How Can Educators Help Reduce Student Stress?

by Kathleen Kury Farrell

The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA recently released findings from its annual survey of more than 200,000 college freshmen.  This year’s headline-grabber is the negative trend in students’ self-reported mental health (see this NY Times article, for example). The entering class of 2010 gives their own mental health the lowest assessment of any cohort in the survey’s 25 year history. They say they are frequently overwhelmed by all they have do – a feeling that seems to carry over from the stress they experienced in high school.  Interestingly, more women report being overwhelmed than men, and women’s perceived stress levels are actually greater as well.

My own work in higher education has been motivated by a concern for students’ holistic success.  Although I’ve enjoyed many roles inside the classroom, my professional responsibilities and research interests have revolved around the time students spend in residence halls, campus governance, clubs and organizations, student employment, and much more. In each of these roles I witnessed the highs and lows that students experience as they encounter what one wise colleague termed “the tyranny of opportunities” that can exist in a collegiate environment.

Although I did not find the UCLS report surprising, it is nevertheless sobering to be reminded of how challenging our students’ lives can be.  The findings hit home, in part, because many educators occasionally experience the same feeling of frenzy that our students convey.  And, for some, stress is a similarly unhealthy way of life.

In the wake of this press I’ve found myself wondering whether even lives that are “purpose-full” and relatively low-stress can unwittingly reinforce the notion that busy-ness is necessary, or that overflowing days convey achievement and worth. It is probably fair to say that the adults who are most personally involved in young adults’ lives balance many roles while putting in long hours at work and serving in their communities. Young people often see us on the move and hear us talking (and sometimes complaining) about our fine-tuned schedules. What they typically don’t see are the difficult, ongoing – and typically private – deliberations in which adults weigh priorities and decide to say “no.”

It goes without saying that many students need and benefit from the expertise and guidance found in their school counseling centers.  However, I don’t think we should overlook the power that stories and experience have to support students in their struggles.  I’ve been involved in assessing two programs that are designed as proverbial ports in the storm. Consisting of panels and/or discussion groups, these initiatives invite students to slow down, take stock, and consider what they are doing with their lives and why. These sessions often include recent alumni, faculty, staff, and “older-wiser” peers who tell their stories so younger students can learn from their difficult decisions and, occasionally, their failures.

Such exchanges go beyond time management to the more challenging and meaningful task of how to manage one’s self.  Participants’ feedback underscores how valuable it is to know others also find their must-dos and want-to-dos isolating and oppressive.  More important, they hear in these stories a message that it is normal and necessary to be proactive in charting one’s course and revising it constantly.  Learning to prioritize, commit to, and let go of opportunities and commitments are difficult lessons but ones that every person confronts – often many times over!  Unless educators make the lessons of doing so explicit we run the risk that young people will take implicit cues from busy environments and continue feeling overwhelmed.

The Value of Play

by Margot Locker

The importance of play in a child’s life has been debated from every angle in recent weeks.  Articles have discussed the value of recess, the significance of structured play during the school day, the need for creativity, and most recently, from the perspective of the “Tiger Mother,” the benefits of extreme structure and no play. Groups, such as Alliance for Childhood,  have formed that are dedicated to increasing the culture of play in children’s lives, while at the same time, schools are devaluing the importance of recess, art, and physical education as a result of NCLB and the focus on standardized testing that has swept the nation.  Parents, educators, and researchers all have varying, often conflicting views on what is appropriate for children in their “free” time.

During my two years teaching 3rd grade in West Philadelphia, I viewed the 30 daily minutes of recess time as almost equally important to time devoted to math and reading.  8 year-olds have a remarkable amount of energy and, without a space to release it, behavior, anger, and attention issues are sure to follow.  On days without recess, my students’ behavior and attention levels were noticeably decreased. Their engagement in lessons was not there, and thus, their ability to internalize the material declined. Learning was far more challenging for my students without the 30 minutes they usually had to run around, socialize, and have the freedom for creative play.  Further, for many of my students, this was the only time they had to run around outside, as many lived in urban areas where outdoor safety and supervision were unavailable for them if they desired to play outside. Recess was a special time for my students, and a time where they could explore, create, and be kids.

Recess took place on a large blacktop. There was no playground equipment, and the toys and sports gear were long lost or broken. Despite the lack of resources, I was always amazed to watch what my students did during their free time. They created games, made up dances, and devised elaborate games of tag. Their ingenuity and resourcefulness impressed me, and I viewed this time as its own form of learning. Due to space and financial constraints, gym classes had been cut to once a week, so recess truly was a unique time of day.

I find it hard to consider the issue of play without thinking about GoodWork. Teaching a lesson where students stayed in their seats and were talked “at” often resulted in sleepy eyes, heads on desk, and an obvious lack of engagement.  However, when I attempted to incorporate some aspect of play in a lesson-a skit about verbs, a race outside to learn decimal points, a hands-on science experiment-the engagement level skyrocketed. Further, the understanding of the material, and the excellence at which the students retained and processed the lesson was always far higher following creative lessons. No child can be expected to sit still in a classroom for 8 hours a day and remain focused.  Countless studies reveal that physical activity aids in learning and triggers brain activity. Beyond the academic benefits  of play and movement, the childhood obesity epidemic in our country, coupled with the fact that children spend  7 hours 38 minutes a day on average in front of a television or computer (according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation last year)  should motivate teachers and parents alike to encourage activity, structured or not.  Taking away the chance to play from a child is taking away an essential part of growing up.

News from India

by Lynn Barendsen

Our colleague and inspired educator Kiran Sethi has sent us news about the Design for Change (DFC) initiative. The DFC Contest is an international contest encouraging children to make positive change happen in their communities. In India, an international jury narrowed the children’s stories from 2000 to 225 and the national jury met to further filter the stories to the top 100, and then the top 20. 10 special jury awards were also announced.

This year, over 200,000 children across all 29 states of India became “Changemakers.” The stories grew bolder and several age old superstitions and rituals like Mrityu Bhoj (rituals based on feeding people when a family member dies) and Black Magic were challenged. Children designed solutions for a range of problems such as traffic, rainwater harvesting, drug addiction, science aids for the visually impaired, bullying, heavy school bags and garbage. In Kiran’s words, “The children showed all of us what can be achieved when we say ‘I CAN’, instead of ‘Can I’!!”

Several of the top 100 stories are going to be documented and published as part of value and character building curriculum for schools.

Below, please find links to some of the outstanding stories of DFC ’10, and to the contest’s website:

Contest website: designforchangecontest.com

Mrityu Bhoj, Satya Bharti School, Alwar

Jal Hai to Kal Hai, Satya Bharti School, Jaipur

Every Child is an Entrepreneur, Sunrise English Medium School, Pune

Go Garbage, Amrit Vidyalaya, Kalol, Gujarat

The First Rule of Teaching: Do No Harm

by Holly Robinson

It wasn’t until I went on a field trip with my son and his eighth grade teacher that I started pondering the recent debates about how a teacher’s performance in the classroom should be evaluated.

My son and his teacher, Jennifer, were deep in conversation about some machine that my son had built at home out of spare parts. Jennifer listened, asked questions, then listened some more. She’s a former engineer, so she has lots of high-powered technical knowledge she might have sprinkled onto my son’s head like falling leaves. Instead, she focused on getting my son to ask the right questions, inserting facts only where she had to, until at last he said, “Oh! I know what I could try next. Thanks!” I couldn’t follow their conversation in detail – I barely passed high school physics – but it was suddenly clear that I was in the presence of one of those brilliant teachers who we hope like hell our children have at least a few times in their lives.

What makes a teacher brilliant? It’s not easy for me to say, despite the fact that I’ve ushered three children and two stepchildren through school and into college. Along the way, I’ve attended countless parent-teacher conferences and PTO meetings. I’ve been a school volunteer. But it was only at that moment, with Jennifer and my son, that I really considered what makes a teacher brilliant and not just okay, or downright evil. While we’ve never had a teacher as evil as Miss Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s brilliant book, Matilda – the one who locked children in a tiny room with spikes on the walls – we’ve certainly had our share of scary teachers.

There was, for instance, the elementary school teacher who made fun of my youngest son because he was anxious and had facial tics. When he told her that he wanted to be a mathematician, she laughed and said, “You’ll never be a mathematician if you keep making those faces!” He also had a teacher who, when it was time to make gingerbread houses for Christmas, called him “defiant” because he didn’t follow her A-frame plan and created his own design. The very next year, a teacher told my son that he would “grow up to be another Unibomber” because he had drawn a sketch of a gun he’d seen on YouTube.

Most teachers, thankfully, have not been so woefully ignorant or mean. Among the many teachers in the lives of our five children, most have simply followed their hearts in an effort to do good in the world. They get up every morning, balancing family life with work like most of us – only their work involves the emotional and exhausting rigors of caring for other people’s children. They fight for what their students need, and sometimes, like the rest of us, they are irritable or too exhausted to be kind. They snap at the kids, or even, in the case of one math teacher at our junior high who, after being pushed to the limit by a wayward kid taunting him from the doorway, chase kids down the hall while waving chairs over their heads. Really.

Burnout isn’t their fault, or at least not entirely. The educational system is overburdened – we all know that – and often more of a premium is placed on crowd control and compliance among students than on anything else. Students come to class unprepared or are confrontational, and parents are equally so. It’s no wonder that our teachers are stressed and overwhelmed. If they’d wanted to be cops, they would have signed up for the police academy.

Yet, a few rare teachers continue to do their jobs well, or even brilliantly. My oldest daughter, always fearful of writing, became an avid writer because her sixth grade English teacher made her believe that she could do it – even as that teacher was battling breast cancer. My oldest son’s first social studies teacher inspired in him a lifelong love of politics. A French teacher’s encouragement led our younger daughter to study in Paris.

What sets those teachers apart? Brilliance in the classroom isn’t about a teacher’s education, training, or classroom experience. No, the kind of teacher who inspires students to learn because they want to, instead of because they have to, has more to do with elusive qualities, like being willing to meet a child where he is, having a keen and sturdy sense of humor, respecting every child’s strengths, and bravely setting forth every day ready to try something new.

There has been a lot of debate about how best to test our teachers, such as asking whether we should use standardized student test scores to evaluate a teacher’s performance. But the most important things to measure in a teacher are things you can’t test for, like the willingness to trust that, within every child, there is a better person who just needs to be coaxed to come out. How do you test for that? While we figure that out, the first rule to follow when evaluating teachers should be the same one we use in medicine. Teachers, like doctors, should First, do no harm.

Learn more about Holly and her work at her website.

Educating for Failure, Seeking Succes

by Yael Karakowsky

Antonio arrives to the classroom, greets the children and sits with them. He is holding under his arm a box of wooden toys. Kids are excited by his visit; it seems like a fun activity. One by one, Antonio takes out the wooden characters from the box, and so, the adventure begins. He gives each child a character in the story, and all of them, unwittingly, become involved in his history.

Antonio was born in Veracruz, and he remembers his departure to Mexico City as if it were yesterday. He was around 5 years old when his father got a better job opportunity. For him, “Goodbyes on trains are just like in the movies…. The saddest ones.” “Have you seen one?” He asks the children, and while he does so, he takes out a wooden train from his box. It was time to leave Veracruz, time to start a new life and deal with new challenges as a family.

While listening to his words and seeing the movement of the train, it was clear that the children were filled with sadness. It was certainly different from what Antonio experienced…but they were attentive both to his words and his heart.

– “Goodbye to my cat.” (Antonio asks a child for the wooden cat, and removes it from the scene while mentioning these words.)

– “Goodbye to my friends.” (Again, he asks those who are holding these characters to put them away.)

– “Now…My grandparents? Goodbye, too.” (And again, he removes pieces from the game.)

Little by little, the staging remains with fewer characters and the children’s’ faces show surprise, sadness and empathy.

Suddenly, there is a twist in the story. Even though Antonio recalls this experience as a sad and difficult moment, Mexico City had its charms. After some time and while requiring some effort on his part, he now perceives Mexico City as a city that gave him many opportunities. He found new friends, learned new things, met his wife, and has formed a beautiful family. Today, he is in the classroom in order to share a life experience with Mariana, his daughter. (In anticipation of his visit to the classroom, Mariana and the rest of the children prepared a thank you note for him. She greeted her father eagerly on the day of his visit.)

This is how Antonio participates in the Project Educating for Failure, Seeking Success. We narrate real stories to children, or as Antonio wrote in his own story and said to Mariana: “I have been asked to tell you a story, but this is not a story Mariana…this is part of my history.”

Educating for Failure, Seeking Success seeks to involve parents actively in their children’s education. How? By providing children with real stories, life experiences through which parents become “humanized” and are much more than “perfect” images. Through this project, each parent is invited to write about a personal encounter with failure, pain or difficulty that can be used to teach and be an example of a learning experience.

Why? Because we were probably all educated to seek success, not realizing that failure is inevitably a part of the journey. Because dealing with failure at the outset can be the first step to success. Because a person that grows by learning may be more prepared to face an unpredictable life and have better tools while dealing with future frustrations. What for? To share a life lesson, to teach children that in life it may take many plantings before you can, successfully, harvest your crops.

Like all stories, our stories have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. It is important to consider that the conclusion of these stories does not refer to a solution, but a proposal to address the challenge. The project seeks to share with children that not all stories have a solution, since life doesn’t offer solutions for everything.

I considered the Project a success. After these experiences and by their own initiative, kids started writing and sharing their own stories. Suddenly, the classroom was full of stories, all being heard and respected. The librarian was amazed after receiving a donation from one of the kids – he wanted to keep his “book” on the library shelf, expecting everyone in school to be able to read and understand him. Would I do it again? The more I read, the more I hear, and the more I perceive…the more I learn. So yes, I would do it again, and again.