Timers, Trauma-Informed Teaching, and Tiny Steps

December is "the silly season," when kids get silly for two reasons: 1) excitement for the holiday break and 2) dread of the holiday break.

Our students who have experienced or continue to experience trauma often have a different set of feelings about the holidays. The break is often unpredictable, lacking the routines, resources, and other safety found in school. Students experience more stress and in anticipation of the break, they are more likely to show the 4 Fs of stress response: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn--the last term implying the student clings tightly to the teacher and is overly dependent upon that praise. 

On a recent Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast, Dr. Melissa Sadin spoke in praise of timers as a strategy to help students who are being extra dependent or needy. In the example, the hypothetical student, Doug, can't/won't start his assignment because he perceives that he NEEDS the teacher by his side. The teacher then deploys a timer, starting small (i.e. 2 minutes) and asks Doug to take a small step, like writing his name on the paper and reading the directions, promising to return when the 2 minutes is up to check in. When the 2 minutes is up, the teacher returns and praises the progress. This timely behavior-specific praise (another proven strategy) gives the student the reassurance they need in a small dosage, while allowing the teacher to work with others. Then the teacher asks Doug to take another step, and sets the timer for 2 more minutes. This chunked process builds trust, as it reassures the student that the teacher will come back. This helps develop student executive skills, and eventually, will allow more time to be planned between check-ins.

This "predictable positive attention" strategy (Minahan, 2014) to create safety and discourage students from seeking attention through less desirable behaviors is reinforced in the research, as shared in the 2019 ASCD article on Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies [Warning, clicking this link will cost you one of your free articles for the month! You can ask TLI for a PDF if you want to save up]:

During independent work time, if a teacher says to a student "Great work! I'll be back to check on you," the student has no way of predicting how long they need to wait—and from past experience they know that the teacher may forget to return altogether. Using predictable positive attention, however, the teacher can say, "I am going to check on you in 10 minutes," put a timer on the student's desk, and add, "Come tap me on the shoulder when the timer goes off." If the teacher has many students in the class that could benefit from this, she could transfer the strategy to small groups: "I will check on this desk group at X time."

Research shows that using timers, agendas, and other predictable structures helps all students. Not knowing what is coming next can put anyone on high alert, so providing visuals (as with slides or ClassroomScreen displays that allow for multiple timers) and previewing any changes to the normal routine can help.

As you navigate the middle of the year, think about how you might use timers to help structure your class and support individual students. Sharing in the comments and with your colleagues is a great holiday gift!

For more background on Trauma-Informed Practices, check out this Edutopia video:

Can Students Have a Say in Curriculum?

In a recent post "Student Pathways into a Curriculum: Chaotic or Empowering," Benjamin Freud raises many questions we've heard from teachers about how we build student-centered curricula.

He introduces the challenge, which is that standards (and some other outside forces) dictate what we MUST teach students, but these skills and concepts themselves may not be innately interesting to our students. But, if we give students license to learn what they want to learn, then how will we know if they've learned what they need to learn? Some would argue that the more structure we put into curriculum, the better. The more common our activities and assessments, the more equitable the education. Correct?

Freud says, 

"Careful! There is a bait and switch at play: in order not to see ourselves as one of those people who force curriculum down students’ throats, we defend our ways by saying we’re helping students, guiding them. “You’ll see,” we declare, “they’ll thank us for it one day when they realize that we were that inspiring figure who opened them up to the unknown world of calculating the angle of the refraction of light!” It’s all nicely brought together in a conscience-appeasing dictum. Our job is to introduce students to subjects they don’t know they love yet.

The problem is that all these good intentions can quickly lead us to teaching what the teacher is in love with, or worse, what the teacher somehow feels the students should love because that is what the teacher was told she should love back when she was at school. Good intentions gone astray. "

While the post raises more questions than it provides in answer, the post is timely as many teachers are thinking about revising and implementing curricula and performance tasks while working toward our Griswold Forward goals. Consider: 

• Are all of the tasks or topics that we think we "have to do" really mandatory? Or are they simply customary, a reflection of what past teachers said was important or what the individual teacher likes? 
• Can we provide flexibility in the content, process, or product for the unit while still meeting the spirit and rigor of the standards for our grade level and content? 
• Can we build our units around meaningful topics or questions that can be customized for student interest, but which are still manageable for a single teacher or team to monitor and implement?

Placing students at the center may mean leaving behind traditions and opening our minds to new texts, new activities, and new ways of structuring class time. If you are interested in looking for places in your curriculum to incorporate student-centered learning, check out this resource from Cult of Pedagogy that breaks down the steps for planning a unit around an authentic "task."

What questions or concerns do you have about project-based learning (or similarly, problem-based learning or inquiry-based learning)?

#NoGradeNovember

 

A student who aces the math tests earns a D in the class.

A student--a READER who always has her nose in a book--fails Language Arts for the second time.

These situations happen all over the country, but why? How does this happen, and how do we address it?

The Mindshift podcast "Grades Have Huge Impact, But Are They Effective?" addresses some of these questions and the myths that surround grading. 

One of the featured teachers, English teacher Monte Syrie, shared a story about a student writer who earned a "C" because she repeatedly forgot to complete her journal entries, despite writing beautiful papers, conferencing thoughtfully with the teacher, and producing work at an advanced level. In response, he spent years thinking about how grading systems impact relationships and student motivation. 

Monte Syrie addresses how teachers can start to prioritize student learning and feedback over scores via his post "No Grade November." This gives great ideas for how people of all comfort-levels regarding changing grading can make reflection, relationships, and fairness more of a focus in the classroom.

As you close out the first marking period and think about grading as a measure of student progress, take some time to check out one of these resources and reflect: 

Are your systems working for you and your students?

Textbooks Can't Do It

On the Leading Equity podcast "Cultural Relevance in Science with Chanel Johnson, STEMinist (love this!) Johnson was talking about highlighting famous scientists of color in the classrooms and making science and math relevant to our students. One statement that really stuck out was: "Textbooks aren't doing it."

And while her point about teachers needing to include a variety of voices was important on its own--and the discussion about respectfully incorporating culture in the classroom so that students "see themselves" in their learning is worth a listen--this also made me think about other conversations I've had with teachers about blended learning. 

Recently a teacher made a joke that  along the lines of, "If I keep making videos, I won't even have to come to school anymore." And while we all laughed, the serious side of me has been thinking that this idea needs to be addressed, in part because of the misconception that textbooks, technology, and/or blended learning minimizes the roles of teachers:  NOTHING can replace a good teacher in a classroom. 

A great video can't do it. 

A great online program can't do it. 

A great textbook can't do it.

Teachers are the people who get to know their students: what is important to them in school, at home, in society, and in their futures. It is by creating and drawing on these relationships that teachers can make education meaningful, respectful, and relevant to their learners. It is through these relationships that teachers can broach difficult topics and broaden student horizons.

Along those lines, one other useful idea from the podcast was about inviting students to share phenomena in science, via TicTok or Youtube videos that come their way, or via television and movies. One example given was from Black Panther, and Ms. Johnson talked about using a scene to discuss energy transfer! Not only does inviting students to contribute make the content relevant, but it opens the door to interdisciplinary practices such as evaluating the credibility of sources (i.e. media literacy) or making connections to current events or trends. A textbook just can't keep up with all that.

-Jessica Gillespie