Today I reached out to a current report by Linda Darling-Hammond and Channa M. Cook-Harvey, "Educating the Whole Child: Improving School Climate to Support Student Success", to challenge, inform, and uplift my teaching practice. What did I learn? What will I do?
Effective learning depends on:
- secure attachments
- affirming relationships
- rich, hands-on learning experiences
- explicit integration of social, emotional, developmental pathways--physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and emotional--while it reduces stress and anxiety that create biological impediments to learning.
There are many points in the article that I believe will help us to teach and learn better in the school system where I teach:
Promote a Positive, Developmental Approach
- Optimal learning profits from warm, consistent relationships, empathetic back-and-forth communication, and modeling of productive behaviors.
- The brain develops most fully when children feel emotionally and physically safe as well as connected, supported, engaged, and challenged.
- Robust opportunities to learn with rich materials and experiences allow them to inquire into the world around them--and equally robust support for learning.
Our team can take this research seriously and better our learning environment in the following ways:
- Use a relationships-first mindset in all that we do.
- Continually develop our own emotional intelligence so we can model productive behaviors.
- Assess the learning experiences with these questions:
- Are these rich learning experiences?
- Are the experiences hands-on?
- Do we explicitly integrate social, emotional, and developmental learning opportunities?
Do we work to minimize and eliminate stress and anxiety?
Every Child's Learning Profile is Unique
- There are multiple pathways to healthy learning and development
- Effective teachers personalize supports for students.
- Do not force all children to fit one sequence or pacing guide as this can cause children to adopt counter productive views about themselves and their own learning potential which undermines progress.
While using pacing guides as a framework, our team needs to continually review what each individual needs and will profit from with regard to that framework hence we need to push the boundaries in, out, up, and down to meet the needs of every learner in a positive, productive way.
Human Relationships are the Essential Ingredient for Healthy Development and Learning
As a teaching/learning team we have to continually ask ourselves the following questions:
- Are we fostering supportive, responsive relationships with all children and their families?
- Are we providing high support and low threat in all that we do?
- How do we appreciate and support students from multiple cultures? Do we continually grow and integrate our cultural competency in ways that offset stereotypes, promote the development of positive attitudes and behaviors, and positively support all students?
How Do We Rid the Learning Environment of Adversity?
- How can we continually embed restorative discipline actions that positive redirect students rather than punitively punishing students?
- How can we continually work against the stress, angst, injustice, and learning boundaries that poverty and prejudice create?
- How do we ensure that every child has the food and health care they need?
- How will we effectively integrate explicit social emotional learning skills and behaviors as well as promote self efficacy?
- Specifically how will we help children to calm emotions and manage responses?
- What supportive routines are in place for managing classrooms and checking in on students?
As I read these points, I believe our team can work for betterment by establishing more consistent routines and staffing. We have a number of meetings about this in the week ahead, and this will be an important focus. Our team can also work to effectively and explicitly embed social emotional learning into all aspects of the curriculum program.
Learning is Social, Emotional, and Academic
- Positive student-teacher relationships and building trust matters.
- Positive emotions such as interest and excitement open up the mind to learning.
- Negative emotions such as fear of failure, anxiety, and self-doubt reduce the capacity to learn.
- Students ability to positively interact with peers and adults to resolve conflicts, and to work in teams all contribute to effective learning and lifelong behaviors.
- Building on the development of empathy, awareness of one's own and others' feelings, and the learned skills for communication and problem solving can be taught.
I will explicitly share these points with students during class meetings and together we will discuss each point and how we might help each other and the class in general develop a positive social, emotional, and academic environment for learning. I look forward to what children will have to say, and I will share the results of our conversations with parents too. That will be a starting point.
Children Actively Construct Knowledge Based on Their Experiences, Relationships, and Social Contexts
- Students compare new information to what they already know.
- Learning is best when student engage in hands-on learning that connects new knowledge to personally relevant topics and lived experiences.
- Effective teachers are mentors who set tasks, watch and guide student's efforts, and offer effective feedback.
- Providing opportunities for students to set goals and to assess their own work and that of their peers encourages them to become increasingly self-aware, confident, and independent learners.
This information presents a positive challenge to our teaching/learning environment. While we have good structures set up for the points above such as the portfolio process, reflective homework, class meetings, and lots of one-to-one and small group work, we do need to make sure that we make the time to effectively employ these strategies of effective learning.
School Climate
School climate needs to be positive to be effective. Attributes of positive school climate include the following:
- high expectations
- organized classroom instruction
- effective leadership
- efficacious educators with regard to mastery learning goals
- strong interpersonal relationships, communication, cohesiveness, and belongingness
- small school size, positive resources
While our school prides itself for having the attributes above, we can definitely work to better these attributes.
Science of Learning and Development for Schools
Supportive Environmental Conditions
- a caring, culturally responsive learning community where every child is well known and free from social identity or stereotype threats that exacerbate stress and undermine performance.
- structures such as looping, advisory systems, teaching teams, learning communities that allow for continuity in relationships, consistency in practices, and predictability i routines that reduce stress and support engaged learning.
- relational trust and respect between and among staff, students, and families through home visits, flexibly scheduled meetings, and frequent positive communication.
Again, our school community includes these attributes, but there is room for betterment. Start-of-the-year lessons about inclusion, no prejudice, and the fact that "everyone is welcome here." positively relay these attributes. Our team teaching approach, parent newsletters, and website also support this. I believe we can better these attributes in our professional relationships and efforts beyond our team and by reaching out to families who are distanced from the school community by language, geography, medical issues, or more to develop stronger ties and teamwork.
Social and Emotional Learning that Fosters Skills, Habits, and Mindsets Which Enable Academic Progress and Productive Behavior
- Explicit instruction in social, emotional, and cognitive skills such as intrapersonal awareness, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, and good decision making.
- Infusion of opportunities to learn and use social-emotional skills, habits, and mindsets throughout all aspects of the school's work in and outside of the classroom.
- Educative and restorative approaches to classroom management and discipline so that children learn responsibility for themselves and their community.
Again, as a school, we have these attributes in place, but we can definitely strengthen and deepen our work in this area. I want to more explicitly identify how we focus on this work and work to deepen our efforts and results.
Productive Instructional Strategies that Support Motivation, Competence, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Directed Learning
- meaningful work that connects students' prior knowledge and experiences
- work that actively engages students in rich, engaging, motivating tasks.
- inquiry as a major learning strategy
- explicit instruction
- well-scaffolded learning opportunities for practice and to apply learning
- a mastery approach supported by performance assessment with opportunities to receive helpful feedback, develop and exhibit competence, and revise work to improve.
- opportunities to develop metacognitive skills through planning and management of complex tasks, self- and peer-assessment, and reflection on learning.
- opportunities to exercise choice and develop intrinsic motivation for learning.
This is a terrific short list for educators to use as they discuss, analyze, revise, and improve learning experiences. I want to use this list as I plan, prepare, and embed learning opportunities this year.
Individualized supports that enable healthy development, respond to student needs, and address learning barriers.
- access to integrated services including physical and mental health and social service supports that enable children's healthy development.
- extended learning opportunities that nurture positive relationships, support enrichment and mastery learning, and close achievement gaps.
- multi-tiered systems of academic, health, and social supports to address learning barriers both in and out of the classroom to address and prevent developmental detours including conditions of trauma and adversity.
These attributes will take a broader, more-comprehensive system- and school-approach, again one we have in place and one that we can continue to better.