I have spent my professional life emphasizing good sleep habits for my students as a step toward academic improvement, and it is high time I direct my advice inward. Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague during which we both lamented a decreased ability to engage with and focus on longer tasks, and I began telling him about my issues with sleep. Through our exploration of possible causes, I had what should have been an obvious realization: 

I am a victim, as are the vast majority of adults and teens, of the pervasive, insidious, and ubiquitous SCREENS! 

They are everywhere in my house. I just did a count and immediately listed the following: TV, my phone, wife’s phone, computer, tablet #1, tablet #2, music streaming video screen. But, the prevalence of screens isn’t limited to my house. We see them in the office, bus stops, restaurants, bars, gyms, and bathrooms. SCREENS! are addictive, alluring, and accessible. They are also sleep killers. 

The science is fairly clear. SCREENS! produce disproportionate amounts of blue light, blue light suppresses melatonin production, low melatonin levels tend to shift circadian rhythms and disrupt sleep patterns. As a kid, I would stay up late reading and watching plenty of TV, but my sleep problem seems particularly pronounced in recent years. LEDs, which are found in all modern screens, are highly efficient and produce more blue light than your average incandescent light bulb or tube TV. The more blue light, the less melatonin, the worse your sleep. As reported in the Harvard Health Letter of Harvard Medical School, studies from both Harvard and University of Toronto have confirmed this connection.

The presence of blue light emitting screens only accounts for part of the problem. What’s so insidious about SCREENS! is that their inherent functions are designed to addict us. TV is now bingeable thanks to streaming services; video games are built to keep you coming back (especially addictive are in-game microtransactions, that are the fastest growing sources of income for software companies). The real difference maker, though, is the phone. Modern phones brilliantly and efficiently provide supplemental entertainment whenever and wherever we want it. And, as we use them, they flood us with notifications of incoming emails, text messages, Facebook likes, Instagram hearts, re-Tweets. These digital social stimuli satisfy our need for approval and cause our brains to produce dopamine, a chemical that reinforces behavior by signaling to our cells the desirability of an outcome and driving us toward that outcome again (for a more thorough explanation, check out this article by Trevor Haynes of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School). So, as our dopamine levels rise, our motivation to seek it out through the same channels increases as well. Our SCREENS! become readily available syringes of dopamine, and we become more and more dependent on them. The producers of content for our SCREENS! of course know all of this and spend untold fortunes opportunistically designing their interfaces to take advantage of the brain’s chemical reward system. We are left salivating for ever more dopamine, endlessly scrolling and refreshing. And, in the thrall of the search for a fix, we stare at blue light. Sleep-killing, circadian-wrecking blue light. All thanks to SCREENS!

In light (pun of course intended) of all this, what can we do for our kids? Child and adolescent brains are more malleable and thus more susceptible to addiction than adult brains. According to the National Institutes of Health, “During adolescence, developmental changes in neural circuitry of reward processing, motivation, cognitive control, and stress may contribute to vulnerability for increased levels of engagement in substance use and nonsubstance addictive behaviors.” So, if we believe SCREENS! do harm, it is all the more critical that we identify and limit opportunities to develop addiction.

How do we move forward? What sort of miracle can we impose on ourselves and our kids to combat the combined forces of Insta-tweety-book, Angry-fort-bird-crush, and every other highly addictive function SCREENS! can afford? Are the combined powers of these behemoths beyond our capacity to resist?

Yeah, probably.

But, we can start small. I’m not advocating a SCREEN-less house (I’m no nut-job), but I can certainly chip away at my own bad habits. My phone’s operating system can eliminate blue light on a healthy, sleep encouraging schedule (done!). I can delete apps on my phone that I don’t really need beyond work hours…or ever. I can go back to playing analog versions of the games I now play digitally (Scrabble, I’m looking at you!) and return to reading books and newspapers made of, well, paper. I can also advocate family behaviors that call out and combat the allure of our SCREENS! We can have regularly scheduled digital-free periods, especially weekday evenings within an hour of bedtime. We can put a “phone basket” at the front door. We can remove or unplug TVs, phones, and tablets from our dining table and bedrooms. All these provide a good model for kids who, especially if they are still outside the digital grip, will hopefully adopt a healthier approach to digital consumption.

OK, so not never. At least, not so simply. See, Boaler’s contention, which she supports with a LOT of science in her article in The Atlantic from April of 2016, is that finger counting isn’t just a stop gap for preschoolers:

In a study published last year, the researchers Ilaria Berteletti and James R. Booth analyzed a specific region of our brain that is dedicated to the perception and representation of fingers known as the somatosensory finger area. Remarkably, brain researchers know that we “see” a representation of our fingers in our brains, even when we do not use fingers in a calculation. The researchers found that when 8-to-13-year-olds were given complex subtraction problems, the somatosensory finger area lit up, even though the students did not use their fingers. This finger-representation area was, according to their study, also engaged to a greater extent with more complex problems that involved higher numbers and more manipulation. Other researchers have found that the better students’ knowledge of their fingers was in the first grade, the higher they scored on number comparison and estimation in the second grade. Even university students’ finger perception predicted their calculation scores.

I don’t know about you, but when I first read this my proverbial mind was blown: “We do what??” The part of our brain that is used to imagine our fingers (so that we don’t cut them off while chopping celery) fires up when we do math in our heads. Not just while counting to ten, but when doing arithmetic, estimation, and even higher math. We all “use” our fingers while we do math, physically as children and subconsciously as adults. If that’s the case, why does it matter if or when we cease to touch our thumbs to our fingers as we calculate our waiter’s tip or how many cups of flour go into our pancake recipe?

There is a simple and powerful explanation, a force in the world of education that stigmatizes the practice: the idolization of accelerated curriculum. The push to have children “ahead” of age-appropriate work glorifies precocious students. And despite good intentions, many educators will discourage or even belittle a child from using techniques that they feel don’t conform to their skill timeline. In other words, if your kid isn’t ahead he is behind, and the way many teachers try to GET that kid ahead is by taking away the tools that not only work now but are necessary for progress into more complex math.

This force is a seemingly inevitable, unconquerable market force of competitive academics, and as the father of two young girls I get it. Even with the best of intentions, we all compare our kids to those around them as ways to mark progress and development. We have to keep reminding ourselves that progress is a non-linear, multi-dimensional animal that proceeds in fits and starts. Ticking boxes on the checklist of academic progression lacks the nuance necessary to measure growth, and finger-counting is a great example. If we don’t actually move on from adding numbers on our fingers (since we are all still doing so in our brains), we cannot call it progress to stop touching our physical fingers while we do it.

What does this mean?

It means…let your kids count on their fingers. Actually, it means ENCOURAGE them to do so. Show them how to use their fingers as placeholders, for large multiplication, for anything they want or need to use them for! Educators have been pressing for decades to have young mathematicians represent their thinking visually, and fingers are the best visual aid we have.

ACT and SAT have begun to sense their tenuous foothold and have instead concentrated on selling themselves as measures of high school success. In the wake of the President Obama's Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, states have begun to seek out ready-made assessment alternatives to the very expensive process of developing and maintaining their own standards and tests. These two pre-existing college entrance exams are low-hanging fruit, and twelve states now require the SAT for all high school juniors and another six, including New York, allow districts to decide whether they would like to require it of their students. Twelve other states require the ACT with eight more having partial arrangements.  

It would seem that both tests are now claiming that they are good measures of high school success as well as indicators of college readiness. However, new evidence suggests that this too may not be the case. I wrote about this issue back in September with regard to Nevada and its reaction to low ACT scores, and the news seems to be getting worse. According to a study just released by the Assessment Solutions Group, neither the ACT nor the SAT sufficiently assesses the Florida State Standards for Math or English Language Arts, and both tests would have to be significantly augmented to fall within an acceptable margin. The tests also fail to interchangeably measure students, with some students performing wildly different when taking two or more of the tests. Using the exams for the purposes of accountability of teachers schools and districts were equally varied, which means that unless all schools or districts use the same test the results cannot be accurately compared. Unfortunately, as in Nevada, the decision to require these tests fell squarely on the shoulders of the elected officials of the State of Florida; parents, students, and teachers had no say in the matter.

The ACT and SAT need to figure out what they want to be. Swiss Army knives are the toys of boy scouts, not the tools of tradesmen. One-size-fits-all is not a good way to determine student futures, school and teacher success, budget allocations, and broad academic trends. Tools need to be well designed for their purpose, and no matter how good a tape measure you have you can't use it to hammer in a nail.

This dialogue probably sounds familiar to many of you. This single-word response is the habit of nearly every adolescent desperate to ward off the prying questions of their well-meaning parents.

Fear not, parents. There are remedies!

It is very easy for a kid to hide behind as general a question as "What happened today?" Probing more specifically, however, demonstrates our own interest and likely prompts a real response.

"Did you guys talk more about Stalin in History?
"Have anything cool to teach me today from Math class?"
"I loved the discussion we had yesterday about cells; did you keep working on that?"

Our kids often find classes to be chores, but, even if they won't admit it, seeing their parents’ passion for acquiring new information will give them permission and inspiration to seek the same. However, if they need more than mere prodding, your dinner table conversations will require a little structure.

As you may have read in previous blog posts of mine, a critical intellectual difference between children and adults is meta-cognitive awareness, the ability to process learning and organize it in a way that is useful. If your mind is a file cabinet, what good are new files if you don't know where to put them? Or worse, you have so messy a file cabinet it doesn't matter where you put them? This analogy can often literally be seen in the catastrophically disorganized backpacks of middle school students!

Ron Ritchhart, professor and principal investigator at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been studying what he calls a "culture of thinking" for students and teachers for the last 20 years. His research aims "to cultivate students' thinking skills and dispositions, and … to deepen content learning. By thinking dispositions, we mean curiosity, concern for truth and understanding, a creative mindset, not just being skilled but also alert to thinking and learning opportunities and eager to take them."

Sounds great, right?

Ritchhart advocates the use of "Thinking Routines," models that can be used to review and process the information from a lesson. Though they seem simple, these structures can be very powerful ways to teach children to organize the information to which they have been exposed. The Cultures of Thinking website and its content are amazing, and I encourage not just parents and educators but also anyone whose objective is to educate to read Ritchhart's work. Below I will outline a couple of the routines most applicable to parents and children at home, but these represent only the surface of a very deep and rich pool of resources.

Among his routines, my two favorites for parents are "Headlines" and "Think Puzzle Explore."

"Headlines" is just what it sounds like. Ask your child to write a headline for today's class discussion, a single phrase that clearly communicates a central theme that he or she finds interesting:

"Stalin's Five Year Plan was his way to industrialize Russia really quickly in the years between the World Wars."
"Volume is how you measure how much stuff fits in a container."
"Cells are like Lego pieces; separate the pieces all look basically the same, but you can put them together into a DINOSAUR!"

Writing a headline is a simple way to get a more substantive answer than "nothing," and it can prove powerful when a subject extends over days and weeks, allowing that headline to shift as more information is uncovered. Coming up with a good headline requires some reflection on the concepts of the day and promotes critical analysis of the concepts to find the core idea.

"Think Puzzle Explore" has a similar purpose but is a little more specific.

What do you THINK you know about the topic?
What questions or PUZZLES do you have?
How can you EXPLORE this topic further?

This kind of probe not only requires that students look back over their day to recall specifics of the lesson but also sets them up well to think about their homework and be ready for the NEXT day's lesson with questions for clarification and further inquiry.

"I think I know that Stalin pretended to be helping the Russian people when he was really helping himself and his comrades."
"How can you measure volume when the container doesn't have straight sides?"
"I can look at images of types of cells on the internet to see if there are major differences between the cells of different organisms."

In time, these interactions will feel less stilted and will become part of the typical dialogue about school. Your child will start to think this way on her own and carry this critical eye back into the classroom. And maybe, just maybe, "something" will happen in class tomorrow...

Standardized tests, including state exams like New York's Regents and Texas' STARR as well as the ACT, SAT, and other privately designed tests, are too often mistaken for assessments of academic skill. All of these tests are content driven, no matter the claims of their designers. They take stock of a set of information and ask test takers to regurgitate that information. 

In the case of Nevada's ACT scores, the state is concerned that its students are less "college-ready" than the rest of the country (see this report in the Nevada Independent.)  To publicize this concern though communicates fear where there may not need be any. ACT's validity as a measure of college-readiness is far from certain. These claims have a history of contention going back decades and have recently been roundly contested (see this study from the National Bureau of Economic Research and this article from Inside Higher Ed for more information.) Nevada has a well designed public school curriculum, supported by the Common Core State Standards, and has increased its high school graduation rate by over 20 points in the last five years. That metric should be a better measure of success in their high schools than the results of one year of ACT administrations and should make them question whether the ACT is aligned with the rest of the state's educational goals. 

If we put aside the validity of the test, there is still the troubling nature of response. As many parents have seen with state tests, the inevitability of "teaching to the test" looms large. To rectify the low scores, the obvious move for administrators is to incentivize schools with rewards for score improvement. The schools will then incentivize teachers, who will adopt curricula that overemphasize the ACT content in favor of a more rounded approach. This will certainly increase ACT scores, but at what cost? A more robust approach would be to attempt to align the sections of the tests with existing standards and examine how those standards are currently implemented and assessed. Those areas that are lacking should be expanded, and assessments that are not capturing student performance well should be altered. 

It is tempting to draw seemingly obvious conclusions about these scores, but we should not be so eager. Simply because the ACT and SAT are one of the standards by which American colleges and universities measure student readiness does not mean they are necessarily the best measures, or even good measures. In addition, though assessments of student performance, especially standardized ones, do correlate with teacher quality and school quality, there are too many confounding and coincidental factors to draw narrow conclusions about the direction that curricula should take. Let's be sure not to warn of impending doom before we take more than a fleeting glance to the horizon.

For the last seven years, debate has been heated among future MBAs as many business schools began to accept the GRE as well as the GMAT for admissions consideration. Now the same is happening for prospective law school students.

Since 1948, the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test) has been the only standardized measure used for Law School admissions. Then, in 2016, Arizona Law announced is would allow applicants to submit the GRE in lieu. Then, this year, Harvard did the same. Then Northwestern. Further, a recent poll revealed that nearly 25% of Law School Admissions offices plan to roll out similar policies in the near future.

LSAC (the company that administers the LSAT) is scrambling to maintain its stranglehold on Law School Admissions and has asked the American Bar Association to rule on the matter.

Read more in these two articles: Above the Law and Above the Law.

There is a solution, or at least an approach, which is beautifully laid out by Penelope Trunk, an entrepreneur and writer, in a blog post, reprinted in an article for Business Insider, about her son's audition for the Juilliard Pre-College Program. Go ahead and read that article first, then come back to this afterward. It's OK. We'll wait...

Everyone back? Good.

Some of you may remember my previous posts about growth mindset and metacognition, and for you Ms. Trunk's take is not new. Regardless, this story puts a very fine point on one perspective that breeds success and how that path that can lead to academic happiness.

The early years of school (before, say, fifth grade) are often reasonably smooth sailing, comparatively anyway. The homework load is small, the content is often fun and engaging, and the pressure exerted by high-stakes assessments is relatively small. It can thus be easy to overlook the necessity to develop behaviors that could be leveraged into future academic triumphs.

Ms. Trunk's son clearly adores music and his cello. He enjoys many of the seeming drudgeries of music practice for their own sake. He finds pleasure in the minutia. With the help of his teacher, he can break down the content into smaller and smaller chunks, deepening his understanding of the music and unearthing further pleasure. Though at times he struggled to muster the motivation, his love of the cello helped to overcome those periods of distraction and reinvigorate his practice.

In the midst of work we don't find compelling, these are skills that are difficult to develop and hone, and that is exactly what we ask our children to do in Middle School. But Ms. Trunk has hopefully avoided that issue. By encouraging her son's passion for the cello, she has helped find a comfortable space in which he can learn to love to work. As she says in the article, "You have to have a proclivity for hard work (which might be as crucial and inheritable as talent) combined with the ability to take joy in the process itself." Once her son can do so in the practice room, he will be more easily able to transfer that ability to other tasks, like a repetitive math worksheet, Spanish vocabulary cards, or a research project on the Peloponnesian Wars.  

The analogy of school work to music is a powerful one for me. I was a professional opera singer prior to working in education, and the joy I found in my practice rooms (and still find at my piano at home) helped me to focus and train my mind toward difficult tasks. For others, music may not make sense in this way, but music is not the only pursuit that has these benefits. Take for instance:

• The young soccer player who spends hours after school kicking a ball against a wall, practicing dribbling, and poring over YouTube videos of Lionel Messi.

• The chess fanatic who stares at a written recaps of famous matches, taking copious notes, and discovering and practicing new approaches.

• The artist who sits in front of a tree or statue or photograph, flicking her pencil at the page intermittently, apparently lost in the image.

• The book lover who walks down the sidewalk, frayed-edge novel in hand, nearly colliding with every pole as each new story unfolds in front of his eyes.

Not every eleven-year-old manages to find a singular focus as these ones do. But, it is these eleven-year-olds who are organizing their minds into efficient machines, capable of accomplishing goals great and small because they love to work.

So, what is the takeaway for parents? Figure out what your child's passions are early on. Encourage them to pursue those passions not causally but intensely. Help them develop the tools early to suffer then savor the work necessary to excel at their passions. If that early passion does not become their profession, their dedication will not have been pointless. They will carry those tools with them long past their childhoods and ultimately find that same pleasure at school and in their future occupation.

"New data show studying for the SAT® for 20 hours on free Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy is associated with an average score gain of 115 points, nearly double the average score gain compared to students who don’t use Khan Academy."

First, I should say that I am pleased that College Board has finally admitted what everyone else in the industry has known for years: preparing for standardized tests in advance improves your performance on those tests. It seems self-evident. But why the sudden change?

Our first clues comes from College Board itself. In a response to an inquiry made by the Washington Post in preparation for its article about the study, College Board’s Senior Director of Media Relations Zachary Goldberg said:

"Too much of commercial test prep teaches to the test — looking for shortcuts and tricks to “beat” the test. The SAT in its old format lent itself to this approach. The College Board and Khan Academy firmly believe in practice, and particularly practice that is personalized to pinpoint areas where learners need additional help. Preparing for the new SAT is the same as preparing for college."

Let me unpack the inconsistencies of this statement.

1. Prior to 2017, College Board claimed that the SAT was not a teachable test. Now, Mr. Goldberg admits that the old SAT format “lent itself” to the approach of “tricks and shortcuts.” So does that mean that it was teachable all along, and that commercial test prep had found effective ways to help students improve their performance?

2. The new format, according to him, lends itself to personalized practice. Many commercial test prep companies that provide one-on-one instruction personalize their approach to the students with whom they work. Shouldn't that mean they too can provide real help for SAT takers?

The value in private tutoring is in establishing a relationship between tutor and student that fosters trust and motivational growth. A student must be sufficiently motivated, adequately exposed to the right material at the right time, and provided with the relevant and academically necessary information customized to their needs. With the right tutor there is potential for immense change - not just improvement in the eventual test score but also in the way a student will test in the future and the way that student will approach other academic tasks of this magnitude.

Yes, of course, there are techniques that exist outside of the academic content of the test. That does not mean that those techniques are rendered ineffective by the new format. In fact, simply because the test is still predominantly multiple choice is reason enough to doubt these claims. Answering multiple choice questions is a skill that can be taught and improved, which incidentally is why many assessment specialists, including me, advocate other question formats in favor of multiple choice when designing standardized tests.

Disappointingly, the study examines only the effect of using the material released by Khan Academy. College Board partnered directly with Khan Academy to develop these materials. So, to maintain the claim that test preparation is ineffectual no longer makes business sense, as doing so would lump their own materials in with those they had been dismissing for sixty years. But if College Board does not include other methods of test prep or other content or service providers in their research, championing Khan Academy as the pinnacle of test prep is horribly misleading.

It’s all pretty confusing, isn’t it? So, here is the simple truth: making broad claims about the efficacy of all programs and companies other than Khan Academy is impossible. What large corporations do in classrooms of 100 kids is very different from what small, specialized firms can accomplish in one-on-one or small group sessions, which in turn is very different from what Khan Academy provides with its semi-adaptable software. All of these models have great value and can provide the right service for the right student. Mr. Goldberg, in attempting to clarify, has broadcast College Board’s motives and undermined the conclusions of the study.

Later in the WashPo article, Bob Schaeffer, Education Director of FairTest, rightly calls out College Board for this conflict of interest:

"The College Board’s admission that SAT coaching can boost scores significantly once again demonstrates the hypocrisy of the testing industry. After six decades of aggressively claiming that SAT prep courses do not have a major impact, the College Board has suddenly reversed its position. Of course, the program they now assert can make a big difference is the only one the College Board partners with. Not surprisingly, they did not study the offerings from any test-prep firm, many of which advertise even larger score gains."

It is difficult enough to know how best to serve your children and students, but things get far cloudier when the administrators of a test begin to make claims not only about their test but also about the exclusive partnerships they make. Now, don't misunderstand me. Khan Academy is an excellent tool. It provides instruction and practice for numerous content areas and can be leveraged to great effect by a motivated and insightful student. It is also provided free of charge, making it available to kids and families of all socioeconomic backgrounds and hopefully cutting into the college access gap.

However, Khan Academy does not have a monopoly on effective SAT prep content. Its content does not replace the customizable approach a private testing expert can provide or the regular and familiar structure of a classroom setting. To say otherwise is naive at best; when asserted by the test designer, doing so borders on disingenuous and self-serving. The real takeaway from the study is this: the SAT has content that can be learned, and the changes to the SAT format have only affected what that content is.

The pressures of accomplishing the “goal” often get in the way of the most vital part of writing: creative space. In order to write an authentic essay that will stand out to admissions officials, students need the time, freedom, and inspiration to access what is true about themselves.

We at Nexus Academics aim to find a new way to think about college essay writing. 

Our “College Essay Writers Circle” is designed to generate not just great ideas but ones that communicate what is unique about each young writer. Each session will help participants explore their past, their perspective, and their writing potential, laying the groundwork for a successful college application essay.

This spring and summer, workshops will take place at Nexus Academics' office at 300 Park Avenue, 12th Floor, each Tuesday from 4:00 to 6:00 PM. 

For more information, to reserve a spot, or to learn about Nexus Academics' other workshops, please email us at info@nexusacademics.com.

Here is the short version. There is a clause in Maine State Law regarding activities that do NOT qualify for overtime pay that reads:

The canning, processing, preserving,
freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

The truck drivers of Oakhurst Dairy contend that the phrase "packing for shipment or distribution of" refers to the "packing" as the action and "shipment or distribution" as a compound object of the preposition "for", thus qualifying drivers, who distribute, for overtime pay. The owners of the dairy contend that "distribution" is a separate action, an item in the list, and thus disqualifies the drivers.

Grammar lovers, don't fret...there's more!

The legal team for the drivers countered that, because the rest of the list contained gerund forms of the verbs (those ending in -ing) and "distribution" does not, it must be a part of the last item of the list rather than its own entry.

Needless to say, the issue is not clear. Ultimately, the 1st Circuit Court ruled in favor of the drivers, arguing that the law is meant to protect the worker. What part those judges' grammatical opinions played is not explicit, but we can only hope!

For a more in-depth look, and some great links to examples of Oxford comma ambiguity, check out the full article.

On one hand, an August test opens the door for subject test preparation over the summer before senior year, alleviating the pressure to take them during either the spring semester of junior year, when students must concentrate on AP tests and finals, or the fall semester of senior year, when the focus should be on preparing applications.

On the other hand, the elimination of the January test limits a student's opportunities to get the SAT out of the way early. In order to avoid having an overlap of SAT, Subject Tests, and AP Exams, a student must achieve their desired score on the SAT using the tests in the fall semester of junior year.

This schedule change means planning ahead has become even more important than in past years. Nexus Academics is now recommending that families begin thinking about college applications and testing no later than the end of 10th grade to ensure that the process is not rushed. Starting the conversation then ensures that there is sufficient opportunity to diagnose a student's strengths, pick an appropriate test schedule, and prepare fully for the chosen tests.

If you are concerned about the implications of these changes for your family, please reach out. We are always glad to answer any questions you have about testing and the college application process!

Good Morning America reported an inspiring story this week. We often focus so much on what happens academically in a classroom that we forget the impact that personalization can have. It is this sort of centering that can change a kid's view of who teachers can be for them.

Barry White, Jr., a fifth grade English teacher at Ashley Park PreK-8 School in Charlotte, North Carolina, has an elaborate, personalized handshake with every one of his students. Every. Single. One.

“They know when they get to the front door we do our ‘good mornings,’ and then it’s time to go,” White told ABC News of his enthusiastic greetings. “I’m always pumped up and then we start doing the moves and that brings them excitement and pumps them up for a high-energy class.”

Each handshake is different, using custom moves inspired by the student’s personality.

“I started with one simple handshake last year with a 4th grader,” he explained. “She would wait for me every morning before she’d go to class. She’d get in trouble sometimes for being late because she’d wait on the handshake."

“This year I started making handshakes with the kids at recess. It was just one or two students and then it became contagious,” he added. “I saw how much it meant to them, so I said, ‘Come on. Everyone come on.’ Then it was my full class, then it was kids from other classes. Now I have 3rd graders wanting to do it too.”

Read more at Good Morning America

As parents and educators, the principle of centering reminds us to be present with children in such a way that they understand that their well-being is more important us than whatever long-term goals we have for them. This is not to say that we should ignore their future, but rather we can more effectively shepherd them toward adulthood by meeting them right where they are now.

Homework is one area where there is often a strong disconnect between what students are feeling in the moment and what their parents are communicating about the future. While it may be fair to point out that working diligently on homework is the only way to “get an A” or be admitted to a “top school” or be prepared for a demanding job, focusing on such long-term consequences might be ignoring the actual challenges that they are facing. 

Writing essays and reports is a task that many students find particularly difficult and, consequently, can easily get into struggles with parents over procrastination. Nevertheless, students often want to finish their assignments yet feel too overwhelmed or afraid to begin. Their sense of frustration can be made even worse if their parents or teachers ignore the actual struggles they’re facing. If, however, a parent or teacher centers their response on students’ present experiences, they are more likely to overcome and develop skills that will help them through similar challenges in the future.

A technique I’ve found useful when students are stuck at the outset of a writing assignment is what I call the “junk draft” (insert whatever adjective will get the message across to your child). Whenever students don’t know where to start, I tell them to write the worst version of the assignment they can imagine. One of two things happens: they either write objectively terrible versions of their assignment but feel unstuck and can draw from the material they wrote down; or, more often, they begin writing what they think will be terrible but actually end up writing the draft they originally were attempting. The key to the success of this exercise is that it addresses the real reasons students are procrastinating rather than assuming they “just don’t feel like it” or aren’t worried about their futures.

There are countless other situations in which children benefit when they are supported in their present experience rather than long-term consequences. While it isn’t always easy to get a child to open up about their feelings, it is always a good idea to communicate to them that those are what you’re most concerned about.

Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford and the world’s leading researcher into motivation, describes two basic mindsets, one that restricts progress and one that leaves us open to growth and learning. From her website, Mindset Online:

“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.”

More recently, Dr. Dweck has further developed her research to address the application of these ideas for K-12 students. According to Dweck, praising effort is not enough. "It's like the consolation prize. 'Oh, at least you worked hard,'" said Dweck. "What if they didn't make progress or they didn't learn?" The focus of the successful growth mindset is the way that effort can result in learning, not the effort itself. If there is effort with no learning, a student can quickly get frustrated and regress. 

The chart below was passed around recently on social media. It demonstrates very clearly the power in our choice of words. 

Help yourself and your children become better learners by pivoting fixed perspectives toward growth opportunities. Resolve to be great learners this year!

Read more at WIRED.

The Upshot Blog of the New York Times discussed new research suggesting that increased funding really is one of the keys to improving educational outcomes in school districts.

Read more at The Upshot Blog.

Renee Dudley at Reuters revealed some of the challenges facing The College Board as it revamps the SAT. The standardized testing industry finds itself in a period of flux as it faces shifting government policies and technological trends.

Read more at Reuters.

Clarity is an essential component of any student’s ability to perform successfully and happily in school. When students clearly know what expectations they have for themselves and what others have for them, they are more able to perform tasks free from emotional and physical distraction. The barrage of peer and media messages that young people receive can make it difficult for them to hold onto any clear set of priorities, but we as educators and parents can help them clarify and stay focused on their goals, particularly if we have a clear understanding of our own expectations of them.

Making a vision board is often suggested as a way to discover and attain overarching aspirations in our lives. The basic idea is to create some sort of visual collage that depicts what we hope to achieve and then to place it in a location where we will be regularly reminded of it. While discussions of vision boards are commonly couched in language some consider “New Agey” and are usually oversold in their power to single-handedly bring wishes to fruition, I have found them a useful and fun way to help students gain a clearer sense of purpose in their academic pursuits. The conversations that ensue while making the board and revisiting it over time have been remarkably effective in opening reluctant students up to new ways for them to understand their relationship with their work.

One particularly straightforward way to make a vision board is to page through old magazines and cut out any images that seem inspiring. If magazines aren’t readily available, printing out images found online also works well. Once there’s a big enough pile, simply arrange and attach them with glue or tape onto a piece of poster board. As themes seem to emerge on the collage, consider labeling them with words either cut out from the magazines or written with marker. There’s no correct way to create a vision board. Rather, the goal is to be led by instinct and find the end result to be somewhat of a surprise.

Your child’s interest in this type of project will, of course, depend on his or her age and personality; however, if you start making one yourself, you may find that an initially reluctant child will be curious enough to join in. The key is to be totally nonjudgmental of anyone’s choices for their own vision board (including your own) and to avoid any appraisals of the “quality” of the work. The effectiveness of this activity hinges largely on how authentic the vision board feels to its creator.

You’ll find that working together on such a project will spark productive conversations about setting worthwhile goals and what it can take to achieve them. You might have fun comparing your boards and sharing some of your own motivations for the images and themes you chose. You can point out the goals or images on each other's boards that you share and talk about how you might work together to achieve them. Ultimately, you and your child will gain a better understanding of the expectations and goals you have for yourselves and each other.

Read more at EdWeek.org.

While most colleges and businesses find standardized testing useful in comparing large groups of applicants, Oliver Staley cites research supporting the notion that a more holistic approach to education that embraces a broader set of academic and psychological factors is more effective in predicting and encouraging future life success.

Read more at Quartz.

Sometimes laughter is, as they say, the best medicine. To help with test anxiety, we can always turn to Mr. Bean...

We all want our children to be happy. They are, after all, children. Despite that desire, balancing happiness with achievement is a difficult task for a parent. It takes patience and perspective; we all feel like we have so much skin in the game. We know the consequences of procrastination and the long years of dedicated work necessary to succeed the way we have and know that they can. The gains of applying pressure to our children when they don’t live up to this standard, though, are often not worth the damage doing so can cause. 

A recent Harvard School of Public Health Study found that more than half of students at public and charter schools felt pressure from their school to succeed and nearly two-thirds of students were stressed about the volume of homework they receive. We all know the typical symptoms of stress: fatigue, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, insomnia, among others. What is so insidious about school-age stress is that these symptoms only serve to increase stress levels, as these symptoms all manage to get in the way of the success that the sufferer was seeking to begin with. This ugly cycle wears students down, leaving them dreading school and the seemingly inevitable and increasingly more disappointing results.

Similar results were found among affluent private school students in a study by Frontiers in Psychology. According to the Frontiers study, pressure and workload, chronic stressors ever present in the lives of adolescents and teens, “occur with more frequency and are more strongly related to maladaptive behaviors and mental health problems in young people than acute major life events,” such as parental divorce or the death of loved ones. These consequences of stress can carry over well into college and adult years, and are correlated with “academic disengagement and substance abuse.” In other words, kids who feel this sort of steady pressure are more likely to develop anxiety and depressive disorders and substance abuse problems in addition to investing LESS in their school work. 

Poor grades, school angst, and increased risk of both mental health and substance abuse problems are obstacles to happiness and success that school programs and parental involvement should be actively avoiding, not promoting. We should be teaching our children to focus not on the pressures and stressors but on the joys of learning and the benefits that can be derived from discovering that passion. Figuring out how is the big challenge we all face.

Studies conducted over the last 20 years years have repeatedly demonstrated that when kids self-report happiness they are more successful at school, but it is often incorrectly assumed that it is the grades that cause the happiness. In a University of Pennsylvania study entitled “Happiness and Academic Achievement: Evidence for Reciprocal Causality,” a two-year study of 5th and 6th graders demonstrated, as the title suggests, not only that success in school promotes happiness but also that pre-existing happiness causes academic success. In this study, students in the Fall were measured for cognitive and affective happiness and given an IQ test. In the Spring, the students’ grades were collected. The tests were repeated the next year and grades were collected again. The results demonstrated that, when controlling for other factors, “well-being predicted academic performance” and that “children who earned better grades were more likely to experience improved well-being.” This suggests that, although increased happiness can be a result of success, an inherent and general sense of well-being can be the cause of success and a more straightforward launching pad when trying to help a kid who is struggling balancing anxiety and a difficult curriculum.

How do we help to foster that sense of well-being in our kids while still instilling the need for hard work, dedication, and achievement? A University of Chicago study performed by Kevin Rathunde and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi entitled “Optimal Experience and the Family Context” discovered a relationship between teenagers and parents that correlated with child happiness, satisfaction, and strength when faced with typical teenage obstacles. This relationship is based in five objectives that reinforce the philosophy that a joy of learning will lead to investment, growth, and success at school. 

Clarity - Students thrive when they have clearly defined expectations. If you have not been clear with yourself about how you want your children to feel about school, you may be sending mixed messages to your child. What is YOUR expectation? Have you discussed that expectation with your husband/wife/partner to be sure you share that expectation? Consistent and clear communication with your children removes the obstacles of doubt that may block their path.
 
Centering - Your child needs to believe that their well-being is a higher priority to you than the goals you have set for them. Be certain any discussions you have about school work do not focus on future consequences. Emphasize what is happening now, whether it be emotional or concrete. With you by their side, your child is better equipped to brave the challenges they face. 

Choice - Children’s sense of autonomy is critical to intrinsic motivation. If every aspect of their lives is structured and hand-delivered, there is no impetus for kids to buy in. There are many opportunities for them to feel ownership over choices, whether those choices are about long-term academic pursuits or smaller choices at home and how to approach their work. The more they realize that they are in control, the more likely they will apply themselves without your insistence.

Commitment - Despite their age, kids are amazingly adept at understanding the truth (or lack thereof) of your intentions. They need to know that you are with them no matter where they are or where they get. Threats will push your children away. With the confidence of your unconditional support, your children can fully engage in their school work without the fear of disappointing you.

Challenge - While providing a secure safety net, a parent must also encourage opportunities for their children to grow at a pace that is suited to them. The only standard your children should be measured against is their own growth. Challenges should neither be so large that they produce anxiety nor so small that children are bored. Start any new endeavor with digestible chunks, and help them to enjoy the sense of accomplishment. Let them find successes, then let them be challenged. Students feel best and thus work best when they both face and overcome challenges set before them.

These are big asks and not easy ones to implement. They take enormous buy-in from all parties and results will often be realized in fits and starts. However, even in parts, these objectives will have a positive impact on the way you and your children talk about work and school. Despite our best intentions, doubling down on the pressures already inherent in the academic process likely does more harm than good. Help your child to love learning, to love school. From that love, academic success and, more importantly, psychological well-being will be borne.

In the coming weeks, we will dive more deeply into the 5 Cs and provide some reachable and specific ways that you can access these concepts with your family. Keep reading, and let us know in what ways you and your children find new successes!

Read more at Mind/Shift.

Nicole Garman at Education World discusses why schools in Singapore better prepare students in math and science than do schools in America:

Read more at EducationWorld.com.

Stanford's Dean of Freshmen, Julie Lythcott-Haims, challenged parents and educators to examine how they approach the education and development of their children and students in a TED talk titled, How to raise successful kids - without over-parenting.

The ACT will now accommodate English language learners on the college readiness test.

Starting in the fall of 2017, the nonprofit will offer supports to English language learners to ensure that their tests accurately reflect their abilities.

For the first time, students will receive additional time on their tests, test instructions in their language, a separate testing room and have access to a bilingual glossary. Students are required to apply for the additional assistance from their school counselor.

The ACT used input from educational experts and civil rights advocates to determine how to offer support to English language learners without giving them an unfair advantage.

“Today’s universities are serving the most diverse populations in the history of U.S. higher education,” California State University Chancellor Timothy P. White said in a news release. “It is imperative that we give all students opportunities to demonstrate their true potential, in order to give all students access to the benefits of a university education.”

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act definition, the ACT defines an English language learner as a student who was not born in the U.S. and whose first language is another language other than English, according to the organization. 

Let’s start with an analogy.

Suppose you want to run a marathon. Without making comment on anyone’s current level of fitness, this is a tall order. You are given two choices:

• Run as far and as hard as you can every day until you can manage 26.2 miles, or

• Find a training regimen, preferably administered by an expert marathoner, and apply the techniques over the course of many months until the regimen and your trainer believe you are ready.

This is an obvious choice, yes?

Not only does Choice B give you a much better chance at succeeding at such a monumental task, Choice A likely puts your health at risk. In addition, the repeated failures likely to occur through the “beat yourself over the head” method would deeply scar your self-confidence, making other similar pursuits more difficult in the future. Certainly, you may end up finishing the marathon distance sooner with Choice A, but at what physical cost?

Choice B’s more measured approach, curated by an expert, would allow you to set reasonable and achievable physical goals, attain them regularly, and subsequently set new more challenging goals. Over time, your body and mind would be attuned to the enormity of the attempt, and you will be able to run with confidence and with far less risk.

Another analogy for the musicians in the room:

You want to learn a Chopin Etude (a very difficult solo piano piece). Two different approaches to learning it:

You attempt to play it through once or twice per day until you can manage to do so without stopping, or

With the guidance of your teacher, you develop an approach, prioritized and planned, to learning the piece. You practice difficult passages out of context, more slowly than indicated in the music, and slowly, with guidance, you reconstruct the piece.

Anyone with any experience on an instrument knows that the second approach is the better one, at least if your goal is fluency, consistency, and musicality. Sure, the first approach may satisfy the amateur whose interest is only casual, but it would never bring mastery.

What do these analogies tell us about academics and learning, especially for the adolescent?

The challenges faced by the average early teen are not dissimilar to those faced by the casual athlete intent on completing his first marathon. Most of primary/elementary school is spent in service of developing the ability to read and a basic understanding of what the school environment is. This is not the case in 7th grade and beyond. Schools begin to fix their sights on broad and deep learning: multiple subjects taught by multiple teachers, each with daily homework, weekly assessments, and a reliance on student learning outside the classroom. The transition into this alien world of middle and high school is fraught with peril, and to expect so much of an adolescent or early teen is ambitious at best.

The first thing to remember is that grades are not an indication of how smart your child is. That bears repeating, so I will repeat it.

Grades are NOT an indication of how smart your child is.

A test, paper, or other graded assessment is a tool for teachers to determine how well the lesson covered has been communicated to the students in the class. The value in that assessment is to help the student, parent, and teacher know what has been mastered and what needs more work. The grade itself is merely an indicator of the effectiveness of the work your child has done.

Effectiveness is not necessarily quality or quantity. Good quality work can be ineffective if it is not supported by repetition and challenge. High quantity work can be ineffective if is does not address conceptual misunderstanding and is rooted only in rote repetition. Effective work is mindful, engaged, and reinforced.

To truly be effective, students must develop what is called “metacognition,” higher-level thinking relating to study skills and self-monitoring. The ability to come home, review the day, figure out what is expected, create a priority list, and execute that list successfully is the great hurdle every middle schooler must overcome.

What does this all have to do with the marathon runner?

Depending on your child’s academic “fitness,” he or she may not be ready to tackle all of this, all at once, on the first day of middle school. A more measured, coached approach may be necessary, and the priority must be placed on these meta-skills in favor of perfect grades. We must adopt a long-term, incremental plan to ensure that our children develop naturally, holistically, and with a sense of academic self.

OK, blah blah blah what do we DO? Here are some places to start:

Facilitate, don't dictate
Give your children the best opportunity to finish their work to the best of their abilities, but LET THEM DO IT THEMSELVES. If they have questions, answer those questions by leading them to their own conclusions.

Let them fail.
Through struggle, failure, review, and persistence, we learn. We adapt. We grow. When others do for us, correct for us, edit for us, we only learn to rely on that person. Example: autocorrect and spell-check. How many of you believe that those tools teach us to spell?

Focus on growth, not success
What matters more than an A on a paper is writing a better paper the next time. We all have more to learn and should strive to do so, so make sure your kids know that your priority is on their improvement and not their achievement.

Listen, observe, and adapt
We all know that every kid is different. Every kid’s education is different as well. What worked for you may not for them, what worked for kid 1 may not for kid 3.

Stay positive, keep it fun
This may seem obvious, but there are so many ways that we communicate negativity and consequence to our children.

In short, don’t lose sight of what is really important for your kids: your love, support, and wisdom as you guide them through what is a confusing and difficult time. They will thank you for it and be happier because of it.