow more quickly. It’s a time that there’s activation of new drives and motivations. It’s a time that there are sex-specific changes in faces and voices and body characteristics. It’s the face that kids are seeing when the mirror’s changing as they go through puberty. The faces of their friends are changing. It’s a time when they have changes in sleep and their _____ regulation, metabolic changes and a wide array of cognitive and emotional changes. And most importantly profound changes in social motivation, social context and social roles. The reason I’m emphasizing these issues of dynamic changes across levels is that each level we look at, whether it’s the deep biology and molecular changes, behavioral changes, the neurodevelopmental changes that I’m gonna talk about a lot, changes in peers, family, school, culture, technology and media, that those changes are inherently causing changes at other levels. As the brain changes, the interest in peers and in the selection of peers is influenced by those brain changes as individuals interact with different peers than the media and technology they use changes. But then the experiences of technology and media are then changing the brain. If I put double arrows across every level you wouldn’t be able to read the words. But if we don’t understand these interactions then we can’t understand the spirals. And then of course another important to mention that often doesn’t get discussed about puberty and adolescence, and I love this quote, is figuring out to relate to the world and yourself as a suddenly and mystifyingly sexual being. And these dynamics that stir up and churn strong emotions and strong feelings and these interactions are important to understand because they set the stage for these spirals. As things start to go badly they unravel and affect other levels of the systems. Now we have focused in the traditional research in this area on what I call the dark side of this, that these rapid interactions, these multiple levels of bidirectional interactions that are actively sculpting these developing neural systems create vulnerabilities. Because these interactions are happening quickly and interacting across these levels, this sets the stage for what a lot of people stereotype adolescence as this time of vulnerability and problems. And it’s what I would call the dark side of this spiral. And it’s clearly true. It’s part of what we call the health paradox of adolescence. And it’s a paradox because on one hand adolescence is the healthiest period of the lifespan. Almost everything you can measure, if you go from elementary school across adolescence into early adult gets better. Strength, speed, reaction time, reasoning abilities, cognitive skills, immune function, resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration and most types of injuries. And yet overall death and disability rates jump 200 to 300 percent between elementary school and early adulthood. And of course these aren’t mysterious medical illnesses. These are problems with the control of behavior and emotion. It’s increasing rates of accident, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance use, violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, health problems related to risky behaviors broadly, worsening obesity. And in addition to the measurable levels of death and disability this is a time when patterns of behavior are instantiated that have long-term consequences across the lifespan. The most striking example is smoking. If you look at people who are gonna develop emphysema and heart disease and lung cancer in their 50’s, 60

    44 min
  3. Lessons in Equity from Gifted Programs

    10/08/2019

    Lessons in Equity from Gifted Programs

    Gifted programs are structured to cultivate and maximize the strengths of an individual. Through enriching instruction and engaging curriculum, students in gifted education are put on a path to achieve their full potential. But shouldn’t these ideals be applied to all students? In New York City, a panel appointed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio thinks so. It has proposed eliminating the city’s gifted and talented programs, which largely enroll White and Asian American students, in favor of an approach that reduces inequality and segregation that is often perpetuated by gifted programs. “Simply put, there are better ways to educate advanced learners than most of the current ‘Screened’ and Gifted and Talented programs, which segregate students by race and socioeconomic status,” the panel wrote in a report to de Blasio. “Today they have become proxies for separating students who can and should have opportunities to learn together.” In a new episode of our Critical Window podcast, Dr. Yvette Jackson, adjunct professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and a senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, shares her knowledge about gifted and talented programs, what they tell us about how we structure our education system, and what we can learn from these programs. We learn quickly that Dr. Jackson, who previously was the director of Gifted Programs for the New York City Board of Education, doesn’t like the term “gifted” or other terms frequently used to label students. We asked her about this term and others that have been used to categorize students in the United States and what these words convey about students. Dr. Jackson: One [term], like you said, is gifted. The other term would be low-achieving, the other term would be subgroup, the other term would be minority, disabled, we can go on and on…I think those are enough, though, because immediately you get an image of you’re either talking about those who have intellectual capacity when you label them as gifted, or those who, when you say low achieving, the expectation is there is nothing about them that could be termed in a high achievement world because they’re low achieving. Dr. Jackson then compared terms used for muscle development to child achievement to emphasize how terms change the way we go about addressing underachieving students. Dr. Jackson: If you say that you have weak muscles, that’s very different than saying you have underdeveloped muscles. Underdeveloped means if you just worked out with the right program, right strategies, and that’s what I’m saying also for these terms. That children are not low achievers, they could be underachieving. They could be in situations where there are cognitive misfirings because of what they’re in but they’re not low achieving because that then puts the onus on the child. The issue is the onus is on us as the pedagogues to bring forward what the child innately has to offer. But before you think Dr. Jackson is talking badly about the effectiveness of gifted programs, she’s not. In fact, she’s saying that there are a lot of things that we can learn from gifted programs that we should apply to the education of all students, such as: 1. Believe that all students have the potential to achieve at high levels. This is a key foundation of gifted programs, explains Dr. Jackson. Students are brought into gifted programs because they are believed to have the potential to get to the next level. While in these programs, they often have access to a more expansive curriculum reflective of what is going on in the world, says Dr. Jackson. But these opportunities should be available to all students to develop their strengths and help them grow academically. 2. Pair teachers from gifted programs with those not in gifted programs. Schools can create professional development opportunities that involve teachers from gifted programs learning from teachers who are not in the gifted program. What types of strategies are the gifted teachers using to elicit high performance and higher-level thinking from their students? 3. Adopt opportunities and experiences offered in gifted programs. At the district level, explore the experiences and opportunities that are being offered to students in gifted programs, advises Dr. Jackson. How can we expand these chances to engage in field trips to ensure more kids are excited for school? What local resources, including businesses, museums, and after-school opportunities are available to give more students exposure and connect their learning to the real world? Listen to more from Dr. Jackson in the episode below. And if you’d like to hear even more from Dr. Jackson, check out another podcast episode with her on the pedagogy of confidence, or teaching with the transformative belief that all students have the potential to achieve at high levels. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents. Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript [Music] Interviewer: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers and communities. On our last episode of Critical Window we sat down with Dr. Yvette Jackson to learn about her work on the pedagogy of confidence, which is teaching with the transformative belief that all students have the potential to achieve at high levels. Today, we are back with Dr. Jackson to learn about gifted and talented programs, what they tell us about how we structure our education system and what we can learn from these programs. Dr. Yvette Jackson is an international renowned individual, recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. He applies her experience in neuroscience, gifted education literacy and the cognitive mediation theory to develop integrative processes that engage and elicit high intellectual performances from underachieving students. She is the author of many books including a book we spoke about previously, The Pedagogy of Confidence. Welcome back to the show, Dr. Jackson. Yvette Jackson: Thank you. Interviewer: You talk about, in your work, the importance of terms and how terms have been used to control and categorize students. Before we get into the term gifted, what are some terms that have been used to categorize students in the US education system? Yvette Jackson: One, like you said, is gifted. The other term would be low achieving, the other term would be subgroup, the other term would be minority, disabled, we can go on and on, culturally different. I think those are enough, though, because immediately you get an image of you’re either talking about those who have intellectual capacity when you label them as gifted, or those who, when you say low achieving, the expectation is there is nothing about them that could be termed in a high achievement world because they’re low achieving. In other words, it’s more like when you think about muscles. If you say that you have weak muscles, that’s very different than saying you have underdeveloped muscles. Underdeveloped means if you just worked out with the right program, right strategies, and that’s what I’m saying also for these terms. That children are not low achievers, they could be underachieving. They could be in situations where there are cognitive misfirings because of what they’re in but they’re not low achieving because that then puts the onus on the child. The issue is the onus is on us as the pedagogues to bring forward what the child innately has to offer. Interviewer: So the term we’re focusing on today is gifted and you use this term gifted land, which is one of my favorite terms of yours. Could you describe to folks, and you did this in our last conversation, describe what gifted land is. Yvette Jackson: Gifted land is where students are identified because they have high scores academically. Now, I’m gonna put that parenthetically because when the government started creating gifted programs – and I shouldn’t say – they didn’t create the programs, they were giving funding sources that then could be used for gifted programs. They really weren’t just talking about academic. They said you could be academically gifted, intellectually gifted, you could be creatively gifted, you could be gifted in the performing arts. They even had a line originally for gifted in physical ability, like sports. And what started happening when districts started applying for money for their Little League baseball team because there was giftedness associated with this physical sports ability, that’s when the government said, uh-oh, wait a second, we’ve got to bring that definition out. They even had gifted in leadership as one of the terms. But then they were saying how do we really show that? That’s more a developmental kind of a situation. But I said that to say that based on these categories of gifted it really got narrowed down to academically or intellectually gifted, and I even put that in air quotes. You couldn’t see me but that’s what I was doing. Because if you’re saying intellectually gifted, are you saying you’re just basing that on a Stanford Binet IQ test? If that’s what you’re saying there’s so much more that goes into intellectual development or that can be seen about intellectual development

    32 min
  4. How Sports and Coaching Influence Social Emotional Learning in Young People

    07/09/2019

    How Sports and Coaching Influence Social Emotional Learning in Young People

    Sports provide a place for young people to grow, learn, and enhance their physical skills, but, with the help of good coaches, they will learn more than how to throw a pitch or perfect a layup. On this episode of Critical Window (audio link below) a podcast by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), Jennifer Brown Lerner, deputy director for Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program, explores how sports and coaching influence the social, emotional, and academic development of students, and what educators and coaches can learn from one another. Building Student Agency on the Field “While sports might be a unique arena, it’s part of a broad array of places in which young people learn, grow, and develop,” explains Brown Lerner. “There’s unbelievable opportunity to think about sports as a place in which young people can take ownership of their own learning.” Into early adolescence, students have “a unique opportunity for voice and choice on the sports field that they don’t have in the classroom,” says Brown Lerner. This space, outside of the traditional learning environment, “is really allowing them to come into their own.” Sports as the “Ultimate Performance Assessment” “You could view sports as the ultimate performance assessment,” says Brown Lerner. “Every game, every practice is really an opportunity for young people to put on display a core set of physical skills and social-emotional skills that they’re learning.” Not only are players demonstrating their skills, they are also receiving real-time responses of their performance. “There’s instantaneous feedback right there, a win or a loss.” Coaches as Role Models Coaches play a significant role in modeling the skills they hope to see exemplified by their players. “Sports are a critical space in which [kids] get to both see modeled, and practice, this core set of competencies across the social, emotional, and cognitive domains,” explains Brown Lerner. “It’s a really important opportunity in which young people can get, and create, a continuous feedback loop with their coaches and with other athletes.” A large part of this learning opportunity is dependent on relationships between coaches and their players. “One thing that great coaches do is really focus in on that individual relationship with each player,” explains Brown Lerner. “They also create a space and environment and a culture that honors the relationship that other players have with each other.” What Can Teachers Learn from Coaches, and Vice Versa? “If we truly believe that learning happens in relationships, we need to give all educators in the classroom, and on the sports field, the time, the tools, and the opportunity to cultivate the fire and passion within each student, which only happens when you have the opportunity to build a relationship,” says Brown Lerner. “There’s a real opportunity to build a bridge between what educators do really well in terms of planning and articulating for young people, and how coaches create relationships and environments which are truly young people centered.” With this combined effort, “we can just see an explosion of growth of these core skills across all the places and spaces young people learn.” Listen to more from Brown Lerner in the episode below. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents. Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. To learn more about the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program, visit: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/sports-society/ Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and communities. This week on Critical Window we’re learning how sports and coaching influence the social, emotional, and academic development of students, and what educators and coaches can learn from one another. Our guest today is Jennifer Brown Lerner. She’s the deputy director for Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program where she’s responsible for strategy, management, and community work. Previously she was the assistant director for policy and partnership for the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development where she managed the policy subcommittee and the Partners Collaborative. Prior to Aspen Jennifer served as the deputy director of the American Youth Policy Forum. She also worked as a classroom teacher, a coach, and a communications officer. Jennifer received her bachelor’s from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s from Teachers College, Columbia University. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. J. Brown Lerner: Thanks, Hans. Glad to be here. Hans Hermann: So let’s start by talking about your work at Aspen’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Throughout this conversation, for those listening, we’ll be referring to the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development as SEAD, or the Commission for short. So for those not familiar, could you provide an overview of Aspen’s history and programs as well as the work, the research base, and the participants in the SEAD Commission? J. Brown Lerner: So the Commission was a policy initiative of the Aspen Institute, which is a well-recognized convening organization driven by values-based leadership. The Commission was comprised of 25 prominent voices across education, business, philanthropy, military, and the government, and it had six advisory bodies which were critical to developing its final recommendations, and those six advisory bodies included research scientists, educators, young people, parents, our partners, and our funders. And so to understand the Commission’s work I think it’s really important to start where the Commission started, and the first thing that they did was spend a lot of time with each of their advisory bodies, and the one that became the foundation for where the recommendations stand and how they move forward were the research scientists. So to understand the research scientists advising the Commission, you need to understand that they tapped voices not just from traditional education research but from neuroscience, from psychology, from biology, from sociology, from history, a real range of academicians and researchers who grounded the Commission in a couple of foundational learnings which were essential for how the Commission shaped and framed its final recommendation and its communication to the broader field. The first and the point that I think stands in front of all of the other things that we heard was we need to get away from this confusing terminology that exists in the space around social-emotional learning or social-emotional and academic development, and really understand a couple of pretty simple things about learning. First, learning is social and emotional and cognitive, and what that means is that there are three categories of foundational skills which are essential to learning, whether it be academic learning, whether it be on-the-job learning, whether it be learning at home. These are the elements that are just foundational to learning, and I’m just going to take a minute to go through those ’cause I think they’re critical to this conversation. So the first is around cognitive skills and competencies, and these are the underlying ability to pay attention, to stay focused, to plan, to organize, to goal set, and to solve problems. The second is social interpersonal skills. This is about your relationships with people. This is about how you read social cues, navigate social situations, how you negotiate conflict, and how you work on a team. And the final category around emotional skills and competencies is not only how you regulate and manage your own emotions, but how you cope with frustration, how you deal with stress, and how you demonstrate respect and empathy for others and have the ability to take their perspective as well. So if these are our foundational skills, there’s a couple of other things that are also really critical to understand. One, these skills develop over time and can be taught and learned. This idea of that they are caught and taught is really important. We need to think about that. Learning happens in relationships, and this is a really critical point, that all of these skills happen based upon a young person’s relationship with their environment, with their educators, or with their peers. And then finally we have some research to demonstrate that social, emotional, and cognitive development, or an emphasis on social, emotional, cognitive development, can offset some of the impacts of trauma. Hans Hermann: So then what did the SEAD Commission tell us about the impact of social-emotional learning on the development of youth and their academic performance? J. Brown Lerner: Yeah, so I think the Commission put forth a really important theory of change that focuses on how learning settings impact a student’s experience and then move us towards a broader set of desired student outcomes. When we think about learning settings we, one, we have to think about all of the places and spaces that young people grow and develop, and I’m looking forward to talking about all those places with you later on. We need to think about in those places in which young people learn and relationship, do they feel safe, supporte

    37 min
  5. Believing All Students Can Learn

    06/03/2019

    Believing All Students Can Learn

    When you step into your classroom each day, do you believe that all your students can succeed? Does this belief shape how you teach and engage your students in learning? On this episode of Critical Window (listen below) a podcast by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), we spoke with Dr. Yvette Jackson, adjunct professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, about her concept of the “pedagogy of confidence.” Dr. Jackson, who has a book titled after this concept, is internationally recognized for her work applying neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and cognitive mediation theory to elicit high intellectual performances from under-achieving and historically underserved students. A core concept of Dr. Jackson’s work is based on the idea that teachers should teach from a place of confidence in every students’ ability to learn, regardless of background or zip code. “When you have confidence about the potential of students, you help to push them to the outskirts, the limits of their mind,” explains Dr. Jackson on Critical Window. In this strategy, “learning becomes something that pulls [a student’s] potential to the next level.” What are the core ideas behind the “pedagogy of confidence,” and how can educators use this style of pedagogy to support adolescent learning? Here are six key strategies from Dr. Jackson: 1.Identify and activate student strengths. Instruction should help students believe “I can do this.” Teaching to students’ strengths helps them become more confident in their abilities and empowers them to perform better, all while establishing a growth mindset. 2. Focus on high intellectual performance. High intellectual performance should be the target for all students, not only those who have been identified for gifted and talented programs. Teach with the knowledge that all students are highly capable. 3. Build on existing skills and knowledge. Look at what students need to progress in their learning. What type of background knowledge do they need to have as a baseline and what additional skills do they need to build to succeed at the next level? 4. Situate learning in students’ lives. Are students seeing a connection between what you’re teaching and what’s happening in the world? Focus on issues and events happening in the world around them and incorporate those trends into the learning experience. 5. Acknowledge the impact of culture. Culture impacts the learning process and is a fundamental building block for students; however, it also can hold children back, even in school. If the school culture doesn’t represent the culture of the students, then you’re going to get all kinds of dysfunction. 6. Assess growth in every learning experience. Make every learning experience an opportunity for assessing growth. Receiving feedback on their performance and areas of growth helps students feel confident that they can progress in their learning. Listen to more from Dr. Jackson in the episode below. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents. Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Featured Image by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript [Music] Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence, and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and communities. This week on Critical Window, we’re learning about the Pedagogy of Confidence and how educators use it to support adolescent learning. Our guest today is Dr. Yvette Jackson. She’s internationally-recognized for her work at assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. She applies her experience in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory to develop integrative processes that engage and elicit high intellectual performances from under-achieving students. She’s the author of many books, including her book on our topic today: The Pedagogy of Confidence. Dr. Jackson currently is an adjunct professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and a senior scholar at the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education. She previously was a visiting scholar for the Panasonic Foundation, and a consultant for the Brazilian Department of Education. She’s also been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Columbia University, and Stanford University, and has served as a member of ASCD’s Differentiated Instruction Cadre. Welcome to the show, Dr. Yvette Jackson. Dr. Yvette Jackson: Thank you very much. Hans Hermann: Before we dive into our conversation, I’d appreciate if you’d take a moment just to describe for those listening, the concept of the Pedagogy of Confidence. Dr. Yvette Jackson: Okay. Well, it all started with my own experience in being able to work with the same group of children for three years, and getting more and more confident about the intellectual ability they had by watching them grow through that time. And realizing that when you have confidence about the potential of students, you help to push them to the outskirts, the limits of their mind. And what goes with that is a pedagogy, the art of your work and instruction that helps students feel, I can do this. Then they become more confident. And so I went into this work to show that when you take this kind of pedagogy, a lot of which I borrowed from gifted education because in gifted ed, they believe that students are coming to you with a lot of potential, they have confidence in those students. And so I wanted to prove that same point that regardless of the child, regardless of where they are from, if you had this kind of gifted education mentality, you will walk and be more confident; the students will pick that up, and all of a sudden, learning becomes something that pulls their potential to the next level. Hans Hermann: So then you started to describe what the Pedagogy of Confidence is. Are there some key components of it that people should be aware or? Dr. Yvette Jackson: The first key component is what I call the high operational practices. And those are practices that I called from research, again, a lot from gifted land that said what are the kinds of things that move intelligence? The first is identifying and activating student strengths. Right. We know that we do that in gifted land, but we don’t do that anywhere else. And the question is why? In a Pedagogy of Confidence, we do. Building relationships, that a lot of people understand. But what they don’t realize that I’m not just talking about social-emotional relationships, but students also want to know what does what I am learning, what is the relationship to me, as an individual, to my role, to my life from one subject to the next? They need to have those ideas. The other one is the idea of focusing on high intellectual performance. Again, in gifted land, that’s what they think. And in a Pedagogy of Confidence, high intellectual performance should be the target for everybody. Then there’s the idea of enrichment. Once again, what do you do to cultivate the frames of references of students so they have strong ischemia, so they have been exposed to things that will peak not only their existing interests but maybe create more interests. Then there’s the idea of prerequisite, including prerequisites in the learning. You know, it’s really interesting because I started as an early childhood teacher, and they always talk about readiness skills. What do you do to prime the brain for learning? And then you don’t have here, prerequisites here again until college. You know, you have to take a prerequisite course. And all in the middle, I am saying in order to move kids to the next level, what are the prerequisites? What’s the kind of background knowledge they need to have? What are the kinds of skill-building they never to have? And the two last ones that are still part of the high operational practices is how do you situate learning in the lives of kids? How do they see the connection between what you’re teaching and what’s happening in the world? What are the issues that are going on in the world? What are the trends? How come we’re not talking about that? We want them to leave us and be able to thrive and flourish, but we don’t talk about that. And the last is, we call it, student voice, but it really should be called student agency. So that’s a main component. The other two components I would talk about is the impact of culture, the idea on the learning process. Culture language and cognition, and how they become the real fundamental ischemia-buildings for students, but they can also be the kinds of things that can hold children back even in school. If the school culture doesn’t represent the culture of the students, then you’re going to get all kinds of dysfunction. So that becomes another part. And the last part of the pedagogy of confidence is making every learning experience an opportunity for assessing a learning growth, and giving students the feedback on that learning growth so they’ll go to the next level. Hans Hermann: You’ve already mentioned it a couple times in different

    45 min
  6. Exploring Racial and Ethnic Identity Development During Adolescence

    02/26/2019

    Exploring Racial and Ethnic Identity Development During Adolescence

    There’s no question that our country is diversifying. By 2030, immigration will overtake births as the dominant driver of population growth. Soon, there will be a majority-minority population in the United States, meaning that not a single ethnic or racial group will make up over 50 percent of the population. Students of color already make up the majority of K-12 students. How is this shift changing school environments and student learning? To answer this question, Critical Window, a podcast by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), turned to Dr. Joanna Lee Williams, associate professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Dr. Williams researches race and ethnicity as social contexts for youth development. “Adolescence is a critical time for thinking about racial and ethnic group membership,” explained Dr. Williams. “During this time, young people’s cognitive abilities start to grow and develop in ways that allow them to think more abstractly about the world and their experiences in it…this often becomes a time when young people begin exploring this ‘who am I’ question in general.” Listen as Williams explores how racial and ethnic identity development impacts students and their learning environments, and how educators can support students in their identity development, on this episode of Critical Window. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.  Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers and communities. This week on Critical Window we’re learning about racial and ethnic identity development during adolescence and how educators can support students in their identity development. Dr. Joanna Lee Williams is an associate professor in the Curry School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia and is affiliated with Youth-Nex, the U.Va. Center to Promote Effective Youth Development and previously served as the director of research for Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program for middle school girls. She is also an affiliate of the Curry School News Center for Race and Public Education in the South. Dr. Williams’ research interests focus on race and ethnicity as social contexts for youth development. Specifically, her work examines ethnic identity as a form of positive youth development in the face of discrimination and other stressors and ethnic identity in relation to youths’ beliefs and behaviors. She has also applied interests in understanding diversity, peer relations and positive outcomes in youth development programs. In 2014, Dr. Williams was one of five scholars in the country to be awarded the William T. Grant Foundation Award for a five-year study for the benefits and challenges of ethnic diversity in middle schools and Dr. Williams received her Ph.D. in 2008 in Developmental Psychology from Temple University. Welcome to the show, Dr. Williams. Joanna Lee Williams: Thank you for having me. Hans Hermann: Before we start, I just want to reference a couple of numbers for folks. We’re in a country that has a changing level of diversity and especially as we see in our schools and our younger populations. By 2030, immigration is gonna overtake births as the dominant driver of population growth. And we’re gonna see, very soon, that we’ll have a majority minority population in the United States, meaning that there will not be a single group over 50 percent of the population in the United States, different ethnic or racial group. This is all important to understand for our educators ’cause that means our classrooms are gonna be changing which is why today’s topic that we’re gonna get into, Racial and Ethnic Identities, is really important for people to be aware of and talking about how hit impacts student learning and school environments. So I first wanted to start off by having you define what racial and ethnic identity are, how these may be different, and then also just talk about identity itself, maybe, and how you define it in your field. Joanna Lee Williams: Sure. So I’ll start with identity, which is essentially our beliefs about who we are and the values and other behaviors that go along with that. So it’s often an answer to the question who am I. For young people there are related questions like how do I see myself, how do other people see me or where do fit in. So we all have our own personal identity that encompasses this range of self-beliefs and attitudes and behaviors. Racial or ethnic identity is more specific. It reflects how a person understands themselves a member of a racial or ethnic group. I am going to use – probably you’ll hear me use the term ethnic racial identity to encompass kind of this broader construct because sometimes people will use racial labels and other people use ethnic labels when they’re talking about their identity. But regardless of the label, ethnic racial identity is multidimensional. In part, it’s about like the content of the beliefs that you have about what it means to be a member of your group but it’s also about the process of how those beliefs develop and change over time. Hans Hermann: So as you know, at All 4 Ed we focus on the developmental period of adolescence. How, then, does ethnic and racial identity development compare in adolescence to other age demographics? Joanna Lee Williams: So adolescence is a really important time for thinking about racial and ethnic group membership. During this time, young people’s cognitive abilities start to grow and develop in ways that allow them to think more abstractly about the world and their experiences in it. So this often becomes a time when young people begin exploring this who am I kind of question in general. While younger children may understand their racial or ethnic group membership in very concrete terms, so things related to like the foods that I eat or maybe the physical appearance that I have, adolescents can reflect on more abstract or collective aspects of their group. They can think about history and sort of, you know, how they’re viewed by other people. So adolescence really tends to be that time when young people start considering what it means to be a member of their group and how race or ethnicity fits into their overall identity. This doesn’t necessarily mean that race or ethnicity is salient to every adolescent. A lot of that depends on personal experience, it depends on, you know, messages from families, peers in schools. But when it is salient an adolescent can reflect on what it means to them and a sense of connection or pride in one’s group is often common during adolescence. Hans Hermann: And if you don’t mind, just for folks as they’re listening, when we’re – and it may be obvious to some, but racial and ethnic identity groups, what are some examples just so people are aware of when you’re talking about those, what they should be having in mind? Joanna Lee Williams: Sure. So we might think about a racial group label as something like black or African-American. An ethnic group label within the sort of black diaspora might be something like Jamaican-American. So there’s a lot of labels that young people and adults, as well, might use. We have, in the United States, a limited number of racial categories. Those tend to be the kinds of boxes that you see when you’re filling out a form. And then lots more ethnic labels that may relate to country of origin or a particular cultural heritage. So when I’m talking about an ethnic group membership, usually – you know, it depends on how the individual defines themselves. It might be a panned ethnic label like Hispanic or Latinx, or it might be very specific like Puerto Rican or Dominican or something like that. Hans Hermann: All right, thank you. So you started hinting at this in the previous question that you answered about cognitive changes that are happening in adolescents. What are the physical changes, social changes and the things that are happening in their brain during adolescents that affect this ethnic and racial development? Joanna Lee Williams: Okay. So we know the onset of puberty brings about important changes in the adolescent brain. I should say we know that although it’s really based on kind of relatively recent science. But we know now that some of the hormonal changes that happen with the onset of puberty also relate to changes that happen in the adolescent brain. And adolescents start becoming more attuned to social information. So young people might pay more attention to messages about what it means to be a member of their racial or ethnic group. Feedback from peers becomes especially salient during this time. Adolescents are starting to negotiate their identity in the context of peer relationships, often in school, and they have to kind of figure out, how do I balance what I’m hearing maybe from family members or other adults with, you know, what I’m seeing or hearing from my friends in school or the messages I’m getting from media or teachers. As they start beginning to explore their ethnic and racial identity and being more attuned to social feedback, young people might start to b

    32 min
  7. How the Opioid Crisis Is Affecting Students

    01/30/2019

    How the Opioid Crisis Is Affecting Students

    The opioid crisis is shaking the nation and greatly impacting young people. In just one year, 42,000 people died of drug overdoses involving opioids. That same year, 2016, 38,000 individuals died in car crashes or car-related injuries. There’s no question that this epidemic is affecting families, communities, and schools across the country. How can educators help support students impacted by the crisis? To help answer this question, Critical Window, a podcast by the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed), turned to Dr. David Patterson Silver Wolf. As a professor at the Brown School at Washington University, in St. Louis, Dr. Patterson Silver Wolf teaches substance abuse courses and works to bring science and research to addiction services. He has over fifteen years of experience providing clinical services in the substance abuse disorder treatment field. This issue is also incredibly personal for Dr. Patterson Silver Wolf, who shares the story of his own experience dealing with substance abuse – from childhood into his twenties – on this episode. “I would look out on the world, and everybody looked good but me,” he recalls thinking as a young child. “I would compare my internal turmoil to people’s external life, and think, ‘Boy, everybody looks like they’re doing okay but me.’” Listen to his story of triumph and learn how to support students experiencing similar hardships on this episode of Critical Window. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.  Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence, and what these changes mean for educators, policy makers, and communities. This week on Critical Window, we’re learning more about the opioid crisis, how it affects adolescent students, and how educators can support students impacted by the crisis. Dr. David Patterson Silver Wolf is professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. A faculty scholar in the Washington University Institute for Public Health, and a faculty affiliate for the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention. At the Brown School, he teaches substance abuse courses, serves on training faculty, and chairs the American Indian and Alaska Native concentration in the Master of Social Work program. He’s the director of the Community Academic Partnership on Addiction, which works with several St. Louis based organizations to bring science to addiction services. Dr. Patterson Silver Wolf has over 15 years of experience providing clinical services in the substance abuse disorder treatment field. He investigates how empirically support interventions are implemented in community-based services and factors that improve underrepresented minority college students, academic success, and American-Indian and Alaskan Native health and wellness, particularly issues related to college retention. He was recently appointed to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicines Committee on Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder. Welcome to the show, Dr. Patterson Silver Wolf. David Patterson: Thank you. Hans Hermann: I would like to set the stage before we get into questions. While the opioid epidemic has received a great deal of press coverage and has been repeatedly called out as a top priority of both the Obama and Trump administrations, I think it’s good to revisit some facts and figures to appreciate the scale of this issue. According to a 2014 report, “A Nation in Pain,” the US consumes approximately 80 percent of the world’s prescription opioid drugs, while making up only 5 percent of the world’s population. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control, said that nearly two-thirds, 42,000 or 66 percent, obviously, of drug overdoses in 2016 involved prescription opioids, illicit opioids, or both, which was an increase from 27 percent in 2015. In comparison to those 42,000 deaths, 38,000 individuals die in car crashes or car-related injuries in 2016. According to the CDC, opioid overdoses continue to rise in 2016 to 2017 by 30 percent, across 45 states, and it’s been estimated that this opioid-related cost exceeds $78 billion for the US economy. So, needless to say, this is a crisis, and a growing one. Could you explain how we got to this point as a nation? David Patterson: Right, thank you. So, the latest numbers of ODs are about 70,000, so we’re about 70,000, and continuing. I think how we got to this problem depends on who you ask, and let me just say I’m here speaking as myself, not behalf of any other person or community. So, I would say it’s a few issues. One, pharmaceutical companies have a big responsibility in this epidemic, and if you’ve watched 60 Minutes or the news, you’ll see that pharmaceutical companies pumped out a lot of opioids into our communities. There was, just on 60 Minutes last night, there was, again, they reported a small town in West Virginia had millions of pills shipped to that one small town that had a few thousand people who lived there. And so, pharmaceutical companies have responsibility, but also, prescribers. And how do you deal with people who say that they have pain? And a lot of times, doctors are in a position to either tell their customers, and that’s how they see patients now, as customers, they went to a rating of how satisfied are you as a physician? And so, are you gonna upset your customer or are you gonna do something for them that would keep them coming back? And so, when patients or customers say that they have pain, obviously, the next move is to prescribe medication. There’s other people who say the responsibility lies with those who take the medication, and in some sense, that could be true. But these are very addictive medications, and so, there’s a lot of data that show once you start taking these medications, it changes your brain, and you quickly become addicted to these. Hans Hermann: This epidemic is impacting individuals, families, schools, communities across the nation, as you said. Are there areas of the country or specific demographic groups that are more at risk of substance abuse, specifically use of opioids? If so, where, and whom? David Patterson: I would say large amounts of people who express pain, obviously, are prescribed opioids, and they become addicted to them. Not all of them, but a lot of them do. But I would say ground zero for America’s addiction is West Virginia. They have more ODs than any other state in our country, but nobody’s immune to this. There used to be this idea that back several years ago that this was an urban problem by minority folks. Now, we’ve seen on the news that young, non-minorities are dying from this crisis, this epidemic, and so, it’s spread across our communities to where anybody could really be impacted by this. But a lot of older age folks are high risk. And obviously, minority communities, underserved communities are high risk for this problem. Hans Hermann: You’ve personally dealt with substance abuse from early on in your childhood and into your 20s. Could you take a moment to share your story for those who aren’t familiar? David Patterson: Sure. There’s still some hesitation about me, or anybody else, sharing loudly that they’re a person in recovery. There’s still a lot of stigma around it, and even me now, I’m saying reaching 60, and a tenured professor, there’s still some reluctance to talk about this part of my life. And so, I could say I grew up in a home with a father that was an alcoholic, and very violent, and you grow up, speaking for me personally, you grow up in a home like that, you have these issues, you try to figure out why these things happen to me, what’s wrong with me? I always felt like I was a square peg in a round hole. I would look out on the world, and everybody looked good but me, and I would compare my internal turmoil to people’s external life, and think, “Boy, everybody looks like they’re doing okay but me.” And so, it’s easy to be talked into trying different, what we would consider medications, to make myself feel better, or the same, or to fit in. And so, I was taught very young on how to drink alcohol. I was allowed to smoke cigarettes, and so it was – I don’t wanna say it was a predetermined path, but it made my path a lot of easier to continue to take risk with other drugs. And before too long, I was taking medications. I had prescription drugs, I was smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and it just led to a life where I couldn’t imagine my life with or without alcohol or drugs. And so, I eventually went to treatment. I was 26, I went the old-fashioned way. I was forced to go, and was allowed to – with a very structured program, allowed to find my path into recovery. Hans Hermann: Well, thank you for sharing, we really appreciate you being open and I’m sure other folks who may or may not be able to relate, but I think it says a lot that you’re able to be open about that, and we appreciate it, again. You started getting into how you eventually overcame your substance abuse issues. What other individuals or support systems helped you do that? David Patt

    30 min
  8. Critical Window: The Impact of Trauma on Student Learning

    01/10/2019

    Critical Window: The Impact of Trauma on Student Learning

    Feeling frustrated that your lesson plan isn’t resonating with your students? Before you throw it out, you should know that there may be more going on with your students than meets the eye. For students to learn, they must feel safe, engaged, connected, and supported in their classrooms and schools. But experiences like chronic stress or trauma from exposure to violence can have a tremendous impact on students’ ability to learn. Students that have been through at least four adverse childhood experiences, such as emotional abuse or neglect, sexual abuse, living with a drug-addicted family member, losing a parent to divorce or death, were 32 times more likely to have learning and behavior issues in school. Michael Lamb, executive director of the Washington, DC office of Turnaround for Children, shared this and other staggering data points on this episode of Critical Window, the Alliance for Excellent Education’s podcast exploring the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence. The episode dives into how students experience trauma, the impact it has on mental health and learning, and what educators can do to create an environment that effectively supports students affected by trauma. Breaking Down the Science of Trauma What happens inside a child’s brain when they encounter a traumatic experience? The amygdala, the area of the brain that acts as a “smoke signal” when individuals experience a stressful situation, takes over to activate a fight or flight response throughout the body. When this area is in charge, the other parts of the brain that manage learning and memory, including attention, self-regulation, executive function, etc., are inhibited. Lamb explains the importance of this natural human response to threats: it helps individuals react to potentially dangerous situations, and not spend time determining whether a threat is real or not. “It’s wonderful if you’re in the forest and you see a bear and you need to act,” says Lamb. “It’s terrible in a classroom or a hallway.” “You could have a wonderful lesson plan as a teacher, you could have really great, engaging content, but if that child is feeling stress…then that long-term memory won’t actually take root,” says Lamb. It’s not just about making the classroom a safe space with caring adult that students trust. The whole school must be involved to create a positive learning environment. “If a classroom felt like a safe, predictable place, but then the hallways were very chaotic, the cafeteria or the playground became a place where students were re-triggered…the rest of the day would be really difficult for learning to take root,” says Lamb. So, how can educators and school leaders create classroom communities that are calm, safe, and predictable, while also building positive school climate? Listen to this episode of Critical Window to find out. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.  Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Featured Image by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Hans Hermann: Welcome to Critical Window, a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers and communities. Robyn Harper: This week on Critical Window, we’re learning more about trauma, the impact it can have on the mental health and learning of students and what educators can do to create an environment that effectively supports students affected by trauma. Hans Hermann: Our guest today is Michael Lamb. Mike is the Executive Director of the Washington, DC office of Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit organization that translates scientific research into tools, practices and systems for educators to help all students thrive, particularly children who have been impacted by adversity. Mike leads network and school partnerships as well as development and stakeholder engagement. Before Turnaround, Mike worked at the US Department of Education during the Obama administration, and prior to that, spent time teaching seventh and eighth grade students in Chicago. Mike is also currently involved in several groups and task force focused on mental health and trauma-informed schools here in DC. Welcome to the show, Mike. Michael Lamb: Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here. Hans Hermann: And we’re really glad to have you with us today. Robyn Harper: Absolutely. Hans Hermann: So we’re gonna just jump right into it. At Turnaround for Children, which for those listening, Turnaround is shorthand for that, how do you define trauma and what are examples of traumatic experiences that students may have? Michael Lamb: Yeah, it’s a great question to start off with. We ground ourselves in the research that has been done for decades on adverse childhood experiences in particular. So 20 years ago or so, there was a major study done to try and identify what is the primary impact of the adverse experiences that children go through. And Kaiser led the study, and what they found was it had nothing to do with the child themselves, their personality, how they were born or anything like that. It was primarily to do with the experiences that they had as children, and that meant emotional abuse, emotional neglect, sexual abuse, living with a drug-addicted family member, losing a parent to divorce or death. It was those kinds of experiences that children went through that ended up becoming traumatic if they were unbuffered, if they did not have a relationship with a trusted adult that helped them buffer those experiences. And the impact of those experience is tremendous. So if you’ve had just four of the ten experiences that they identified in that original study, you’re 32 times more likely to have learning and behavior problems in school. That’s not 32 percent; that’s 32 times more likely. But it also affects health as well, so you’re 10 to 12 times greater risk for attempted suicide or intravenous drug use, and many of the leading causes of death are correlated with four or more ACEs. And fully 20 years can be taken off your life if you’ve had six or more of those ten ACEs. So this has really profound impacts on the lives of students if these experiences are unbuffered and if they do not feel like those experiences can be supported and mitigated through. Hans Hermann: If that doesn’t lay out for people how important of a subject this is, I don’t know what else could. It really shows the importance of addressing and being knowledgeable about trauma and traumatic experiences. So the history of Turnaround is rooted in the tragic and traumatic events of 9/11 and really helping students in New York City cope with the aftermath of what took place. Could you just tell us a little bit more about the beginning of Turnaround? Michael Lamb: Absolutely. So Dr. Pam Cantor is our founder, and she was a child psychiatrist focusing on the impact of trauma for the children that she worked with. And what she would always say is that she could never change the experiences that children were going through. She couldn’t stop the divorce that was happening in their lives, she couldn’t stop the abuse that they had gone through. What she could help them with was how to move forward, how to develop skills and mindsets and approaches that would help them actually be able to go through those experiences and become resilient on the other side. So right after 9/11, the City of New York was becoming concerned about the impact of trauma in their schools, and they convened a task force to try and figure out what will be the impact here. And the task force believed that the biggest impact would be right around Ground Zero. This was where the towers fell down tragically, this was where a lot of people saw those events, and so they thought that that was gonna be the place where trauma was living the most. But because they did the study for the entirety of New York City, what they ended up finding was that the biggest impact of trauma, the biggest impact of trauma, the biggest lasting impact of trauma was in the areas of deepest poverty throughout New York City. Because for the children in those neighborhoods, this was not a one-off experience where the traumatic event happened and then it was over. For them, it was every day, and that was something that the school system hadn’t really been thinking about. It wasn’t something that principals and teachers and social workers were constantly planning around, and it was an eye-opening experience for Pam. And so she decided to found Turnaround for Children to try and do something about that. Hans Hermann: Yeah, and I think that that segues well into our next question and other questions we’ll have throughout this conversation that that point that they really discovered that all these experiences that students were having around the city and living in certain conditions were having just as much, if not more, effect on their learning. So in addition to events as we were talking about with widespread impact like 9/11, students, as you were saying, may experience trauma in their communities, schools or even their homes. So how then has the mission and work of Turnaround evolved once this came more to light to support all students who have experienced trauma? Michael Lamb: Well, I think when we first started, Pam was most connected with the work around student – supporting students through mental health services and

    29 min
  9. Critical Window: When Students Trust Their Teachers

    11/20/2018

    Critical Window: When Students Trust Their Teachers

    As a professor of human development in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park, Dr. Kathryn Wentzel researches the nature of teacher-student relationships and how these relationships predict young adolescents’ goal pursuit, prosocial behavior, and academic performance. On this episode of All4Ed’s podcast, Critical Window, Wentzel walks through the process of building positive student-teacher relationships and how it affects student engagement and learning. In the below excerpts from the episode, Wentzel explains that teachers can… Capitalize on Collaboration “The more [teachers] are tuned in to the peer relationships in their classrooms, the better able they are to create a classroom climate where [students] can interact with their peers but also engage in good instructional activities. So the challenge is to enable students to interact with each other but also in structured contexts where they’re able to learn.” Act as a Safe Haven for Adolescents “During middle school and high school, teachers have the ability to create safe environments for students, physically safe environments as well as emotionally safe. And this is very important for adolescents because, as supportive and friendly as peers can be, they can also be mean spirited. They can also create a lot of stress. And so, teachers need to continue to be there as a safe haven for adolescents.” Model Good Relationships When a trusting relationship exists between students and their teachers, “students are willing to engage in things that the teachers would like them to.” “A positive relationship also allows teachers to model good relationships with others, and so these social and emotional skills are very valuable for kids to learn and to demonstrate with each other.” This results in positive social behavior in the classroom, including “being helpful, cooperating, sharing, being nice to each other, and engaging in positive social exchanges with others.” Create an Engaging Classroom “If a student feels that a teacher cares about them, is going to be supportive of them as an individual, they’re more likely to listen to the teacher, to engage in what the teacher wants them to. It [will] create a very calm, but at least an engaging classroom climate which allows everyone to learn more and better. It just creates a better climate for everybody to engage in the process of learning. And so there are academic benefits as well. Kids are more engaged and motivated to learn academically.” To learn more about how to build positive relationships between teachers and students, listen to the full episode of Critical Window below. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.  Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Featured Image by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Robyn Harper: How can positive relationships between teachers and students help to keep students more engaged in the classroom? This week on Critical Window we’re looking at how positive relationships can be a crucial tool for teachers and how education leaders need to take a key role in developing the structures that help teachers create and foster these relationships, especially when it comes to adolescent students. Hans Herman: We have a great guest today whose work focuses on the nature of teacher-student relationships and how they predict young adolescent goal pursuits, social behavior, and academic performance. Kathryn Wentzel is a professor of human development in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She researches the nature of teacher-student relationships and how these relationships predict young adolescents’ goal pursuit, prosocial behavior, and academic performance. Kathryn has served as an editor of journals and handbooks in her field and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. She is currently an American Educational Research Association Congressional Fellow for 2017-2018, where she uses her research expertise to inform policy in Congress. Welcome to the show, Kathryn. Kathryn Wentzel: Thank you so much. I’m very glad to be here. Robyn Harper: Great. So, teachers and parents often notice that children entering their adolescent years start to focus more on their friends, their social circles, and their pursuits outside of school. Also, we know that there’s a noted decline in students’ motivation and achievement in school during adolescence. Is it true to say that many adolescent students are not as motivated to do schoolwork and be in school itself? Do adolescent motivations often lie elsewhere? Kathryn Wentzel: I think that we often have a stereotype about adolescent students, that they don’t want to go to school, that they’re highly unmotivated, and I think there are truths and untruths in that stereotype. I think, yes, adolescents are less motivated simply because they have more things to do. There are more distractions, and so they have to divide up their time across multiple goals and things that they want to spend their time doing. On the other hand, I think they do like to go to school, for the most part. Their friends are there. There are lots of social opportunities in school for them to pursue. And many adolescents are serious, by the time at least they get into high school, about what they’re going to do as adults, and so they start to focus more on their work, their career goals, or whatever it is they want to do. So I don’t think they totally discount school. Robyn Harper: Definitely good to know. Hans Herman: I’m curious, then, what are the specific changes that are taking place in an adolescent’s life that explain why there is this shift. And you started to mention some of those, but what are they? Kathryn Wentzel: Sure. There are lots of changes for adolescents, and I think that’s one reason why we don’t understand them probably as well as younger children. There are environmental changes as they move into middle school and then from middle school to high school. Adult expectations are that they become more independent and self-regulating. At school, classrooms and the school plant itself becomes more impersonal, so they don’t have those social supports ready to help them. There’s less oversight and opportunities to get in trouble as kids get older. There are also cognitive changes, so students move into the stage of formal operations. They’re more able to think abstractly and play with ideas. This also is related to identity development, so they’re more able to take on different personas and identities, and that’s part of the adolescent experience, is trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. So that’s a big change that I think drives who they are and what they do in school. Their teacher’s role becomes more focused on learning and instruction. So as elementary school students, quite often teachers provide more emotional support sometimes and they’re friends with younger kids, or try to be friends. But adolescents see teachers more as having a role of being their teacher and instructor, and so that becomes a narrower role for teachers. And then there’s ongoing brain development. We probably understand this least with respect to at least schooling. But what happens is that adolescents become more and more prone to risk taking. This can be good as well as bad. It’s good in the sense that it feeds into their identity exploration, so they’re willing to take personal risks with who they are. But then they look to the peer group for more security and safety, and a peer group also offers more opportunities for risk taking and getting into trouble. And so it’s a time of flux and kids are generally, I think, excited about this, but it’s also a scary time. And so the risks come with both positives and negatives. Robyn Harper: You mentioned in an earlier answer that school is where adolescents’ friends are, and now I’m hearing again their peers offer this greater opportunity for risk taking, both positive and negative. So if the center of the adolescent’s social world, let’s say, is their peers, what does that mean for their teachers and the other adults in their life? You talked about how the teacher’s role is shifting from that of mentor and friend in the elementary years to more instructor in the adolescent years. So are the abilities of adults to support and motivate adolescent students drastically diminished because of these changes? Robyn Harper: I think they have to change. So I think just as adolescents are faced with new challenges, I think adults need to recognize these challenges and perhaps change the way they interact with adolescents. I think it’s very important especially for teachers to acknowledge the importance of peers and use that to their advantage. And so what we are beginning to understand is that teachers vary in their ability to understand adolescents’ friendships with each other and their ability to get along with each other. And the more they are tuned in to the peer relationships in their classrooms, the better able they are to create a classroom climate where they can interact with their peers but also engage in good instructional activities. So the challenge is to enable students to interact with each other but also in structured contexts where they’re able to learn. I think the other piece of this – you know, I talke

    28 min
  10. Critical Window: Navigating Student Activism in an Era of Parkland

    10/24/2018

    Critical Window: Navigating Student Activism in an Era of Parkland

    March for Our Lives. DREAMers. Black Lives Matter. Young people are lifting up their voices and demanding a seat at the table to discuss issues of immigration, gun violence, and inequality that permeate their lives. These are problems that students carry from their homes to their schools each day. As an educator or school leader, student activism may lead to difficult questions. Should you support your students when they stand up for change? What if your beliefs differ from theirs, or you have trouble relating to their experiences? If you want to support them, what’s an appropriate way to do so? To answer to these questions, All4Ed spoke to Ben Kirshner, professor of the learning sciences and human development at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of Youth Activism in an Era of Education Equality. As a guest on All4Ed’s new podcast, Critical Window, Kirshner shared three key points to address student voice and navigate student activism. Lead with Empathy Handling student participation in protests and walkouts is a complex issue that is entwined with safety and liability concerns. But there are ways that adults in the school building can support students without losing facetime or harming the learning process, explains Kirshner. “If students are feeling like there’s an issue that really affects them and they care about it, it affects their daily lives, and a teacher is not showing any empathy with that, or, at least a willingness to listen and hear what that issue is and, maybe, show solidarity with their students, then, all the facetime in the world isn’t going be helpful for that learning relationship,” Kirshner says. Leading with empathy is key. “I think it’s important that school leaders, teachers, faculty try to understand where students are coming from. They’re not required to agree with them, in my view; but, if they show an effort to listen and take them seriously as people who are interpreting their world and have mature ideas about the world, then, I think that goes a long way.” Create an Infrastructure That Supports Student Voice “One way to support student learning and voice is to think about how a student council, student advisory group could actually have some input into substantive issues that the school is facing,” says Kirshner. This moves beyond the benefit of providing students with leadership opportunities and enables them to create change in their schools. “Frankly… [that] will help [principals and superintendents] develop practices and policies that are really responsive to young people’s lived experiences,” Kirshner explains. Make Learning Relevant to Students’ Interests “Think about how civic learning and voice and agency can be integrated into the academic curriculum,” Kirshner posits. What would that look like? Take English class as an example. If some of the goals of the class are for students to improve their reading ability, understand the difference between evidence and opinion, and learn to write or speak persuasively, then have students do their own research about issues that matter to them and develop policy proposals on what they’ve learned, Kirshner explains. “You could call that participatory action research,” he says. “From the perspective of a learning scientist, like myself, [this] is actually really consistent with what we know to be high-quality, deeper learning.” Listen to the full episode below. Critical Window is a podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.  Subscribe to Critical Window on Apple Music, Stitcher or wherever you find podcasts. Expand Transcript Collapse Transcript Robyn Harper: This week on Critical Window, we’re taking a closer look at what research says about student agency and activism and what it means for our middle and high school students learning. Hans Hermann: I’ve got to say, Robyn, I’m so excited for this topic. Robyn Harper: Me too. I’ve been seeing topics like this all over the news and I’m really excited about the guest that we have Hans Hermann: Ben Kirshner is a professor of the learning sciences and human development at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the faculty director of CU Engage Community Based Learning and Research. He’s the author of many papers and a few books including Youth Activism in an Era of Education Equality. His work centers on how young people, especially those from marginalized communities learn to exercise collective political agency and how they interpret their sociopolitical context. Welcome to the show, Ben. Ben Kirshner: Thanks, ______. I’m really excited to be here. Hans Hermann: As we were preparing for the show, we realized that a lot of the terms thrown out in this space might confuse people, researchers from student activism use a variety of them. If you could just unpack these terms for us and clarify if they’re the same thing or different, that’d be very helpful. Ben Kirshner: That’s a good place to start. rather than define each of those terms, which I’m afraid might be a little dry and uninteresting, I’m just gonna introduce a few key questions that I try to ask when I’m learning for the first time about a particular activity, again, or initiative. A key distinction that I think matters is to try to understand who is the sponsor or the host for this effort or program. So, often, for example, we’ll see that student voice gets associated more with school-sponsored activities to try to promote student input into decision-making at the school level; whereas, oftentimes, youth organizing is associated outside of school with community organizations, but I think sometimes those terms can get used differently. There’s another question I will often ask which is who’s participating or leading—and/or leading the effort? I often find that college student versus high school student programs, they’re substantively very different, so I think that’s an important distinction. Is the program really centered on and/or led by experiences of youth of color or, perhaps, LGBTQ youth? Or, does it aspire to a more colorblind orientation? Or, maybe, it’s even restricted to a certain population of students like student athletes or straight-A students. So, those are the questions, who participates and who’s experiences are really defining the agenda. That’s the second distinction. And I just have one last distinction that I want to share with the listeners: towards what ends is this effort going? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal? There’s a distinction often made between opportunities for young people to be civically engaged that are primarily focused on maintaining our institutions, so it means participating in existing systems and learning how to participate in those systems. Very important. Or is it oriented towards issues of equity or justice and encouraging young people to think about how they might change institutions or systems to really address or realize broader goals of the United States or of issues of fairness and inclusion and social justice. Robyn Harper: As I think about what’s been happening with students in response to things like DACA, which is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, for listeners who aren’t familiar with that acronym; and, also, the response by students to the tragedy Parkland, recently. Could you talk us through using those key questions as a frame? How we can wrap those examples into the context? Ben Kirshner: The effort to, both, create DACA and, then, fight to maintain DACA came out of the immigrant rights movement and that movement has been—was intergenerational in many ways, so it included parents and grandparents and adults and young people. There’s some really terrific research showing the ways in which youth efforts and youth leaders worked in an interdependent and collaborative way with some of the existing policy organizations. The Undocumented and Unafraid movement really tried to lift up a broad range of experiences within undocumented students and also really did more direct action that was occupying offices of Senator McCain, for example. Which I would very much characterize as a form of activism that was really centered on the experience of young people, many of whom are from Mexico and Central America, but also, many from the Continent of Africa, from Europe, from East Asia, who were fighting to become recognized as part of this country because they grew up here. On one hand the DACA effort is working with existing government channels to recognize and legalize the status of young people who grew up in this country even if their parents came here in an undocumented way. So, in that sense, they’re working within our existing structures, but, then, they’re also challenging those structures, too, and how we think about borders and the arbitrariness of borders to some extent. So, in the case of Parkland, I think those students felt like the status quo response was not satisfying to them around the issue of gun violence and they did not necessarily feel that the typical channels that they might have to address those ideas could be met by just by talking to their teachers or raising the issue with their principal; so, I would very much think of this as a form of activism, particularly because it involved galvanizing statewide and national movement. According to my sources, that particular school district and school had a really lively and thriving set of opportunities for students to get skilled at civic

    30 min
  11. Critical Window: Uncovering the Secret Life of the Teenage Brain

    10/01/2018

    Critical Window: Uncovering the Secret Life of the Teenage Brain

    If you regularly interact with adolescents, whether as a parent, educator, or community member, you’ve likely noticed that there are factors that set teens apart from children of other ages. But did you know that adolescence is the second most active time of neurodevelopment in a human’s life? By better understanding what’s going on developmentally with adolescent students, educators can create learning environments that capitalize on the unique opportunities that adolescence offers. For some practical advice on the subject, I looked across the pond to speak with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, PhD, professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. The following are edited excerpts from our discussion, but I encourage you to listen to the full conversation below on Critical Window, a new podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education. Critical Window highlights how research from the science of adolescent learning can inform middle and high school design and the practice of school and district leaders.   "Adolescence Isn't an Aberration" Bob Wise: You open your book with a chapter, "Adolescence Isn't an Aberration." In that chapter you state that adolescence is a unique stage of human development…Could you explain why? Sarah Jayne-Blakemore: Some people have argued that adolescence is a recent invention and it doesn't really exist as a biological period of development, but actually there's really good reason to think of adolescence as a unique period of biological and psychological and social development. You see increases in risk taking and impulsivity and changes in social behavior for this age group across species, culture, and history.   “No Such Thing as an Average Adolescent” Bob Wise: There are different stages of adolescent development, the physical process is occurring as well as other individual differences. What does this mean for the educator? Sarah Jayne-Blakemore: I think educators themselves know all about individual differences. They work with adolescents every day of their lives and they know there's no such thing as an average adolescent, there's no such thing as an average teenager, every teenager is different and that's absolutely what we're finding in the neuroscience in the psychological research, that although you can look at averages, it's probably more meaningful to think about differences between individuals within adolescence. That might have translational and real-world implications into different teaching strategies for different types of adolescence, but we're nowhere near there yet.   “It’s Not Too Late to Intervene in Adolescence” Bob Wise: You write that "education policy tends to emphasize the importance of early childhood intervention…however this emphasis on early interventions is at odds with the findings that the human brain continues to develop throughout childhood and adolescence and into early adulthood.” Are we suggesting that the way we often think about interventions is wrong? Could you elaborate further on how you think education leaders and policy makers might think about decisions about interventions? For many years there has been this emphasis in education policy or economics that the first three or five years is most critical to intervene. But the problem with that is that you can't just intervene in the first three years of life. You can't just try to help children, say those from low socioeconomic groups, in the first three years of life and then stop the intervention and expect them to be fine from then on. If a child slips through the net early on in life, and they don't have that early intervention, that doesn't mean that it's too late to intervene in adolescence. It's not. The evidence from brain research suggests that in fact the brain continues to develop very substantially during adolescence and provides an important window of opportu...

    31 min
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About

A podcast from the Alliance for Excellent Education that explores the rapid changes happening in the body and the brain during adolescence and what these changes mean for educators, policymakers, and parents.

Information

  • Creator
    Alliance for Excellent Education
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2020
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2022 Alliance for Excellent Education
  • Show Website
    Critical Window