Class Rankings
Denise Pope shares why eliminating class rankings can reduce undue student stress without decreasing engagement.
Audience: Educator
Don’t Forget To Bring a Doorstop
The most important piece of advice my oldest daughter and I heard when she was packing for college was: Don’t forget to bring a doorstop.
Year-end Student Awards and Assemblies
Several administrators at a recent conference asked my opinion on year-end student awards and assemblies. At their schools, they typically rewarded students who had straight A’s or who had GPA’s above a certain cut-off point.
HAPPINESS WITHIN REACH: The Open Secret
“I want to be happier. I just don’t know how.” In my work as faculty, presenter and leadership coach, I hear this confession from adults, 18-80. We live complex, stressful and often disconnected lives, often bombarded by media that convinces us that buying all kinds of stuff will make us happy, beautiful, successful, prestigious, and even more loveable individuals. Sometimes it does, in the short run. The real problem, however, is that this media-created trance can blunt our quieter universal quest for deeper joy and kindness. But there is very good news. Deep happiness is within reach.
What Teaching 8th Graders Has Taught Me About Homework and Stress
This is my first year as a full time teacher, after working for many years in education as a part-time teacher, researcher, and coach with Challenge Success. Throughout the year I’ve seen the complexities and nuances of how student stress works up close. Stress doesn’t just come from one place. It’s not only teachers assigning too much homework, or a hectic school schedule, or one too many extracurricular activities. It’s deeper than any one of those things. It’s cultural, and it’s something we not only feel, but also go in search of.
A Season of Growth Mindset
While upside down in what must have been her hundredth attempt to stand on her hands for more than a few seconds, our first grader said, “You know, my teacher told me that every time we try to learn something, a new pathway grows in our brain.” How appropriate for a season of growth! As an educator, I could not be happier that the students of Room 114 have now become proponents of what scholar Carol Dweck identifies as a growth mindset.
The Teacher’s Note: Too Much, Too Fast
Thursday was the technology professional development day at the District, and although I thought the day was excellently planned and carried out, and I was impressed with all the presenters, when I left, I felt battered and pessimistic. I have been trying to figure out why.
A Student’s Perspective: The Importance of a Caring Community
On paper, Castilleja is not so different from other schools. There are other private schools, even all-girl schools, that can claim the same benefits and advantages that Casti can. At least, I used to think this was the case. A few weeks ago, I discussed the practice of Senior Talks with a friend from a different school. Her school is much like Castilleja – small, all –girls, but located in a different state. They also have senior talks, where seniors speak about an important experience or idea that they want to convey to their peers, in a speech that is often moving and deeply personal. However, at my friend’s school, the best senior talks get voted on in a competition to win scholarship money. At Castilleja, the only prize you get for a senior talk or 8th grade speech is flowers …
Helping Students Learn to Engage
What’s the most important determinant of students’ growth in college? According to Nancy Sommers, a researcher at Harvard, it’s not feedback or carefully designed assignments or skill acquisition, though these are central. These aspects of learning, Sommers finds, are overshadowed by another, less obvious but more important: students’ attitude. Specifically, a shift in attitude, away from evaluative and instrumental views of education (e.g, “I complete school work to get a grade, or because I need a degree to get a job,”) and toward a sense of purpose and connection.
Nurturing the Emotional Lives of Asian American Students
In Cupertino, California, Hung Wei, a mother and local school board member, has worked passionately for almost a decade to improve the mental health of Asian American students. Throughout the school year, she gathers her teen staff members from Monta Vista High, a campus with a mostly Asian American student body, to produce Verdadera, a school publication that Wei founded. Verdadera, which means “truthfully” in Spanish, is devoted to honest expression and mental health. In every issue, students write about matters closest to their hearts: love, secrets, dances, body image, sexual identity, relationships with parents, and also intense academic pressures, competition, loneliness, depression and fears for the future.
High School Is About More Than Test Scores & Rankings
The Washington Post ranking of US high schools has just been released and, as you can imagine, parents around the country are either congratulating themselves on the great choice they made or having an anxiety attack because their child’s school didn’t make the cut. While we could argue about the methodology used, we mostly want to convey that school choice should be about where your child fits and can succeed as much as anything else. We thought hearing from high school counselor and CS board member Lisa Spengler on how she helps her students choose a high school would help provide some perspective on an alternative way to think about high school choice.
Helicopter Teaching and the Challenge of Mythrules
In an era of hyper-focus on students’ academic performance, is it possible that schoolwork is actually too easy? I recognize that this might seem a strange question, given how much we hear of stressed-out students, slogging through hours of homework and blizzards of standardized tests. If anything, school is too hard, right?