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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2G1b39s

With Unfilled Jobs, Businesses Push Rural Residents Toward College

When the Chemours chemical plant in New Johnsonville, Tenn., needed workers to maintain its high-tech machinery, it advertised for them as far as 90 miles away in Nashville in one direction and 150 miles away in Memphis on the other.

It still couldn’t fill the jobs.

“You just can’t find anybody because people don’t want to come that far,” said Gregory Martz, manager of the facility, which makes a quarter of the nation’s supply of titanium dioxide used in everything from paints to plastics and paper.

The problem isn’t just that the plant is in a rural town with a population of less than 2,000. It’s that fewer than one in five adults in the entire surrounding Humphreys County have at least an associate degree, according to census data analyzed by the nonprofit advocacy organization Complete Tennessee.

Educators and policymakers started raising alarms about low levels of college-going among people in places like this after frustration from rural Americans spilled over into national politics in 2016.

Now, growing demand for college-trained workers has brought a powerful new voice to the chorus: businesses desperate to fill increasingly complex jobs at a time of almost nonexistent unemployment. With worker shortages hitting industries nationwide, their companies — and many states’ economies — depend on it.

“No employer wants to locate where it has to bring in outside labor or train its staff from the ground up,” editorialized one newspaper in Tennessee’s rural Washington County. That area was short-listed for a new factory planned by a South Korean auto parts manufacturer that would have provided 1,000 jobs, but the company pulled out because of the low proportion of skilled workers available.

As this gap becomes more critical, Tennessee is trying to prod working adults to go back to school. Starting this fall, it extended its groundbreaking promise of tuition-free community college to all residents.

Business leaders have joined with elected officials and educators on “completion councils” in a dozen rural counties where the proportion of adults with postsecondary credentials hovers in the 20 to 25 percent range.

“We said, ‘Okay, well, we’ve got to build our own'” employee base, said Martz, who manages the Chemours plant in New Johnsonville and was also the former chairman of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce.

In Humphreys County, Chemours and nine other area manufacturers have struck a partnership with the local campus of Nashville State Community College to train and certify factory workers, creating a new employee pipeline from scratch. Graduates, who receive an associate degree in industrial process or mechanical maintenance technology, can expect to earn around $60,000 annually within a few years, the college and its partners say.

This kind of business-led approach is driving a statewide effort to increase the proportion of Tennesseans with degrees, from its current level of about 40 percent — sixth lowest among the 50 states — to 55 percent by 2025.

And it isn’t happening only in Tennessee. In other parts of the country, where fewer rural high school graduates and older workers go to college, there is concern that people don’t have the right skills. Illinois, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Florida are among the states looking for solutions.

In Colorado, one of the state’s top higher education priorities is to boost the proportion of adults with degrees from 55 to 66 percent by 2025. The challenge is in changing the attitudes of people in areas where there’s not a tradition of going to college, said Dan Baer, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

About three-quarters of Colorado jobs will require some education beyond high school by 2020, Baer said.

“Never before have we had a conclusion that the majority of the population should have a postsecondary credential,” he said. “Postsecondary has always been for a minority of the workforce. This is a true inflection point.”

That’s easier said than solved. With jobs of all kinds in good supply, many people don’t see a reason to spend time and money getting a degree or certificate — despite the likely eventual financial payoff. Enrollment in Tennessee has actually declined among adults aged 25 to 64 since 2011.

In rural places in particular, educators say, higher education still conjures visions of a four-year campus that pumps out humanities degrees rather than a community or technical college from which graduates can go straight into high-paying positions.

But where generations of rural Americans could once get good jobs with just a high school diploma, employees in many types of industries now need further education.

“In a lot of rural communities, we still have a lot of work to do to get people to understand,” said Bill Seymour, president of Cleveland State Community College, which serves rural Tennessee’s Bradley and neighboring Meigs counties; only 23 percent of residents in the two-county region have any kind of postsecondary credentials, compared to the national average of 47 percent.

Bradley County’s rolling landscape is dotted with examples of the new economy. Major employers include a sprawling Amazon warehouse and a Wacker polysilicon plant, both just a short drive from Walker Valley High School, where students are learning how to contribute to the high-tech manufacturing world.

In the school’s mechatronics lab – the term has become a buzzword across manufacturing-heavy Tennessee — students tinker with miniature machinery that flows into an assembly line. After a few supplementary classes at a local technical college, local companies will be clamoring to hire them, said teacher Alan Bivens.

“We have students come out [of high school] able to program these things,” Bivens said. “That’s a really good thing to have on your resume. There’s a lot of opportunity in this community, but not a big workforce to draw from.”

Students at this high school are encouraged to at least complete two free years at Cleveland State or a technical college. Those who successfully finish Walker’s mechatronics program can start college with 12 college credits earned in high school.

Michaela Boggess, 17, hopes to take her mechatronics skills to the University of Tennessee, about 75 miles away, where she wants to study industrial engineering. Her parents didn’t complete college, but they’ve pushed her to do it.

“I’ll probably go for four years, maybe longer,” Michaela said of her college plans. After college, she hopes to go into product design or architecture. “Ever since I was little, I’ve liked to build stuff.”

Fellow Walker Valley student Jordan Munck, 18, isn’t sure yet about his future. He’s been working as an electrician during breaks, he said, but he’ll probably end up taking over his family’s real estate business eventually. A baseball scholarship may change his plans, he said, but for now he’ll probably go to Cleveland State for a couple of years.

“My parents definitely want me to go for those two free years,” he said. “It’s not smart not to do that.”

This story about rural college-going was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

Copyright 2019 The Hechinger Report. To see more, visit The Hechinger Report.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2RX730g

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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2sVWHil

How Effective Sports Coaches Help Students Feel Understood at School

Aly Carter graduated from high school 13 years ago, and what she remembers most distinctly about those years were her experiences on the playing fields. She ran cross-country and track, played soccer and threw herself into lacrosse, helping her school team make it to the state final in 2005. She barely remembers her high school teachers, as her classes and teachers rotated, preventing her from passing much time with any particular one. But she spent four years with several coaches and remains connected to some of them.

“I always became close with my coaches,” she said. “I learned my greatest life lessons in team and individual sports.”

Nearly 8 million teenagers played for their high school teams during the 2017-18 academic year, many of them occupying hours after school under the guidance of various head and assistant coaches. For many of these kids, their coaches reached them in ways their teachers couldn’t, and what they learned on the soccer field or basketball court has stuck in a way that a lecture on the French Revolution did not.

Much of this disparity has to do with the adolescent brain. “These young athletes are pulled into powerful situations where they’re directly engaging physically with other people,” said Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Unlike in the high school classroom, where learning is often abstract, students playing sports are carrying out physical activity in physical space, often in the company of others. The learning is direct and clear. And the interactions with teammates often elicit powerful emotional responses at a time when the adolescent brain is highly susceptible to social cues and hierarchies.

“Where there are powerful emotions, there are tools for learning,” Immordino-Yang said.

Of course, not all coaches are effective, and some kids will take home destructive lessons and sour memories from their sports experiences. Even worse, the intimacy of the coach-athlete relationship can morph into abuse. But sports remain the most popular extracurricular activity for children ages 6-17, ahead of religious education, music, dance and art. For better or worse, coaches affect child development.

The shorter path to learning and emotional jolt that sports provide give coaches an opportunity to reach their student athletes in several ways:

Forging personal relationships. “My coaches took the time to know me personally,” Carter said about her high school coaches, a sentiment shared by many former athletes. An in-depth study on the developmental benefits and drawbacks of sports conducted by researchers at Queens and York universities confirmed these perceptions. The majority of swimmers who participated in the study reported that their coaches had made “special connections with athletes.”

And the relationships often go both ways: Students know their coaches more personally, too, and see them as fully fledged adults rather than educators at a podium. Will Sangree, now 28, remembers the time commitment his high school lacrosse, cross-country and hockey coaches devoted to their teams. Practice and game time, team dinners, bus rides — “they invested so much time in us, I definitely knew them better than my teachers,” he said.

Sangree remembers observing his coaches with their children, and noting that how they interacted with their own families had a powerful impact. It felt natural seeing a coach in different settings and taking on various roles, whereas running into a teacher out of school “was a weird, out-of-body experience,” he said.

Working together toward a shared goal. Shane Murphy, a professor at Western Connecticut State University and former president of Exercise and Sports Psychology at the American Psychological Association, often starts his sports psychology course by asking students if the class is a team. The students always say no. “That’s because we don’t have shared goals,” Murphy explained. Everyone is graded individually, and classmates’ performances have no bearing on the other students. On sports teams, players are often interdependent, and effective coaches underscore the need for unity and work toward a common goal. “Coaches are involved in helping individuals feel a part of something bigger than themselves,” Murphy added.

Even teams made up of individual competitions, like track or tennis, can be unified by coaches who emphasize everyone’s contribution to the team’s performance, and who build a sense of camaraderie. Teenagers might feel a sense of purpose in sports that’s lacking in the classroom. Maggie Lynch, now a junior in college, recalled how her high school field hockey and lacrosse coaches compelled her to work toward a common goal. “I felt as though my coaches actually trusted me in important and consequential situations,” she said, “whereas my teachers encouraged me to do well solely for my own benefit, not for the benefit of the group.”

Tailoring motivation to the individual. To be sure, dedicated and experienced teachers work to teach children in a way that they will best understand. But teachers working with dozens of kids in multiple classes aren’t afforded the time to know what sparks every student. Good coaches, on the other hand, who often spend countless hours with their players, will motivate each one depending on her personality and nature — knowing that a quiet word of encouragement to one child won’t work with another, who might respond better to blunt feedback. Because coaches often have a deeper understanding of the kids on their team, they are better able to tailor their motivation to the child in front of them.

Providing adult friendship. Research on child development shows that teenagers who have healthy relationships with adults other than their parents are less apt to bully or experience depression and are more inclined to engage in school and their community. For some students, coaches play this role. Aly Carter remembers her high school coaches interacting with her more casually than her teachers. “My coaches came down more to my level, while my teachers were more like authorities,” she said. That informality removed barriers to a relationship and allowed her to build lasting bonds with caring adults. Lynch had a similar memory about her high school sports experiences: “I got to form real friendships with adults and was given responsibility from people other than my parents,” she said.

Teaching “life lessons” that transcend the sports arena. In the classroom, these traits would be characterized as social emotional learning: growth in self-discipline, social and self-awareness, relationship skills, decision-making. In this, coaches received the most universal praise. Sangree learned “about hard work and all that,” he said, but he also came to appreciate that his behavior had an impact beyond himself. “Getting drunk outside in the park on the weekend affects not just you, but your teammates and family,” he said his coaches taught him. Lynch put it more bluntly: “My high school sports experiences shaped me into a functioning human,” she said. “The lessons I learned through sports” — about teamwork, communication, and trust in others — “are so much more applicable to real-life situations than those I learned in the classroom.”

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2sSI5jS

Angry?! How Naming and Understanding the Different Kinds of Anger Can Help

Over the past three years, I’ve had one major goal in my personal life: To stop being so angry.

Anger has been my emotional currency. I grew up in an angry home. Door slamming and phone throwing were basic means of communication.

I brought these skills to my 20-year marriage. “Why are you yelling?” my husband would say.

“I’m not,” I’d retort. Oh wait. On second thought: “You’re right. I am yelling.”

Then three years ago, an earthquake hit our home: We had a baby girl. And all I wanted was the opposite. I wanted her to grow up in a peaceful environment — to learn other ways of handling uncomfortable situations.

So I went to therapy. I kept cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets. I took deep breaths, counted to 10 and walked out of rooms. And I even meditated at night.

These strategies helped me manage the anger, but they never really decreased it. It was like keeping a feral horse in a barn. I was contained, but not really domesticated.

Then, six months ago, I was talking with Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. Right at the end of the hour-long interview, she tossed out this suggestion: “You could increase your emotional granularity.”

My emotional what?

“Go learn more emotion words and emotion concepts from your culture and other cultures,” she added.

Over the past 30 years, Feldman Barrett has found evidence that anger isn’t one emotion but rather a whole family of emotions. And learning to identify different members of the family is a powerful tool for regulating your anger, studies have shown.

Or better yet, as I found, go and make up your own anger categories and start using them.

What is anger?

There’s a common theory about anger. You’ll find it in text books, scientific papers, news reports — even here at NPR. And some scientists support the theory, says Feldman Barrett.

The idea is that anger is one of several “basic emotions” that are universal, Feldman Barrett says. It’s almost like a reflex — hard-wired in the brain. When something unjust or unfair happens to you, “your blood pressure often goes up. Your heart rate will go up. Maybe you’ll breathe heavily or you’ll have a reddening of your skin,” she says. “Then you’ll have an urge … to punch or yell at someone. That’s the stereotype of what anger is,” Feldman Barrett says.

But it’s not the full story.

Anger around the world

What you feel when you’re angry depends on the situation, what your past experiences are and how your culture has taught you to respond, she says.

As a result, there is actually enormous variation in the types of anger in the U.S., like exuberant anger when you’re getting pumped up to compete in sports, or sad anger when your spouse or boss doesn’t appreciate you.

When you look at other cultures, the variation explodes.

Germans have a word that roughly means “a face in need of a slap,”or backpfeifengesicht. “It’s like you’re so furious with someone that you look at their face, and it’s as if their face is urging you to punch them,” Feldman Barrett says. “It’s a great emotion.”

Ancient Greeks differentiated between a short-term anger that doesn’t stick around (ὀργή or orge ) with a long-lasting anger that’s permanent (μῆνις or menin).

Mandarin Chinese has a specific word for anger directed toward yourself, 悔恨 or huǐhèn. It’s literally a combination of regret and hate, says linguist Yao Yao at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. “You regret something you did so much, that you’re angry at yourself,” she says.

Thais have, at least, seven degrees of anger, says linguist Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong at the University of Hawaii. “We don’t walk around saying ‘I’m angry.’ That’s too broad,” she says. “We may start with ‘I’m displeased’ and ‘I’m dissatisfied’ and then increase the intensity,” she says.

And India is a treasure trove of angers.

“There’s a common form of anger which means like ‘when eggplant hits the hot oil,’ ” says Abhijeet Paul, who teaches South Asian literature at Middlebury College.

“You suddenly become, like, really angry at hearing something shocking or learning something that you really, really dislike,” Paul says.

Indians also differentiate between political anger, which you have for the ruling class or “boss man,” and personal angers, which you have for a friend, family or neighbor. You would never mix the two and express political anger in a personal relationship, Paul says.

“There’s also a very interesting anger that is a loving anger,” Paul says. You express this emotion toward a spouse when your spouse has angered you but you can’t help them, only love them, he says. “It’s a mixed bag of love, grief, sorrow and anger.”

Personalize anger to help regulate it

So in many ways, anger is like wine. There are these major varieties — such as chardonnay and pinot noir — but each vintage has its own unique combination of aromas, flavors and potency. The more practice you have at detecting — and naming — these nuances, the better you understand wine.

And if you learn to detect all the various flavors and nuances of anger and label them, you can start to handle your anger better, says psychologist Maria Gendron at Yale University.

“There’s definitely emerging evidence that just the act of putting a label on your feelings is a really powerful tool for regulation,” Gendron says. It can keep the anger from overwhelming you. It can offer clues about what to do in response to the anger. And sometimes, it can make the anger go away.

The idea is to take a statement that’s broad and general, such as, “I’m so angry,” and make it more precise. Take the Thai: “I’m displeased,” or the German “Backpfeifengesicht!”

Psychologists call this strategy emotional granularity. Studies show that the more emotional granularity a person has, the less likely they are to shout or hit someone who has hurt them. They are also less like to binge drink when stressed. On the other hand, people diagnosed with major depressive disorder are more likely to have low emotional granularity compared to healthy adults.

“There’s a whole arm of research showing how functional it is to have finely tuned categories for our experiences,” Gendron says.

Emotional granularity is like watching HDTV versus regular TV. It lets you see your anger with higher resolution, Gendron says. “It gives you more information about what that anger means, whether you value that experience and choices about what to do next,” she says.

This last part is key: Being granular with you anger helps you figure out what’s the best way to handle the situation — or whether you should do anything at all.

For instance, if you are feeling a quick burst of anger, which you know will fade rapidly, then maybe doing nothing is the best strategy.

And you don’t have to limit yourself to the labels that already exist, Gendron says. Be creative. Analyze what’s causing your various angers, give them specific names and start using the terms with family and coworkers.

“If you’re making a practice in your family of coming up with words and then using them together, that actually can regulate physiology,” she says. “That can resolve the kind of ambiguity about the situation.”

Personally, I found this strategy the most helpful. I started paying attention to what typically triggers my anger at work and at home. And I found three major types, which I named.

Illogical anger: This emotions happens when somebody at work makes a decision that seems completely illogical. Once I labeled this anger and started tracking what happens afterwards, I quickly realized that trying to convince an illogical person of logic is often futile – and a waste of time.

Hurry-up anger: This is the anger I feel when someone else is not doing something fast enough — yes, I’m talking about the driver of the gray Prius at the stoplight this morning or the 3-year-old who will not put her shoes on fast enough. Once I labeled it, I realized that cars, people and toddlers eventually move. Huffing and puffing doesn’t make it faster.

Disonophous anger: This is my favorite anger. And has the biggest impact on my life.

I wanted to figure out how to decrease yelling at our house. So I started paying attention to what often occurred right before the screaming began. It was super obvious: The dog was barking and the toddler was screaming. Basically two loud sounds simultaneously.

So my husband and I made up disonophous anger from the Latin for “two sounds.”

Now when my husband says, “I have disonophous anger, Michaeleen …” we know exactly what to do: Put the dog on the porch and pick up the baby.

And I know he’s not angry at me. He just wants some peace and quiet.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2HBHop9

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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2Tjs1D9

Why Mindfulness And Trauma-Informed Teaching Don’t Always Go Together

Mindfulness is a fast growing trend both in the world generally and in schools. Teachers are turning to the practice as a simple way to restore calm to the classroom, help students find some quiet space, and build self-regulation skills. Some teachers say their personal mindfulness practice has helped them respond more calmly to students and helps them keep perspective. But it’s also important to realize that some of the ways mindfulness is practiced — sitting still, eyes closed, in silence — can also be triggers for students who have experienced trauma.

“This isn’t about calming down,” said Sam Himelstein, a clinical psychologist, trainer and author who has spent most of his career working with incarcerated youth. “Calming down is great and it is a skill that youth can get better at. But if we’re talking about mindfulness, at its core, we are just talking about being present with whatever it is.”

Himelstein has worked with teachers who get upset when students don’t want to engage in mindfulness a certain way — perhaps they don’t want to close their eyes or won’t sit the recommended way. But none of those things are truly about mindfulness, Himelstein said. Forcing students to engage with the practice in prescribed ways may do more harm than good, especially if the student has experienced trauma.

“You never want to force people to close their eyes,” he said. That alone can cause trauma for some kids. “The goal is not to turn people into meditation monks. It’s just about learning to turn inwards and practice self-awareness.”

Himelstein has a lot of empathy for the young people he works with because he was an angry kid. He said got into trouble in his early teenage years for drugs, and was sent to juvenile hall seven times. He also spent a lot of time in group homes once released, and it was there that a skilled mentor put him in a leadership position and sparked a desire in Himelstein to do counseling.

Himelstein was lucky that he got into trouble during middle school and was able to get back on track for high school. He was also lucky to be born into an affluent, white, two-parent home in Berkeley, California. His time in juvenile hall showed him what other kids his age were up against.

“A lot of the kids I work with it’s a real uphill battle when they come into the system at [ages] 15 to 16 because they just have so many high school credits to catch up on that it becomes overwhelming,” Himelstein said. “It’s so easy for them to get in the mindset that ‘school isn’t for me’ and turn that into a core belief.”

When Himelstein explains mindfulness to young people he likes to use a metaphor coined by Larry Rosenberg the dog-mind versus the lion-mind. If a human waves a bone in front of a dog, the dog will track that bone and chase it when it’s thrown. But wave a bone in front of a lion’s face and that lion might eat the human behind the bone.

“The dog can’t see beyond the bone. If I control the bone, I control the dog’s reality,” Himelstein said. But the lion sees a broader picture. He sees the human behind the bone. “That ability to see the larger picture gives the lion more autonomy, more choices.”

Himelstein then directs students to think of the bone as anger or anxiety. Reacting with the mind of a lion allows a person to say, “I’m angry right now,” and that little bit of metacognitive space between the person and the thought allows them to choose how to respond.

“It’s much easier said than done, but that’s what mindfulness is,” Himelstein said. “It’s noticing what’s happening in the present moment with a non-responsive mind.” When he’s presenting to youths, he asks them: Who’s the king of the jungle? The lion. And who doesn’t want to be the king of their inner jungle?

Himelstein has found that teens gravitate to this metaphor because it makes the concept less abstract. They can see how mindfulness will be useful to them and how it could give them an edge. Additionally, the metaphor becomes a language thread Himelstein can return to over and over again. “Lion-mind” is a shorthand for that ability to choose a reaction.

TRAUMA SENSITIVE MINDFULNESS

“A trauma-informed lens is, ‘this behavior may be a result of some sort of trauma.’ Or even better, ‘this may be a way for them to protect themselves,’ ” Himelstein said. The are some common issues he sees when trauma interacts with mindfulness.

• Students don’t take the activity seriously
• Students are triggered by silence because it feels like a storm is brewing, so they don’t want to be quiet
• Students feel too many requests are made of them without the requisite trust being built up
• Students exhibit avoidance behavior

 

Himelstein says building an authentic relationship is key to accessing the trust required to make mindfulness effective. For some kids, chaos is part of trauma so when adults are unpredictable they can’t be trusted. That’s why being a “predictable adult” is a good way to be authentic with kids.

Himelstein also offers these guidelines for teachers using mindfulness:

• Don’t force it
• Don’t focus on the logistics like sitting with eyes closed
• Somatic awareness, like counting breaths, could be a good place to start. “There’s different types of awareness. Sometimes we’re really aware of what’s going on in the mind and sometimes we’re more aware of what’s going on in the body,” Himelstein said.
• Think about the child’s window of tolerance and whether he is already triggered or not. “It’s good to strike when the iron is cold in a lot of these cases,” Himelstein said.
• Build relationships

When Himelstein works with teachers, he’s conscientious of how different the classroom setting is from a therapeutic one. While teachers aren’t trained therapists, students gravitate towards a trusted teacher and want to share with them. On top of that, teachers are keenly aware of their duty to cover required content.

“They do have the hardest job out of all the direct service folks because they have all this stuff the’ve got to get through,” Himelstein said.

He likes to affirm with teachers right off-the-bat that the public school setting with 30-40 kids in a classroom is already not trauma-informed. It’s a very difficult context in which to build relationships, and the architecture, policies and procedures that can make schools feel institutional only make it harder. That’s why often Himelstein sees mindfulness first-and-foremost as a self-care technique for teachers. If teachers can successfully use their mindfulness practice to create metacognitive distance, they can take their ego out of interactions with kids.

“Classroom management skills that are based in trauma informed principles, which means learning how to redirect, learning how to confront people with a non-aggressive pose, not taking it personally, all of that overlaps to help form a relationship,” Himelstein said.

If teachers can see the trauma-informed approach as a way to better build relationships, he thinks it may feel less daunting. Once those relationships are formed and students trust their teachers, it’s more likely that mindfulness will be an effective tool for them.

Many teachers already see relationship building as a core part of their effectiveness, but one practice Himelstein recommends may be less intuitive in the rush to deliver information to students: active listening. “That’s a super simple concept, but it goes a long way, especially in an educational setting because kids are used to not just being presented to, but talked down to,” Himelstein said.

SELF CARE

Cultivating a trauma-informed classroom is much harder when educators themselves are burnt out. Building relationships, not reacting defensively to student behavior and taking time to listen to students can feel nearly impossible if the adult is barely making it through the day. Classrooms can be stressful places for teachers and even someone who has been practicing mindfulness for a long time may have difficulty calling upon that knowledge when triggered — just like kids.

That’s why a core part of a trauma-informed classroom is a healthy teacher. There are several categories of self-care, according to Himelstein:

1. Regular cultivation of relaxation response (3Rs): things like watching TV, going into nature, getting a massage.
2. Effortful training: These are things like more sustained meditation or exercise where the payoff comes over a longer time period.
3. Creativity: something that gives purpose and adds vibrancy to life. Writing, reading, painting or other passions are examples.
4. Advocacy: everything from learning to say “No” (set boundaries), to working at a higher level to impact policy or structural change.

Ultimately, Himelstein wants teachers to be aware of how students who have experienced trauma might be experiencing mindfulness in the classroom so they can respond in more empathetic ways. And, recognizing that sometimes teaching is traumatic and the practice may be more for the adults than the kids.

“You’re casting a wide net,” Himelstein said. “This is how it should be anyway. This is called trauma informed care because it’s often not done this way and when it’s not done it triggers people more. This should just be what engaged teaching is called.”

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2S8y6VI

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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2CI21du

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Five Ways to Help Children with ADHD Develop Their Strengths

What is it like to be a kid with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?  Children with ADHD often struggle academically, socially and emotionally. They may be disorganized, forgetful, easily distracted and impulsive.

And like all kids, they want to feel normal, says Dr. Sharon Saline, author of What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew. Saline, a psychotherapist who works with ADHD children and their families, argues that an informed empathy for ADHD children —  for what they experience on a daily basis — can inspire parents and teachers to work with these children in ways that will help them grow into responsible and happy adults.

She advocates the Five C’s method — self-Control, Compassion, Collaboration, Consistency and Celebration — as a roadmap for reducing family stress and equipping children with the skills they need to thrive.

Self-Control

Self-control isn’t just a skill for children, says Saline.  Raising a child with ADHD can test parents’ patience, so she advocates “learning to manage your own feelings first so you can teach your child to do the same.”

Saline says that it’s distressing for kids when parents absorb and reflect their distress. Children in her practice want their parents to know, “If I’m upset and then you get upset, there’s nobody to help me reign it in and get back to center. If you lose it in response to my losing it, it’s kindling on the fire.” Kids with ADHD need adults to model how to manage emotions in the face distress. Remember that self-regulation is a skill — something that children and adults can strengthen with strategic practices such as mindfulness training.

Compassion

Saline likens ADHD to a constant barrage of “small ‘t’ traumas.”  These children experience “the accumulation of a thousand paper cuts that wear down their positive self-concept.” If we want children with ADHD to develop self-compassion, they have to first experience it from others. When parents and adults constantly point out deficits, children run the risk of viewing themselves as inherently deficient. Saline says kids want to tell adults,  “I need to you understand and accept me even if I don’t understand and accept myself.”

Saline describes compassion as “meeting your child where they are, not where you expect them to be. When you accept the brain that your child has and who your child is, it makes all the difference for them.”

Collaboration

If parents and teachers can project self-control and compassion, it becomes easier to collaborate with children on practical strategies that will help them grow. Saline advocates working together with children to find solutions rather than imposing top-down rules.  “What kids tell me is that they want to have a say in the plans that are made that are supposed to help them,” says Saline. “They get feedback from people all the time on what they could be doing differently. When there’s buy-in from the child, there’s more participation, more collaboration and more value.”

Here’s a strategy Saline recommends to families and educators: sit down and jointly identify a list of things you want to work on — things that will make daily life at home or school a little easier. “You may have 15 items on your list, and your child may have two.  But those two things will also be on your list, so go with those two.”

For example, if you are constantly fighting because your child’s room is a mess, you will probably both identify that issue.  So how do you teach organization? As the adult, you have to participate in this, at least initially, says Saline. “It’s not going to work to say, ‘Go clean your room.’ They will find one item and say, ‘Wow, where has this been?’ – and then they are gone.” Adults can be the child’s “double” and help scaffold their success until they have mastered the skill on their own. This might include talking through the plan and creating a checklist that you tackle together. Try turning needed tasks into a game, says Saline. “Turn on tunes that they like and say, ‘We are going to take 15 minutes and put your room in order together.’”

Saline describes a grandfather who sat in his grandson’s room and called out one item at a time (“Shirts!” “Socks!”) until the room was cleaned. “He was helping build the executive functioning skills of sorting, sequencing and prioritizing all at the same time.” When you model how to attack an overwhelming task, “you are helping your child build fundamental skills.”

Consistency

Children with ADHD respond well to predictable routines that help them organize their day. This includes consistent rules and consequences. When possible, says Saline, “do what you say you will do” while recognizing that you are aiming for steady, not perfection.

Saline says that the kids she works with “can’t stand it when parents say they are going to do something and then they don’t do it.” For example, a parent might say, “I’m not going to pick up your stuff anymore,” and then clean up their child’s piles when they are at school.

“For concrete thinkers, this is very confusing,” says Saline. “They will continue to push you because they don’t know where the limit is. The limit keeps changing.”

Celebration

Saline estimates that the ratio of positive to negative feedback ADHD children receive is 1:15. Kids often feel like adults only notice when they “mess up,” not when they try. Saline says that children and teens with ADHD can grow wary of feedback because it so rarely focuses on their strengths.

“We have to pay attention to kids trying, even if they are not succeeding,” says Saline. “Practice makes progress; we are looking for progress, not perfection. We have to focus on the process more than the product. It’s the process that will help the kids build the executive functioning skills they need for productive adulthood. When we notice that they are actually turning in homework four-fifths of the time when it used to be two-fifths? Well, that’s progress.”

Look for ways to celebrate your child’s strengths, says Saline. “They get up in the morning, they go to school, and they do it over and over and over again. That is a strength. Build on that desire to try. We often look at what the shortfall is. We have to tap into these strengths.” Pay attention to children’s interests and skills — from technology to doodling to drama — and explore ways children can use these interests to strengthen other areas of their life.

Saline describes one little boy she worked with who  had big feelings to manage. She asked him if he would like to take an improv class. Four years later, he is a fixture in drama performances, an activity that builds executive functioning skills such as memory, planning, and focus.

Reversing the positive to negative feedback ratio isn’t always easy, says Sailne. “If you have a day where your teen is driving you crazy, and all that you can find to celebrate is the fact that they are showering and brushing their teeth, that’s what you are talking about: ‘You smell good. Nice T-Shirt.’”

Helping ADHD Kids Understand Their Brain

Saline says that medication can help some kids with ADHD but “but pills don’t teach skills.” Children need consistent support in developing their executive functioning skills. “You have to separate your brain with your sense of self.  It’s easy for these kids to ask, ‘What’s wrong with ME? Why am I less than? Why am I failing?’” Instead, she talks to kids about how their brain works, how it grows, and what they can do to strengthen their executive functioning skills.

This type of language helps kids “create space between ‘what my brain is’ and ‘what I am,’” separating the experience from the person. For example, instead of “I am a distracted person,” kids learn to say, “I am training my brain to focus better. Here’s how I’m doing it.”  

Teachers can help children with ADHD  by overtly teaching executive functioning skills and integrating this language into their lessons. For example, when introducing a task such as writing a story, ask students what executive functioning skills they will need to use — e.g. shifting from listening to thinking, planning and organizing — and offer help if they find themselves struggling with one of these steps in the process. “Remember,” says Saline, “you are talking about the skills, not the child.”

The Good News for Parents

If your child has just been diagnosed with ADHD or if you are struggling to help your child manage their life, Saline offers these words of support.

First, development is in your child’s favor. “The brain is developing and will continue to develop.  Where your child is now is not where they will be in a year. Focus on the now, not on your worries about the five years from now.”

Second, your efforts matter. “What kids tell me over and over again is that they wouldn’t get through without their parents. You matter more than you think you do.”

Finally, she has seen countless children with ADHD develop into flourishing adults. “When kids are treated properly and given opportunities to learn the skills they need, their life with ADHD can be wonderful.”

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2T3BP40

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How Assessments Can Support, Not Just Measure, Student Learning

Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today!

Assessments have a bad rap in schools. Tests stress students out; they can be high-stakes for schools and teachers. But the word assessment describes vastly different things. Yes, the nail-biting, end-of-year exam is an assessment. But so is the couple-questions quiz a teacher gives at the end of a lesson to get a sense of how many students understood it. These lower-stakes assessments happen all the time in the classroom and they’re vital for student performance. Assessments create feedback for teachers and students alike, and the high value of feedback – particularly timely feedback – is well-documented by learning scientists. It’s useful to know you’re doing something wrong right after you do it.

The Assessment for Learning Project is trying to improve assessment’s reputation and get it recognized as a positive part of the learning process. The initiative advocates assessment systems that empower students, lead to greater equity and deepen students’ skillsets by virtue of their design.

Grantees and project partners are exploring decades-old methods like portfolios and capstone projects as means of assessment. The methods, then, are not new. But Sarah Lench, ALP’s director, said a widespread desire to assess skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity – the “4 Cs” – is new, and that’s driving interest in getting away from standardized tests to measure student progress.

“The practices themselves might not sound brand new and shiny, but the contexts and the drivers behind them are where we think the innovation is happening,” Lench said.

The project has awarded grants to 17 teams of education leaders at the school, district and state levels, all of whom are working to improve assessment systems. No one is arguing schools should stop measuring math and reading ability or content knowledge. But these grantees are seeking ways to better balance assessment systems that have prioritized that to the exclusion of other skills for decades.

In Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools has a “Portrait of a Graduate” that identifies the skills students need to be successful in today’s world. Among them are the 4 Cs. But the district noticed principals and teachers still face pressure to teach to the narrower state tests, and therefore make decisions about what students learn that ignore the goals of the graduate profile.

As an ALP grantee, Fairfax County partnered with 11 other Virginia districts to create what they call student-led assessment, a process that includes daily reflections on learning, student-led conferences and capstone projects that force students to engage with the community. This process, they hope, will make assessment more relevant to what students are learning, and give them the communication, collaboration and other skills they’ll need along the way.

One major recommendation from ALP is to invest in teacher training as part of such work, according to Tony Siddall, K-12 program officer for Next Generation Learning Challenges, a lead partner on the project. 

“The most impactful assessment for learning is the assessment of what is happening in the classroom, integrated with instruction and the curriculum,” Siddall said.

That’s done by teachers. But the time and investment necessary to increase teacher capacity is one barrier to doing this work. It’s hard to fit into an already-packed school day and year.

Still, few people have to be convinced it’s time for change. Siddall said there is a surprising degree of consensus among parents, teachers and employers about what skills schools should be measuring. They don’t want to stop measuring academic skills like reading and writing. But there is widespread agreement that collaboration and social skills should be in the mix, as they are considered increasingly important for success in well-paying jobs.

ALP is helping schools strike a balance, ensuring change doesn’t simply bring new, competing tests, but a system of assessment that supports student learning while giving parents, teachers, state leaders and future employers the information they need to know about student achievement.

(The Assessment for Learning Project is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, both of which are among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

This story about innovative assessment was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2T2czeF

How Medical Marijuana Can Help with PTSD Symptoms

Scientists have recently discovered the important role that endocannabinoids play in regulating the central nervous system.  Determined by this discovery, an increased interest in medical cannabis as a therapeutic aid for many medical conditions has led to a legitimization of its healthy benefits in society. But, is marijuana a real symptom reliever or is it …

from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2MiKGfJ

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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2Fy1nmJ

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Forget Screen Time Rules — Lean In To Parenting Your Wired Child, Author Says

The overuse of technology has overtaken drugs, sex and bullying as the biggest parental worry, according to the annual Brigham Young and Deseret News American Family Survey.

But what are we actually supposed to be doing about it?

Jordan Shapiro, a Temple University professor whose background is in philosophy and psychology, has a prescription that might surprise you. In his new book, The New Childhood, his argument is that we’re not spending enough screen time with our kids.

“One of the things I suggest in the book is that kids should be starting on social media much younger,” he says. And, play more video games with your kids, too.

After Shapiro’s divorce, he found himself solo parenting two little boys (now 11 and 13) who were obsessed with video games. He started playing the games simply as a way to connect with them. Then he discovered connections between the emotional catharsis and interactive storytelling on the screen, and thinkers like Carl Jung and Plato. He came to realize that part of his job as a parent was to help his children make sense of their online experiences and teach them how to uphold enduring values in the new world they are living in.

Now, he thinks about the intersection of child development and digital media as a senior fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and nonresident fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.

Shapiro spoke to NPR about his new book and approach. The following interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

You teach the core curriculum at Temple University and helped adapt it to an online version. How do your studies inform your thinking about YouTube and Facebook?

My background is ancient philosophy. I think we have very few new values. I love the old stuff — Plato and Homer. All the world’s great religions have tons of wisdom to offer us in a changing world. We need to figure out how to apply how they lived to a very different time and place. If you look historically — let’s say every hundred years, there’s these huge transitions that require giant adaptations so [the old ways] are still meaningful.

You talk in the book about how a lot of expert advice focuses on simply limiting the screens, but that doesn’t help us teach our kids how to make that kind of transition or that adaptation, to interact ethically in the digital world.

Right. People are trying to do things like device-free dinner because they are scared of the way work and home have enmeshed.

Home was safe, and now these devices bring the entire world inside. Are your kids home or are they in Fortnite? They’re here and somewhere else — in the ugly agora and within the beautiful picket fence.

But it’s good to have some respite from the outside world and the digital world, right?

Sure. We have family dinner in our house. It’s mostly device-free. No one should be watching YouTube videos the whole time. But most of the time we have conversations that necessitate pulling up a YouTube video or Googling something to make a point.

They’re not going to learn good date behavior if they’ve never had a phone before.

How are we going to maintain those positive things, the compassion, ethics, good social skills and intimate relationships, if we’re teaching them to live in a world that doesn’t look like the world they’re living in?

Can you give some more concrete examples of how you teach kids to maintain positive values in the digital world?

Let’s take violent video games. All tools should be facilitating our ability to create a more meaningful, more just world. Sometimes our children are going to seek out violent games.

And we teach them violence is bad, but playing violent make-believe isn’t necessarily bad.

Do you still play video games with your kids? What do you do if you’re just not a gamer? I’m not.

Not as much, because they’re much better than me now. But I still talk to them about it; I ask them to show me what they’re playing; I’ll watch them. I’ll tease them and say, this looks stupid, explain to me why you’re interested. You can tell them the reasons you don’t like it, as long as it’s a conversation and not a scolding.

We teach them how to make sense of the narratives they construct. Whether you’re talking about video games or social media or YouTube, how do you enable them to construct a meaningful narrative in relationship to these artifacts?

And your approach seems to be kind of like the Socratic method — you ask questions.

That’s part of it, yes. So my sons are into these YouTube videos where kids open toys. It’s the most disgusting representation of consumerism I can imagine. Just a terrible kind of video.

It’s incredibly popular too — in fact an 8-year-old with a toy channel was the top moneymaker on YouTube last year.

Right. I don’t think, ‘Oh it shouldn’t exist.’ I’m in favor of free speech. But then if my kids watch it, I want to have the conversation about why I find this attitude so weird and problematic, and I want to teach them to think about it that way. So now after having lots of these conversations, the first thing they do with every YouTube video they watch is ask, who paid for it, what are they trying to sell me?

So the idea is that they internalize your ethical voice?

We spend their entire lives teaching them how to share, how to get along. The alternative is throwing 20 kids into a room, locking the door, and saying don’t worry, they’ll end up hugging. That’s kind of what we do when we put a hormonal prepubescent on social media for the first time.

And this is why you say kids should be starting on social media much younger than they are?

If we want to get rid of the horrible stuff happening on Twitter right now, then we need to model it for kids when they’re 7 and all they want to do is be like their parents. I think we should have church groups and sports teams, small social media groups, so adults can model what to do. Or large families can have a family social network. You can share pictures and maybe you do gently tease someone, so they see the difference between kind and mean teasing.

This came up recently in one of my conversations with a 16-year-old girl and her mother. She was exasperated that all her aunts were following her on Instagram, using her childhood nickname, leaving embarrassing comments, but her mother was happy to have so many people looking out for her.

I learned to be able to have a civil argument at holiday dinners. I watched my parents, uncles and aunts have political arguments, with love and kindness, also sarcasm and also teasing. That’s how I know how to do it at a dinner table.

The American Academy of Pediatrics supports this idea of joint media engagement, basically engaging alongside your kids, as you suggest, whether with games, videos or social media. But isn’t there such a thing as too much screen time?

When people talk about addiction, I think it’s weird we want to blame the digital media because you can form unhealthy relationships with lots of things — food, sex, work, money.

And what we do is we try to teach people how to not develop those relationships.

We don’t blame the eating, sex, work or money itself.

And what I’m often trying to explain is that we’re seeing unhealthy relationships because we’re leaving our kids to figure it out on their own.

We’re using screens as a babysitter.

There’s an interesting study that recently came out that looked at how parents and young children were interacting around devices. It showed that this joint media engagement is not happening.

Most interactions are negotiations about how much to use, or tech support kinds of things. And almost no discussion of what they’re actually doing on the screen, and when it is discussed it’s usually initiated by the kids.

I feel like part of the problem is that parents are getting essentially abstinence-only education, like in sex education. The research on that says, if all you hear is, “Just say no,” it has no positive effects.

Nobody actually thinks we’re going to have a world without [tech]. They’re aiming for that healthy relationship. A healthy relationship is you being able to have the autonomy to make good decisions. That’s what we’re trying to teach our kids — to make those decisions. If we make it all about here’s the restrictions, the on/off switch mentality, that doesn’t teach them to make smart, autonomous decisions.

NPR is partnering with Sesame on a new podcast called Life Kit. Much like Jordan Shapiro’s new book, it will provide overviews of problems or questions in areas where NPR has deep expertise — starting with personal finance, health and wellness, and parenting.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2Rup9Gx

12 Mental Health Benefits of Marijuana You Should Know

Cannabis, also called marijuana, is a substance, immensely popular for its recreational use not only among youth but also among the elderly ones. In the United States, medical marijuana is legal in thirty-one states while recreational marijuana is legal in nine states only. On June 25th, 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Epidiolex, a …

from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2RLFZ3k

Why Competency-Based Education Is Exciting And Where It May Stumble

Educators all over the world are thinking creatively about ways to transform the traditional education system into an experience that will propel students forward into the world ready to take on its complex challenges. Competency-based education has piqued the interest of many communities because of its promise to make learning a more personal experience for students. In a competency-based model, children move through school based on their ability to demonstrate proficiency in skills and content, not by how many hours they spent sitting in class.

Teachers have long faced the difficult task of designing lessons for a group of students who are not all alike. Students come to school with different exposure to academic opportunities, disparate lived experiences, and unique interests and passions. For decades teachers have tried to impart a set curriculum in a limited amount of time to this heterogeneous group of students. And regardless of whether all students grasped the concepts and skills, for the most part students moved forward with their age cohort to the next grade.

Now some are questioning this time-based approach to learning. They wonder what sitting in a classroom for a predetermined number of instructional hours says about what students know and can do. They argue some students are ready for more challenges, while others need more support. They say it’s unfair to shepherd everyone along at the same pace. Wouldn’t it make more sense if everyone could move at their own pace, investigate their unique interests and demonstrate their knowledge in the ways that are most meaningful to them? In its purest form, that’s what proponents of competency-based education want to see.

Several states in New England have passed legislation making it easier for schools to adopt competency-based systems, and online platforms like Summit Learning have spread a version of the idea to schools around the country. For many parents and educators it’s exciting to think that each student could move at their own pace through the curriculum with guidance and support from teachers. However, the discussion around competency-based education raises big questions about how teachers manage classrooms filled with learners at different stages of learning, the potential drawbacks to such a system, and whether it may inadvertently perpetuate inequality.

In the rush to fix a problem, it’s easy to forget the history behind the system we have. The Carnegie Unit, also known as the credit hour, was a grassroots solution to unreliable standards for college admissions educators faced in the late 19th century based on in-person inspections and exams. That system didn’t scale and it offered a limited curriculum. In an effort to open up various pathways to and through college, educators developed the idea of the credit hour, so that different courses that met an agreed-upon number of credit hours would be considered roughly equivalent by colleges.

The current system based on the Carnegie Unit has proven durable  in part because it has allowed an eclectic mix of institutions to work together. No two classrooms are exactly alike, but the credit hour allows students to be considered equally prepared.

“If you think of it as a currency, then currencies are defined by the institutions or collective space in which you can use that currency and it’s honored at face value,” said Ethan Hutt, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland-College Park.

And, Hutt maintains, the current system puts significant trust in educator professionalism. The whole system is based on the fact that a student sitting in a U.S. history class in Maryland is learning roughly the same things as a student in California. Colleges are trusting high school teachers to do a good job. That trust is built into many public universities, where the top high school graduates may be guaranteed admission to one of the state’s colleges and into less-selective colleges where a high school diploma serves as the basis for admission.

That trust also allows students to move and change schools without losing credit for work they’ve completed. Hutt worries that while it’s a known fact that all U.S. history classes are not created equally, many competency-based systems are developed so locally that it would be difficult for another district or state to recognize the learning a student has done.

“Often when people talk about competency-based education, they don’t really think about who it is that’s going to accept this measure, this certification,” Hutt said.

He’s concerned that in an effort to make sure students have key skills, educators pursuing competency-based models will end up cut off from the larger system. In order to validate the learning for a wider audience, the same educators who hope to create a more open-ended system could end up relying on standardized tests to demonstrate that learning has happened.

And, “there’s a small concern that if you go to a competency-based system that’s not validated by standardized tests, people may rely strictly on school reputation when recognizing these competencies — a decision with obvious equity implications,” Hutt said. He worries that without addressing the other structural inequalities in the system, competency-based education will be yet another “innovation” that gives more affluent students a leg up.

Despite the practical concerns with how competency-based reforms are implemented, and their effect on equity, there are already schools and districts tackling these issues. In New Hampshire, some schools have used recent legislation as an opportunity to rethink what schools look like, while others have used it as an opening to make other instructional shifts. And in Maine, some of the challenges Hutt raises have led to pushback from teachers and parents.

MIT professor Justin Reich is interested in the conversation around competency-based education because it touches on some fundamental problems in the system right now. He’s not convinced competency-based systems will be the solution for everyone, but he has seen positives come out of communities who are trying to implement it.

“It forces or compels people to think really carefully about what it is we want students to know, to do, to believe, and to have conversations that are not just within one person’s classroom or department, but across departments, “ Reich said. “They’re thinking really carefully about what it looks like for students to be on a trajectory.”

That kind of coherence is key to innovative change, Reich said. And often it’s the incremental changes, not the huge innovations, that ultimately transform systems. So while competency-based education in its most radical form may not end up being a viable solution for many schools, elements of the reform may make a big difference for educators and students where these conversations are happening.

At competency-based schools Reich has visited, school is still recognizable to him. The differences are more subtle; teaches are on the same page about what students need to know and be able to do at each stage of their learning. Students know what the expectations are, and there’s a clear system to track students through their progression.

“It’s not a total transformation where in the same room there’s a kid working on calculus and another kid just getting started on something else,” Reich said.

Reich and his colleagues will be exploring the intricacies of competency-based education in a free online course offered by EdX beginning Jan. 31, 2019. Participants will hear from experts and on-the-ground practitioners about the positive and negatives of competency-based models. Reich hopes teachers, district leaders, school board members, parents and community members will participate in the six-week course so they can go back to their communities and start informed conversations about the best way forward in their unique contexts.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2QNqLGj

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from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2TMWLMz

How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness

Many of today’s parents and teachers came of age in the 1980s and 1990s — a time when the self-esteem movement was in its zenith. Self-esteem was supposed to be a panacea for a variety of social challenges, from substance abuse to violent crime.  The research, however, did not support such broad claims.

If teachers and parents want children to develop resilience and strength, a better approach is to teach them self-compassion, said Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. “Self-esteem is a judgment about how valuable I am: very valuable, not so good, not valuable at all.”  

In contrast, “self-compassion isn’t about self-evaluation at all,” said Neff. “It’s about being kind to oneself. Self-compassion is a healthy source of self-worth because it’s not contingent and it’s unconditional. It’s much more stable over time because it is not dependent on external markers of success such as grades.”

How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation

Most of us have a habitual way of talking to ourselves when we make a mistake or struggle with something. For many people, said Neff, self-criticism is the “number one way we motivate ourselves.” It’s the voice in our head that reminds us of all the consequences that will befall us if we fail that quiz or eat that tub of ice cream. But self-criticism brings with it “lots of unintended consequences such as anxiety and fear of failure,” said Neff. Students may become more susceptible to perfectionism and procrastination “because the fear of not measuring up looms large.”

When a student develops self-compassion, the seat of motivation shifts.  Since internal value doesn’t depend on external achievement, it frees students up to experiment, take risks and try new paths.  “Self-compassion leads to learning goals instead of performance goals — such as trying again after messing up,” said Neff. “It’s a better academic motivator than self-criticism. It’s a motivation of care instead of a motivation of fear.”  

Neff said that there is an empirical link between self-compassion and growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable and responsive to effort). Research shows that students who adopt a growth mindset thrive on challenges, show resilience in the face of obstacles and view failure as part of the learning process. Both self-compassion and growth mindset are robust responses to the inevitable ups and downs of life. “When we are self-compassionate, we remind ourselves ‘I am a human and the human condition is imperfect for all of us,’ ” said Neff.

How Adults Can Teach Children Self-Compassion

The good news is that parents and educators “can teach students to be self-compassionate,” said Neff. “It is a learnable skill. Our culture discourages it — you have to go against the grain a little bit —  but it’s a common-sense idea.” Self-compassion isn’t self-pity (poor me!) and it isn’t arrogance (I’m the best). Instead, it’s about treating yourself and your shortcomings with kindness, reminding yourself that you are human and — like all humans — you are a work in progress. Neff says, “Most of us have learned how to be supportive of others. We have to give ourselves permission to treat ourselves the same way.”

Trade Criticism for Supportive Feedback

Parents can model self-compassion in the language they use with their children. For example, said Neff, if your child comes home with a less-than-stellar grade, help them view it as data — as an indicator of things what they need to work on — instead of as a judgment of their intelligence. Instead of harsh criticism, give them feedback that is “designed to help, support, encourage.”

Model Compassionate Self-Talk

Adults can also model how they process challenges. “When you fail or make a mistake, talk it through out loud with your kids. Use language that communicates, ‘It’s OK to make mistakes. Now what can I learn from this?’ ”  Compassionate self-talk reminds us of our common humanity, the inevitability of mistakes, and our ability to bounce back and keep going. It shifts the self-talk from “I am a failure — I am so ashamed of myself” to “Everyone messes up sometimes —  let’s see what I can learn from this situation so I can try again.” In this way, self-compassion helps us move on to problem-solving faster, said Neff. Instead of getting stuck in a loop of negative thoughts and feelings, we can take a deep breath and move on to what to do next.

Be a Good Friend to Yourself

To make self-compassion a concrete idea for children, ask them to compare how they treat themselves to how they treat a friend. When we treat ourselves with the same kindness and care that we offer a good friend, we are practicing self-compassion. “By age 7, children have learned about the concept of friendship. A lot of their developmental energy is spent on learning how to be a good friend,” said Neff.  So when students are feeling frustrated or upset, ask them, “What would you say to a friend in this situation?” This simple question can help students reflect on the situation and reframe their response.

Calm the Nervous System

When something goes wrong, students’ bodies may experience a spike of adrenaline. The heart starts to race, breathing gets more shallow — and this can make it harder to feel calm. Neff said that in these moments, we can teach kids to practice self-compassion by taking deep breaths while putting their hand on their heart. Gentle, caring touch releases oxytocin, a hormone that makes us feel safe and connected. Neff said, “Touch is one of the most powerful symbols of care. So if you are feeling upset, put your hand on your heart. Hold your own hand. Hug yourself.  Even if your brain at the moment is full of the storyline of how bad you are, you can put your hand on your heart and calm your physiology down.”

Self-Compassion and Trauma

Teaching self-compassion to children who have a history of trauma is particularly important — and particularly challenging. Dr. Patricia Jennings, associate professor at the University of Virginia and author of the new book, The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom, said that these children “often feel very bad about themselves, and their ability to feel compassion for themselves may be impaired. They don’t even know how to accept compassion from other people yet.”  In these situations, caring teachers can literally rewire some of the neural pathways associated with attachment.

Jennings said one of the most transformational messages these children can learn from teachers is, “I know there are people in the world who care about me.”  This isn’t always easy: Children who have experienced trauma may exhibit challenging behaviors in the classroom. But with time and consistency, these children can begin to internalize the message, “I really care about you. I care about how you are doing. And I care about how hard you are trying,” said Jennings. Helping children feel and accept compassion from someone else is a “good first step to helping them develop self-compassion.”   

For parents and teachers who are not used to offering themselves kindness, teaching and modeling self-compassion for children is a gift we can give ourselves. “Self-compassion is a way of reparenting yourself,” said Neff.  “If you grew up with really critical parents, it’s a chance to treat yourself like an unconditionally loving, supportive parent.”

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2RQGE3e

How to Relieve Muscle Soreness: Quick Fixes from Pro Athletes

Among gym-lovers, recreational runners, and professional athletes alike, muscle soreness is considered a hard-earned prize for their efforts. As painful as it may be, sore muscles are a clear sign you’ve crushed your workout, pushed your boundaries, and your body got enough stimulation to grow stronger and more resilient. However, what most workout novices fail …

from Dai Manuel: Your Lifestyle Mentor http://bit.ly/2RozSCw

To Get To College, It Helps Black Students To Have A Black Teacher Early On

Public education has a persistent and well-documented issue: the achievement gap between white students and students of color.

Researchers have studied disparities in areas such as test scores and discipline rates to identify ways to close the gap. But what if matching the race of a student and their teacher could contribute to a solution?

A recent study — part of a series of working papers published by the National Bureau of Economic Research — shows that having just one black teacher not only lowers black students’ high school dropout rates and increases their desire to go to college, but also can make them more likely to enroll in college.

According to the results, black students who have just one black teacher in elementary school are 13 percent more likely to enroll in college than their peers who didn’t have any black teachers. Students who have two black teachers are 32 percent more likely to go to college.

It’s an update to a study NPR reported on in 2017 that found that black students who had just one black teacher could help them stay in school. With the addition of college enrollment data, the analysis shows that the impact of black teachers on black students reaches even further than researchers initially thought.

“Over the past few years we have a lot of studies that have looked at the short-term outcome,” says Constance Lindsay, a researcher at the Urban Institute and one of the report’s authors. “This is the first study of its kind to show that there are long-run effects.”

The researchers say that one of the reasons for these long-term effects is that black teachers serve as role models for black students. Their presence gives students a tangible example of what educational attainment might look like and therefore something to aspire toward, such as going to college.

Being a role model is an important aspect of teaching for Cristina Duncan Evans, a library media specialist in Baltimore City Public Schools.

Part of the reason why she chose to work at her current elementary school, she says, is because there are more black faculty members than where she previously worked.

“There are lots of role models that students can have,” she says. “They have lots of examples of what it means to be a black professional.”

But that wasn’t necessarily the case at her previous school, and she says that that’s not the case throughout the district either. According to the BCPS website, just 40 percent of BCPS school teachers identify as African-American while the student population is close to 80 percent African-American.

Duncan Evans hopes that can change. She’s one of the founding members of the Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (BMORE) — a caucus within the Baltimore Teachers Union. One of the organization’s goals is to recruit and retain more black educators in Baltimore’s public schools. And they’re not alone. Organizations, programs and initiatives such as BMORE are popping up across the country to address the lack of black educators and educators of color.

The study does come with a few caveats: many students enrolled in community colleges or two-year programs, which aren’t quite as lucrative as a four-year degree. And the researchers don’t have any conclusions yet about how same-race teachers might impact students’ college degree completion.

But they add their work to a growing body of research that shows the benefits of same-race teachers for black students.

And Duncan Evans agrees. “If we’re going to inspire the next generation of black educators,” she says, “then we need black teachers to do that.”

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

from MindShift http://bit.ly/2THEEYw