Saturday, May 31, 2014

Do children get their daily dose of boredom?

The Straits Times

Do children get their daily dose of boredom?

By Bharoti Pande For The Straits Times

HAVE you ever wondered why Archimedes had his eureka moment while relaxing in a bathtub? Or why a falling apple gave Newton a brainwave and not just a bump?

I believe it's because both men were at their creative best as they were in the throes of total inactivity, possibly even boredom. Yes, boredom has a value. And so with the summer holidays coming up, make sure you don't cram your children's days with only classes and activities. It's important to give them a dose of boredom too.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the laid-back, indulgent type of mum. If anything, I fit the stereotype of a "Tiger Mum": I'm Indian-Singaporean, and my children were strictly disciplined. They learnt the value of hard work, and ended up in Ivy League schools where they had to work very hard for scholarships to make the tuition affordable.

They could have been the famous bogey-children Tom Friedman warned his daughters about: "Girls, finish your homework - people in China and India are starving for your jobs". But honestly, I was a far cry from Amy Chua's now (in)famous Tiger Mum: despite the strict discipline, I believed in boredom being an important part of a child's education.

Consequently I was surprised when I Googled the word "boredom" to find that all the links only showed ways to overcome. It was much like WebMD, an American corporation which provides health information services, handles a query on urinary tract infections or earache. This attitude to boredom pervades our society and drives parents to dole out what they believe is "responsible parenting". As a result, activities are programmed for each moment a child doesn't spend in school: tennis, piano, violin, tuition, pottery, art, taekwondo, swimming, singing - and if all else fails, a play date. The view seems to be that the more you organise, the better parent you are. So we have children who don't know how to entertain themselves and, more importantly, don't even know themselves, as they've never had the opportunity to be alone.

We seldom hear the plaintive cry "I'm bored!" coming from a child today. I believe this is a sad indicator of how many opportunities for growth and maturing have been lost. The usual response a parent would have had to Jack's "I'm bored" would have been "Go find something to do…". Jack would soon realise that boredom was his responsibility, something he had to handle or accept if he couldn't come up with a solution. This is how life shapes up anyway, so it's a useful skill to teach our children. I truly believe parents today are far more conscientious than those of my generation ever were. They take parenting very, very seriously. But while they have a lot of information available to them, they still miss out on the wisdom that can only come with experience.

In their quest to be good parents, they feel guilty about unstructured time instead of valuing it. Looking back, I'm truly glad that we didn't have smart phones and smart apps. Our children had to entertain themselves and soon accepted that life could be dull or exciting, depending on what you made of it.

Thanks to wireless hotspots and 24/7 connectivity, every corner is a potential workstation, or if not a workstation, most definitely an information kiosk. The fact that connectivity is available seems to suggest that it must be used. Children have been made to feel inadequate if they are not swinging to a constant mental march.

No one sits anymore with a blank look, eyes glazed over, with fingers drumming to a faint tune as the brain whirs at its own pace and down its own path.

Last week as I sat in an airport lounge I noticed I was the only one sipping something from a cup. I mean, just sipping, not doing anything else. Everyone around me was eating and texting, or drinking and using an entertaining app. I believe they weren't even aware of the taste of what they had on their plates. For me, even water has a taste.

I have vivid recollections of my childhood in Calcutta: standing on the balcony, watching others also just standing on their balconies; or watching the raindrops scuttle along telegraph wires till they coalesced and became too heavy and plopped down. This is what children today are missing out on: the luxury of letting their brain dance to its own tune at its own pace. Instead, as a result of "good" parenting, they get constant stimulation but lose out on a deep, personal growth that can only come with introspection and silence.

I wish young parents today were bold enough to schedule in hours of boredom for their children, and so give them the unstructured time they need to discover their own eureka moments. Children need periods of mental blankness for personal growth, just as they need sheets of blank paper for creative expression.

This is when they can delve into themselves, learn who they are, what they want and, most importantly, grow comfortable with themselves, warts and all.

How are they going to get this enrichment in their hectically organised world? Will parents only recognise that this has a value if it is available via a free app?

stopinion@sph.com.sg

The writer teaches Business Communication at Singapore Management University. She has two children, now adults, whose childhoods were enriched with periods of boredom.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Idolising failure in hope of success

The Straits Times

Idolising failure in hope of success

By Denise Chong

Hope is the thing with drills and hammers.

I try not to get excited when I see drilling and hammering going on for weeks as retail spaces in my neighbourhood get renovated for new eateries and shops.

Shiny new furniture sitting inside, shiny proud faces of owners standing outside.

I try not to care because I have seen so many shops there close down within months of opening. And the whole renovation cycle starts again.

Hope is the thing with feathers, wrote poet Emily Dickinson. Hope is probably what helps some would-be entrepreneurs fly the coop, to escape from a salaried life into the tough one of setting up their own businesses, even as the risk of failure perches nearby like an ominous raven.

I wonder if quite a number of people who hammer away at setting up their own businesses are mentally cushioned by fail-fuelled pep talks that go along the lines of: "Fail fast! Fail early! Fail cheap!" That commonly heard advice for entrepreneurs asserting that businessmen shouldn't be too fussed about messing up because it is better to find out quickly what's not working and move on before it costs them too much.

All that talk about wearing your failures as battle scars and badges of honour. Does fetishising failure help or hinder us?

Small-business failure rates vary according to where the statistics come from, but they do yo-yo on the grimmer side. Here is a sampling:

From a statement from the Ministry of Trade and Industry in reply to a parliamentary question a couple of years ago on business failure rates among small and medium-sized enterprises: "What we know, for instance, is that in the United States, for 10 new businesses formed, about eight to nine businesses would cease operations in the same year. Our comparable numbers are between seven and eight..."

The BBC reports that more than 80 per cent of start-up businesses fail within the first five years.

Talk about running businesses on a wing and a prayer.

As I peer into another space in the neighbourhood that is being renovated for a new eatery, I spot a vintage chalkboard with the name of a cafe scrawled on it that does not match the one on the door. I find wonderful reviews of that old coffee shop on the Internet but also read posts about it closing down for good. A day later, the old cafe name is wiped away from the board.

Another one bites the (chalk) dust.

But remaking the image of failure into a more cuddly concept continues apace. And embracing failure is not just for business owners. The idea of using failure to unleash creativity and build character could prove energising to the rest of us.

The British media reported that one school there held a "failure week" to help nurture resilience. Another conducted a maths test in which (without the schoolchildren's knowledge) it was actually impossible to achieve 100 per cent, "to prevent students becoming obsessed with perfection".

In Dublin, at Trinity College's Science Gallery, a recent exhibition entitled "Fail better" had the goal of opening up a public conversation about failure. "Rather than simply celebrating failure, which can come at great human, environmental and economic cost, we want to open up a debate on the role of failure in stimulating creativity: in learning, in science, engineering and design."

So does making failure more huggable help us? Optimistically, yes.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." As a Slate report says, these "six disembodied imperatives" from the Samuel Beckett prose piece Worstward Ho "have in their strange afterlife as a motivational meme come to much greater prominence than the text itself. The entrepreneurial class has adopted the phrase with particular enthusiasm, as a battle cry for a start-up culture…"

Here, remaking the image of failure flies into a territory where it appears nearly uncool to even try to dampen the risk of failing.

There is an established Silicon Valley conference called FailCon for entrepreneurial types to study their own and other people's failures, and to hear about how failing actually makes them more likely to succeed in the future. A version of the conference was held in Singapore too.

So does fetishising failure in the context of start-ups hurt us? Yes and no.

The New Yorker notes that "because we don't know how to identify good companies in advance, investors end up funding lots of them in the hope that a few will hit it big… The economy has come to rely on this Darwinian process to drive innovation".

Mr Brian Wu, a professor of strategy at the University of Michigan, told the magazine: "Overconfidence means that many more companies start up than will ever succeed. That's unfortunate for individual companies. The paradox is that it's really beneficial for society."

Hope is the thing with a fish hook stuck through it.

Baiting the next would-be entrepreneur.

denise@sph.com.sg

Monday, November 18, 2013

Motivation for teachers

Response: Using 'Self-Compassion' to Recover From a Bad Day

By Larry Ferlazzo on November 9, 2013 8:40 AM

What do you do when you're having a bad day in the classroom? How do you get over feelings of frustration?

Who among us doesn't have a bad day now-and-then?

This post is final post in a three-part series responding to this question. Part One included responses from Roxanna Elden, Allen Mendler and Julia Thompson. Part Two featured contributions from Terry Thompson, Renee Moore and Cindi Rigsbee.

Today, in addition to sharing many comments from readers, educators Amy Benjamin and Dina Strasser post their thoughts.

Response From Amy Benjamin

Amy Benjamin is a teacher, educational consultant, and author whose most recent book is Big Skills for the Common Core (Routledge):

I've always been a teacher of one sort or another, so I really can't say where teaching ranks in terms of job frustration. I can think of jobs that are a lot more physically stressful, dirty, and dangerous. I can think of jobs that pay a lot less, pay a lot more, command a lot more respect, command a lot less. I can think of jobs with a lot less job security, not too many with more. But I do know this: teachers have bad days.

A teacher's bad day--mine, anyway--is not caused by a fluctuating stock market, a dip in sales, a delinquent supplier, or a fickle customer. My bad days were caused by my own reactions, reactions to the difference between my expectations and what I perceived as reality. It is said that stress equals the distance between what you have control over and what you are held responsible for. Using that definition, teaching is a stressful job. Certainly, teachers and administrators are held accountable for conditions that are not our in control. We don't control the home or community environments of our communities. We don't control their or their parents' attitudes about education; we don't control the physical conditions in our schools and classrooms. Yet we are expected to control their test scores on a given day. We are expected to be unruffled by the most ruffling of situations at all times, in all weather.

My bad days came from feeling disrespected, plain and simple. Teaching is an act of hospitality. You are offering something, and it hurts to be rejected. I had bad days from feeling disrespected by some of the students in my class, for sure, but also by noisy students in the hallway, lawnmowers and garbage trucks making a racket outside, administrators, unreasonable parents, the union, a dog barking in a neighboring state.

But I know that my career had a turning point, a point at which my bad days became fewer and less intense. I remember the turning point vividly. I had been teaching for about twelve years and had a small child at home. I needed to leave the stress of work at work when I was at home, and deny the yearning to be home with my toddler when I was at work. I had to be strong, and here's the two-step process that got me through those years and many more:

First, I decided that I would try one thing, one small thing, that might make things a little better in my most difficult class. It may have been being more vigilant about preventing students from gathering around the door in the closing minutes of class (a habit that has always annoyed me). It may have been changing someone's seat. It may have been using a timer to keep students on task. It may have been instituting a "curse jar" in which students had to pay a fine--to be used to purchase tissues for the persistently drippy and needy--for certain words I didn't care to hear. ("I don't care that you didn't say it to me. If I hear it, you pay.") It may have been keeping a log of the offenses of the most noisome of students. They'd know I was writing something, but that they couldn't see it, and couldn't prove that I was writing about them drove them nuts. Some innovations worked better, for longer, than others, but thinking of solutions and trying them out became its own reward. I became less of a complainer and more of a classroom anthropologist.

Second, and this was the real corner-turner, I began keeping a journal at the end of the day on only the learning and progress that I had seen in any student, however small. The results were immediate, cumulative, and lasting. Because I would take a few minutes at the end of the day to reflect on only the positive moments, I'd go home feeling productive and grateful, rather than fretful and frustrated. My list grew. Along with it, a positive attitude that fed on itself, as positive attitudes will do.

Try it. Discipline yourself to forget, just at list-making time, every affront, every disappointment that a typical day as a teacher presents you with. Try just making a list of every single moment of learning and progress that you witness in your classroom. You will start having a lot more good days in the bank to draw from when those bad days strike.

Response From Dina Strasser

Dina Strasser is a 7th grade ELA teacher and 13 year veteran of the public schools. She is currently working as a curriculum designer for Expeditionary Learning.

What a great question--and especially pertinent now, when the atmosphere of education in this country can be so scary and uncertain.

Ironically, I've found that the best things I can do to help me move on from a frustrating day at school are not school-related. Instead, it's been essential for me to try to stop the nasty self-talk tapes that start playing in my head when things aren't going well. You know how it goes. "I've done nothing but bend over backwards for these kids and they still won't follow directions. A real teacher would have had them in hand by now. And if I had planned correctly it wouldn't even be a problem. I'm awful at this." etc., etc., etc. Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, calls this "throwing gasoline on the storyline."

I've done a little Buddhist reading and training and highly recommend its approach to dealing sensitively and kindly with your own self. If this isn't your cup of tea, though, I would recommend the work of Brene Brown and Kristin Neff. Both these wonderful women have websites, books and other materials available which provide very simple, effective techniques for increasing your self-compassion, which is neither pity nor selfishness. In fact, for folks in the service professions such as teaching, I would argue that self-compassion is the quickest and strongest way to recharge your own emotional batteries and become truly available, consistently, to your students.

Responses From Readers

Joanne:

Like most teachers I had many bad days in my early years of teaching. But then I learned something important: don't concentrate on the lesson you planned to teach, but on the students. If you are determined to stick to you lesson plan, and it doesn't seem to be working--for whatever reason--you will become frustrated and, very likely, show that frustration in your tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. You may very well end up blaming the students and punishing them. Unless they are completely cowed by your authority or a lot more mature than you are, they will react negatively, and that day's class session goes down the drain.

Over all, what I'm trying to say is that no lesson is perfect; so don't blame yourself or the kids. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again." Slow down, take a break, change your approach, or re-teach the lesson tomorrow. And do it all with a smile!

Kim:

Humor has certainly saved the day many times. When tension mounts, it dissipates it. I'll use my acting skills and become a new persona by changing my voice or speaking through a puppet. The puppet may become the fussy inspector of the messy room, while I assure Mr. Puppet that the students are normally neat and orderly. I work with second graders, so it's easy to make them laugh and feel that tomorrow will be better. Then I go home, drink wine and play Candy Crush Saga.

Reed:

Whenever I'm having a bad day at school, I do one of two things-and if it's really a bad day, I do both. First, I keep a file of thank you letters from parents and students. On bad days, I take a couple of minutes to re-read these. Needless to say, it's uplifting and motivating. My second strategy: I look over my class roster, find a student who has made great strides recently, and call his/her parents. Of course, the parents and the student are pleased to receive such a positive phone call and I'm inspired, reminded of the positive impact I can have and energized to tackle whatever is thrown at me.

Erin Paynter:

I try not to think if them as "bad" days. Bad days elicit that fixed mindset that nothing can be done about them but wallow in them. In more of a growth mindset, I think of them as challenging days because I learn something every time I have one - either about myself as an educator, about students or about learning.

Many readers sent comments through Twitter. I've collected them using Storify:

Response: 'There Is No Such Thing as an Unmotivated Student'

By Larry Ferlazzo on November 17, 2013 10:46 AM

Fitta Astriyani asked:

How can I deal with unmotivated students? I'm a little bit frustrated when I know my students don't do their homework and sometimes they talk during my lessons.

This question highlights a never-ending challenge to educators, and it's one that requires regular examination. I've previously published thirteen posts on this topic, and you can find even more resources at The Best Posts and Articles on "Motivating" Students (not to mention my three books on the subject). I don't have any new thoughts to share, but I'm pleased to say several well-respected educators have agreed to contribute to this new three-part series on motivation. In addition, my final post will include suggestions from readers.

Today's "line-up" is impressive with guest responses from Cris Tovani, Josh Stumpenhorst and Eric Jensen.

Response From Cris Tovani

Cris Tovani taught elementary school for ten years before becoming a high school reading specialist and English teacher. She currently teaches at Adams City High School in Commerce City, Colorado. In addition to teaching full-time, she is a nationally known consultant focusing on issues of reading and content comprehension in high school classrooms. She is the author of three books,I Read it but I Don't Get It, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? and So, What do They Really Know? Cris is also featured in three instructional DVDs that show her in action with adolescent readers. These DVDs, Thoughtful Reading, Comprehending Content, and Talk to Me are available through Stenhouse Publishers.

Planning for Motivation and Engagement

It's the last staff meeting of teacher work-week. In two days students will fill the building and the first bell will ring signaling the beginning of the school year. Before this happens, teachers will have the chance to hear from selected members of the student body. They have been asked to share what motivates and engages them.

Javier starts, "Know our names. When teachers know who I am, I act better."

"Yeah," says David. "I try harder when you try to help me. Help us when we get stuck."

Marisol quietly follows, "I try hardest for teachers who ask me how I am. Sometimes you could ask us how we are doing."

Smiling, with eyes down, Humberto shyly says, "Try not to be boring. Teach us stuff we need to know. Make class interesting."

All down the line similar responses emerge: Know us. Care about us. Engage us. It is clear kids want to like school. They want to be motivated.

Backed up to the reclaimed Rocky Mountain Arsenal sits Adams City High School. Housed in a beautiful new building rests the traditions of 99 previous graduating classes. The institution is a mainstay of this humble community. The school needs its families and the families need the school. It's a good marriage.

Unfortunately, Adams City High School is entering the third year of "turn around" status. Test scores are low, graduation rates are dismal and student engagement is minimal. Stakes are high for these kids and their teachers. Faculty and administrators are working furiously to figure out why students aren't succeeding. Some hypothesize the difficulty stems from students not being native English speakers. Others blame poverty. Many worry that students lack motivation and engagement.

What Does Motivate Learners?

Thinking of last year's students reminds me that there isn't a magic bullet when it comes to engagement. Motivating students is complex but it is something that teachers can plan for. If I strive to engage students at the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive levels, I can increase the number of motivated students (Fredrick, 2004).

For me, engaging students at the emotional level is the easiest. This means I need to work to build personal relationships--to know and care about students. When that relationship is developed kids will often "work" harder just because they like me. However, just engaging them at the gut level isn't enough. I also need to set up rituals and routines and model how they work in the classroom if I want behavioral engagement. However, just being behaviorally engaged isn't enough either. There also has to be behavioral engagement. This means there is predictability in the classroom. I post learning targets on the board each day so students know what my instructional goals are. I also want to identify what students will produce in terms of annotations, drafts of writing, double entry diaries etcetera so they understand what they will create to show me what they know and need. When students understand how the classroom work in terms of rituals and routines, they can better manage the rules of school.

The level of engagement that I'm trying to harness more is cognitive engagement. When students are cognitively engaged, they are motivated to learn because the topic is compelling and they see a purpose in their own life for the learning. This requires I flesh out why my content matters. I have to help students see how what we are studying has relevance to the world outside of school and how it will empower them as learners. Content can't sit in a curriculum guide if it is going to be compelling to students. It has to connect to their lives. When I hit the sweet spot and get students engaged at all three levels, my classroom is humming.

Another body of work I consider when I'm trying to motivate students is Daniel Pink's book Drive. Pink synthesizes the work of researchers like Mikal Csikszentimihalyi and concludes that human beings are motivated when autonomy, mastery and purpose are in place. In school, autonomy means that students have some choice in their learning. Sometimes they can choose what they read or how they show their thinking. Sometimes it means they have choice in what they work on and what the final product will look like. In other words, choice drives engagement.

Mastery also drives engagement. In my class, it means that kids have models so they can see what exemplar work looks like. They also get feedback from me and they have time to use the feedback to gain more mastery and make their product better. Ebony a student in my CP 11 English class would often rewrite her papers five or six times. She was dazzled by the idea that she could take the feedback I gave her and improve upon it. She must have asked me a hundred times if I was sure she could make the revisions. Ebony didn't think of herself as a good writer and at the beginning of the year, really avoided doing any writing at all. I think she thought that good writers were born that way. Once she realized that with practice she too could be a good writer, she was willing to dig in. For Ebony, like most learners, success bred success.

Pink also emphasizes the importance of having relevant work to do. When students see a need for the learning or a connection to their lives, they are more motivated to struggle through the difficult parts. I think about Fernando. He was another student of mine last year. Two weeks after school was out, he sent me another draft of his Dream Speech, an assignment that was due in May. Fernando's speech was about his "crossing" to the US when he was four. He wanted his audience to know why Mexicans were coming to the US and why it was so important for immigrants to get legal status. In the email that Fernando sent me he wrote, "Dear Ms. Tovani. I know the final draft of my speech was due weeks ago, but I wanted to keep working on it so it was good. I hope this draft is better than my last one. Maybe you can share it with people so they know why the Dream Act matters."

The importance of doing something that has relevance to a learner's life is a powerful motivator. Fernando didn't turn the new draft in for points. He did it because he wanted to make his world better.

Compliance Isn't Engagement

Engagement is very different from compliance. Motivated students don't just show up in classrooms. Teachers have to plan for them. Considering what will engage students is a challenge that I look forward to. Like a doctor, I get to try and diagnose what each student needs to be motivated. Some need more autonomy than others. Some need choice, even if that choice is picking between one of two articles to read and annotate. I would argue that most learners need a purpose for their learning while others need a combination of autonomy, choice, and purpose.

Recently, I worked with district instructional coaches. I asked them to brainstorm what motivated them.

Sara started the group off, "I'm motivated when others care about my learning."

"I need people to collaborate with," added Colleen.

Denise agreed and then shared, "I need a purpose for the learning. Without a one, I'm not very invested in the task."

After a bit of quiet thought, Mimi said, " I need time and opportunity to revise my thinking in order to get it right."

Katie, ended by saying, "I need something interesting to think about. If it's boring, I'll find something more interesting to do."

Just like the high school kids, adults, need certain conditions in place if they are to be motivated. Motivation doesn't come from some mysterious, unattainable place. For me, it starts with knowing and caring about my learners. It also requires that I plan so kids have time to practice and I have time to give them feedback. Last, I need to remember that no one wants to give his time to busy work or learning something that has no relevance. My job as the teacher is to help my students see why what I'm teaching is compelling.

Fredericks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C. & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59-109.

Pink, Daniel. 2011 Drive, Riverhead Books.

Response From Josh Stumpenhorst:

Josh Stumpenhorst is a 6th grade Language Arts and Social Science teacher in suburban Chicago, IL. He is the 2012 Illinois Teacher of the year, 2012 Illinois Computing Educator of the Year and an ISTE Emerging Leader in 2011. He blogs at www.stumptheteacher.blogspot.com and tweets as @stumpteacher:

An unmotivated or under-motivated student is probably the most thought about and talked about issue among educators. Every teacher I have ever worked with can name off their unmotivated students and all the things they have tried in their classroom. We have all faced that student that seems to defy all logic and rationale through a complete refusal to do any work. If as a teacher you have not faced this student then you are not a real teacher or I need to know where you work :).

Since we can all guarantee we will have an unmotivated learner in our class every single year, what do we do about it? For me, I have three beliefs that I hold to be true.

First, I can't make or force a kid to do anything. No matter how much a teacher yells at a kids or punishes them, at the end of the day you cannot make a kid do anything. Period. Once you accept this, it is easier to move to the other two beliefs.

The second belief I have about unmotivated students is the reason they are unmotivated is because we are asking them to do things that are a waste of their time. We ask students of high skill levels to do basic tasks dictated by a standardized curriculum and wonder why they don't want to do it. In addition, we ask our more struggling students to do thing far beyond their abilities and again wonder why they refuse. Motivating students to see value in something that is applicable to their skill level as well as their life is a simple and yet highly effective strategy for motivating students.

Finally, I have found kids will do just about anything a teacher asks them to do if they have a positive relationship with that teacher. Teachers that take the time to invest in a kid's personal life will ultimately have more success in motivating that student. We too often get wrapped up in teaching the student that we forget to learn about the kid. This is in no way an endorsement that you are best friends with all of your students. However, if you have a personal relationship with a kid you can connect with them, tailor your instruction, and motivate them to learn because they care about you and know that you care about them.

Response From Eric Jensen

Eric Jensen is the author several books, including Turnaround Tools for the Teenage Brain: Helping Underperforming Students Become Lifelong Learners (Jossey-Bass) and Engaging Students With Poverty In Mind: Practical Strategies For Raising Achievement (ASCD):

First, stop labeling students. There is no such thing as a unmotivated student. If they're in school, they at least willing to give school a try. They may be in unmotivated "states." States are mind/body "moments" such as the experience of confidence, apathy, fear, cynicism, intrigue, anger or curiosity or defiance. Very few states are good for learning and the best teachers orchestrate "hungry to learn" states like anticipation. But these can be shifted with the right strategies.

Good strategies include the using of more compelling, inclusive questions. Better states come with more engagement, dance, stretch breaks and energizers. You can use music and cooperation learning to boost states. To that list, I would also add the use of celebrations, mystery boxes, partner work and competition. When orchestrated well, teachers can usually elicit the states they need with the kids that need it most. Then, when kids go home, and they are asked about their day, they say, "I love my class!"

When kids seem motivated or struggle, never call them your "low kids." You wouldn't call underperforming teachers, "Low teachers" would you? Yet many teachers call kids, "Low kids. This labeling has got to stop. Maybe there are no "Low kids," only kids who have had "low teachers." After all, some teachers get fabulous results and with kids and another teach will struggle. High flyer teachers can often get one and a half to three years AYP with their kids while other teachers struggle to get one year's of progress in one year.

Instead of pointing fingers at how some kids are "low," start moving them into better social, psychological states. Kids who struggle are often very poor at regulating their own internal states.

Second, above all, build relationships in ways that kids really get that you are vested in their success. This goes way past the name and 2 hobbies stage. Learn about their family. Attend sporting events and give them an extra helping hand when needed.

Third, find the leverage points. All kids care about something: family, dreams, proving themselves, etc. Find what they care about and use that hook them in and foster dreams and the effort to reach them. One kid loved football, so the teacher of this student with severe behaviors simply organized a behavioral system around a football field on a flip chart. When he behaved poorly, he was thrown for a "loss." When he did well, he moved his piece towards the end zone. This idea works for all of us; find out what we care about and use it.

Finally, be willing to be in it for the long haul. You don't need to turn kids around in a day. But nibble at it every day and show students that you will not let them fail.