Love Learning

Reading and Learning Disabilities

It is sad to me that one approach to teaching reading has become the yardstick against which every  child is measured, and those who do not measure up are labeled with a disability. In my opinion, a large percentage of the children who have been branded disabled are not disabled at all. Somehow we must lose the idea that there is one right way to teach reading. How have we let the situation get so skewed?

I have spent a lot of time nose-to-nose with kids who had been sent to special education classrooms and have seen the resulting emotional pain. They carry the disability label as a brand on their hearts and minds. It colors everything in their world. By labeling children with disabilities, educators intend to identify children who need to receive special help, but all too often what results inside the child is completely detrimental.

Talking to Anne About Special Education

I remember talking with a  middle schooler who I will call Anne. She was, as many children are, absolutely defeated. She’d been told that she was learning disabled, and what that did for her was remove any reason for trying. Telling a child she is disabled is like holding up a mirror that shows her a version of herself, a version that will never measure up to what is expected. To a child, being disabled means they are never going to make it. Very few people try hard if they know failure will be the outcome of their efforts.

As I spoke with Anne, trying to find something I could use to motivate her, she brought up being in special ed and how much it bothered her. Rashly, I asked Anne what she’d be willing to do if she could get out of the program as a result. She said, “Anything. I will do anything.”

I went to the head of the special education department and asked exactly what Anne would have to do or what skills she’d need to acquire in order to test out of special ed. Some eyebrows went up, but we got some specifics to take back to Anne. The change in her was startling. She saw hope. Immediately Anne’s work ethic changed and she began to try very hard and make progress in her work. Rather than having a sentence, Anne now understood she had specific skills to learn.

What If the “Cure” Ends Up Killing the Patient?

Apart from the emotional damage labeling a child can cause, there are other reasons to exhibit great caution before identifying a child as disabled. Too often, once children have been taken through the process of identification, the label they receive is so broad as to be non-descript and certainly unhelpful. Worse yet, once the child has his label in place and he receives help in or out of the classroom, that help frequently comes in the form of dumbing down the expectations for the child.

Many children who have been identified for special education have their requirements cut in half (half the math problems, half the spelling words, etc.) The problem with this scenario is that the number of problems or words a child is given is not usually the issue. The issue is that the child might just not know how to do the work! So it doesn’t matter if you assign five problems or ten. Ten words or 20. If the problem lies in missing skills or if the child simply cannot memorize, you are not really helping him by cutting the amount of work in half.

Look at the Child First, Then Make a Decision

If I am correct in surmising that a large percentage of children who are in special ed don’t belong there, it makes a lot of sense to spend more time identifying where the gaps in learning are for the child and finding resources that teach in ways that make sense to him before labeling him as special needs or disabled.

We, at Child1st, believe that many children who are seemingly not able to read COULD read if they had the right method. The next post will describe what one such method looks like and how it helps non-traditional learners.

Reading and the Non-Traditional Learner

Quite a few different types of learners do not thrive when learning to read in the traditional classroom. Because I’ve worked with many children who struggled with reading, when I think about teaching reading, I instantly visualize various pitfalls that yawned in my students’ faces.

Look at how reading is normally taught

Typically, children learn to say their ABC's, and then they're taught a sound that goes with each letter. The next task is usually to begin to sound out words made of a few letters. When children see a letter symbol, they must recall the sound that goes with the letter and retain that sound in memory while viewing the next letter, learning its sound, and storing that sound while approaching the next letter. And the process continues. Once children have learned to sound out words, they are supposed to know that they can recognize those words when encountered in other books. They are also supposed to understand that they are reading to extract meaning from the text, and this being true, they are to understand what they read and remember it once reading is completed.

Areas of difficulty in learning to read

Global Learners: Children who are global need some very specific helps if they are going to ease their way into reading. They need to know why they are learning all the letter names and sounds, or learning all those facts will be difficult for them. Telling them, “You need to learn all this material so you can learn to read” is not sufficient. They need to experience the art of reading in order to successfully begin to acquire the necessary skills. They need the goal or reason or relevance to the exercise clearly spelled out in order to be able to focus their attention and memory on the tasks at hand.

Visual Learners: This label encompasses many children. Children who are visual learners may have  acquired other labels along the way, including dyslexia, autism, etc. These learners may have a difficult time remembering the name of each letter and have an especially hard time relating sounds to letter symbols. When visual learners are working on reading, memorization is not their strong suit. They need something to help them learn the way they learn best, which is in pictures. They are picture thinkers who don’t learn by memorizing details and then constructing a whole out of them. They capture information all at once, just like a camera snaps a photo.

Kinesthetic Learners: Children who are active, kinesthetic children need to have some helps since it takes a lot of concentrated focus to get through the tasks usually associated with reading. Snippets of information, preferably ingested through visuals and movements, prove most successful. Kinesthetic learners typically prefer hands-on learning and activities that let them make things. Their attention will follow their hands.

Other Learners: Some children have short-term memory issues, and so decoding (or sounding out words) definitely presents a huge challenge to them. A myriad of characteristics of learners make traditional approaches to teaching reading not suitable. One size fits all certainly does not apply to methods of teaching reading.

What can be done to teach non-traditional learners successfully?

It seems logical to me that if we first study the child (and by this I mean many children who struggle), we will learn over time where the gaps occur, where the areas of difficulty lie within the traditional system of teaching reading. We can then take these areas of difficulty and address them. Rather than have two fistfuls of approaches to use, why not combine all the helps into one lean and clean approach to teaching reading that will close the gaps for learners of every ilk?

In our next posts we will talk about what happens to a child when he/she’s given a label and how that might impact his/her ability to learn to read. And finally, what would a reading program look like that addresses the needs of non-traditional learners? We’ll talk about that a step at a time.

Success through Visuals & Play

I read an article the other day that really tugged at my heart. The author mourned the fact that  kindergarten as it should be seems to be a thing of the past. Gone is the free play, the crayons and paint, the housekeeping center, the emphasis on learning social interactions and skills. She painted such a poignant picture of sunlit rooms and happy children thriving and creating. She decried today’s widespread, headlong dash towards increasing academics in kindergarten.

No matter how much I agree with the author’s viewpoint regarding the true work of kindergarten, I  am not sure there is much we can do to change that academic push for beginners. Because I am totally aware of the segment of our population that frowns horribly on teaching our young children anything smacking of school, I always squirm a bit when customers write me to say that their preschoolers are devouring our stylized SnapWords™. I think my guilty conscience is rooted in a book I read by David Elkind called Miseducation. The premise of the book is that we are going to create a whole generation of at risk children if we begin to push schooling in preschool. Elkind followers, including the head of the education department in my graduate school, apply a blanket rule towards teaching preschoolers. You cannot do it, apparently, without mistreating them. Elkind makes an impassioned point, my department head is far more educated than I and surely knows better, but still I raise a timid hand to ask, “Might this only be one part of the story?”

Most Issues Are Not Black and White

Have you ever found yourself listening to a well-delivered argument which you feel is so airtight as to be unanswerable…only to find yourself listening to an equally well argued point directly opposing the first viewpoint? I have many times! I think in such cases what this means is that there is no clear cut way to choose a course of action and make a blanket rule that could be applied across the board. Far from being black and white, there are myriad shades of meaning between polar extremes.

Do I believe kindergartners should play? YES. Yes I do. Do I also believe in teaching very young children? YES. Yes I do. But what I believe lies somewhere in the middle of the argument for and against teaching young children. I do not believe that you prevent learning problems by starting to teach children when they are younger. The problem No Child Left Behind tried to address is not going to be solved by starting to teach reading and math in preschool. Not unless the method used is drastically changed. Ironically, if we change the method by which we teach, we could wait and begin to teach in first grade – or even second grade!

Use a Barometer

Recently I’ve heard from several parents who called to say they were distressed because their kindergartners were beginning to move from loving books to hating them because of what was being required of the kids in school. The children were not responding to the drills and flashcards, and the result was that they were turning away from an earlier love of books and reading. In cases such as these, STOP what is being done. If a teacher insists you drill your child at home, find an alternative right away. I think the decision about whether or not to teach young children can be made by answering the following questions. Iis the child playing? Is he having fun? Is she engaged? Does he want to do this? If the answers are no, the only option we have is to stop what we are doing immediately because we will cause harm.

Change the Approach: Use Visuals and Play

What we can do is change how our children learn the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. If we can utilize visuals and play, kids will gain the knowledge they need, but will not feel the stress of “doing school” too early. Best of all, using visuals and play will have the effect of cutting “school time” greatly. When I taught kindergarten in my home, the children far surpassed grade level expectations, but we did all our learning through creative play and visuals, and all our learning was done in less than two hours a day including coloring and craft time. Those were the days! What we were doing was working inside a system (school), but not using the regular system’s methodology. I went where the kids went – to what drew them. And it worked so well!

Is It Possible That Neither Side is Totally Right?

I think in the debate about academics and kindergarten, the point might have been totally missed. The point is not should we teach the very young, but rather HOW shall we teach them? At Child1st, we believe that if you have an engaged child, that child will learn and will love learning and we work very hard to find ways to make learning effortless.

Teaching Picture Thinkers

I’ve been thinking about visual learners for several years now--teaching them, working to understand how they think and learn, and then creating visual helps embedded in left brain material so they can grasp new material with ease. My goal has been to provide a connection between left and right brain processes so that more and more right brained learners will be successful. I’ve been primarily focused on getting material into a child’s understanding and memory.

A few short weeks ago, I began thinking more about not only how people process new ideas and information, but then how they re-articulate that once they've digested it. My focus shifted from thinking primarily about channels into the brain, to how people express the learning. I was doing some research in unfamiliar territory, with the goal of first understanding the content, and then distilling the critical parts of the research so I could share it with others. During the process of research, I drew several pictures and mind maps to help me organize the content. When it came time to share the material with my colleagues, I found myself really struggling. What I had digested was so rich and deep, but I felt completely inadequate when it came to verbalizing the amazing ideas I had gained. It dawned on me that the breakdown occurred somewhere between the hemispheres of my brain. I had spent a week reading words, translating them into pictures and visuals so I could learn the material, and now it was time to take those pictures and change them back into words. I think I understood more fully what it really means to be a visual learner. I realized how frequently I think in pictures rather than words. I thought everyone did that. Pictures I make in my mind or ones I see help me remember.

The problem with thinking in pictures

The trouble comes in that I cannot always form a picture from words I am hearing. In graduate school, I recall sitting in a class and hearing strings of words each of which I had heard before, but being completely unable to extract meaning from them. Particularly painful were the times in which the professor was verbalizing directions for the current class activity, and everyone around me seemed to be totally in tune – except for me. Everyone set to work – except for me. I was too mortified to ask a question and betray my ignorance. Surreptitiously I would peek at what my neighbors were doing, and if I felt ok with the person seated next to me, I would ask him/her to translate for me what we were to do.

In a third type of scenario, I was confronted with problems to solve, which I felt unable to solve until I hit on the plan of drawing sketches of what the problem entailed. When I did this, a solution presented itself.

What if the picture thinker is a child?

At that time when I found myself not understanding the professor, I had grown children. Imagine what I would have felt like had I been a child. If you do a search for terms such as right brained learner, teach visual learners, reading programs dyslexia learners, or a similar phrase, you will access a lot of information about the percentage of children in the world who are suspected to fall into the category of picture thinkers or visual learners. There are quite a few children that can be described this way. So, what happens when you have a high percentage of children who think in pictures, but our primary means of teaching them is verbal or approaches that use symbols rather than images?

Provide images

Certainly it would be advantageous to provide the very young with images as they are learning the critical skills that lead to reading and math. We have written a lot about our products that tie symbols to meaning using embedded visuals. These materials are critically important when you are teaching a young child. Children between the ages of 4 ½ and 7 are highly visual thinkers anyway; that is the time of life in which their right brain is rapidly developing. It makes the most sense to start out right and teach these young learners in a way most compatible with how their brains are working.

We can quite easily provide visual cues as we teach sight words and even explicit phonics concepts. But the great good news is that there are ways to help teach the visual learner to begin to make his own mental pictures. Children are their own best allies when they are helped to understand what they need in order to learn.

Show her an example of what you want

To this day, if I am asked to do something I’ve not done before; failure is pretty much guaranteed unless I can see an example of a finished product that is considered to be successful.  I need to SEE something to understand the expectations for me. If you ask your child to draw a picture to help him solve a math problem, show her an example of you doing just that with a similar problem, modeling for her your thinking process as you do it.

Practice visualization

When young children are working on learning to read, in many cases, they don’t instinctively know that the reason they are learning to read is to extract meaning. There are many, many children who “do not comprehend” what they are reading, but really, did anyone ever tell them to think about what the passage meant? Or did we just tell them the phonics rules, teach them how to recognize high frequency words, or drill them on correct spelling? Did we ever explicitly tell them to visualize what they are reading? As I worked with young children on learning to read, I found it very helpful to prompt them to stop, close their eyes and make a picture in their minds of what they had just read. If they answered, “It’s just dark in here,” I prompted them to open their eyes and read the passage again with the goal in mind this time of making a picture. I have done this with kids as young as kindergarten. It was not an instant process, but it did work better and better over time.

The starting point was to show them a stylized letter from our Alphabet Teaching Cards. We’d explore the details in the picture, then I would have them close their eyes and wait until they could see the picture in their minds. At this point, they would open their eyes and quickly draw on a whiteboard what they saw in their minds.

Using our SnapWords® is a next step. The image that is embedded in each word conveys to the child the fact that the collection of symbols MEANS something. The image makes it impossible to ignore the meaning of the word. But again, if you ask the child to close his eyes and “see” the word in his mind, you can even focus in on details. You can show the child the SnapWord for CLEAN. Talk about the lady with the blue bandana that has not one but two dusting rags. Is she in a hurry to get a lot done? Give the child a chance to study the word, then lay the card down and ask him to close his eyes and see the word again in his mind. Ask him to describe for you what he’s seeing.

Finally, as a child is reading a book, stop him after each thought and ask him to close his eyes and imagine what he read. If you prompt him to do this, visualization will become easier and easier. In addition, he will learn that he needs to focus in this way in order to extract meaning not only out of reading material, but out of people’s words he is listening to.

Write directions out

One easy help to offer your picture thinker is to write out for him what you want him to do. I know it takes me a few reads sometimes to make sense out of directions for a new task. If there are only auditory directions provided, there is nothing to refer back to. A middle aged graduate student might have the motivation to ask for clarification, but I pretty much can guarantee you that a first grader won’t always feel the burning need to do so. We can save ourselves some frustration if we take a few more steps in helping picture thinkers know what is expected.

Turning pictures into words

Helping visual learners grasp new information by using images and helping them learn to visualize is great. However, my recent struggle to put words to my research made me understand in a very personal way more about the challenges our picture thinkers have in our traditional school setting. Once visual learners have made pictures in their minds, the other half of the issue is helping them learn how to put their mental images into words. I have thought carefully about how I felt when in the middle of trying to verbalize what I’d learned. I’ve relived the frustration, the suspicion I had that I was somehow a bit slow, and the resulting discouragement, and it makes my heart go out to children.

What can be done?

If so many of our population are picture thinkers, we need to spend a lot of effort reevaluating our teaching approach and materials. Much of our traditional system is not kid-friendly. It hurts me that this is so, and that we are calling children disabled when they can’t learn via traditional approaches. Some of our most creative potential problem solvers and designers are kids who think in pictures. Let’s encourage them to use their giftedness by opening the door to alternate ways of learning and new ways of expressing their learning. We can make it so that all our children love learning.

Child1st Publications, www.child-1st.com

So You Find it Hard to Just Memorize?

Just this morning, a mother told me that her son is having increasing difficulty with reading and math. He was tested at his school and diagnosed with something called “specific learning disability.” He was given an IEP (individualized education plan) which allows various helps, but the mother said she feels he is not disabled; rather, he is not learning the way he is being taught. She is not alone. Over and over again I hear from parents who are desperate to find something for children who have been judged unable to learn.

Who should get the label?

I think in many, many cases, the teaching method should be the one labeled rather than the child. If a child cannot memorize strings of information or facts, is there something wrong with her? OR, is there something less than desirable with how she is being taught? Is memorization the best way to teach? Is it effective? How many adults out there find it difficult to just memorize? Is there a more effective way? If so, why are we still relying so heavily on memorization?

Alternatives to memorization

Use visuals that SHOW the information so that the child can look, understand, and remember. Example: understanding the difference between b and d. You can either tell the child, OR you can show the child a visual of the stylized letters. For the kinesthetic learner, you can act out the difference between b and d.

Let the child work out the problem for himself. Instead of asking the child to memorize math facts, give him some manipulatives such as plastic disks and two bowls, or a handful of smooth pebbles and two cups, and let him work out the answers as you pose the problems. Example: “Toby, count out five pebbles. Now, let’s find out how many pairs of numbers will equal five. In order to do this, divide your pebbles into the two cups and write down what you find.” The child would put the pebbles in the two cups and would write 2+3. You would prompt him to divide them up again another way. He might put one pebble in one cup and the remaining four in the second cup. He would then write 1+4. After some thought, he might decide that he can put all the pebbles in the first cup and have none for the second cup to make 5+0. The child will have discovered that there are only three pairs of numbers that will equal five. This is powerful. The child will have thought it through, handled the pebbles, represented the combinations in writing, and he would have been engaged in the activity rather than being passive.

For the visual & tactile learner, use dot cards to practice learning how many each number is. For instance, if you steer a child away from counting up to add, she will begin to rely on her strong  visual sense to understand the “how many” of each number as well as to learn the combinations of numbers that equal each target number. Example: These dot cards show various ways to arrange five dots so that not only will a child have practice just glancing and guessing “how many,” but also a strongly visual learner will begin to absorb that 5 can be made of different combinations of numbers. If you encourage your child to rely on her visual strengths, she will be much farther ahead than if you sit her down to do math the old way, which is to count up, count on her fingers, or just write the answers to problems written on paper. BO-ring!

Get away from memorizing words. How many of you have had children who just struggled to the point of discouragement with trying to learn to recognize words he was supposed to be learning? What is engaging about that? Frankly, it is the quickest way to make reading a chore and something to be avoided. Our colorful SnapWords® have rescued many a child from the drudgery of having to try and memorize (and later recall!) his all important lists of words. If you show your child a word like this one, is it not clear how engaged he will be? What will happen is this: He will put himself right into a pleasurable time when he was in the store with Mom and saw a teddy bear (or something cooler!). He will take a picture of the word in his mind and his recall will be easy. The tall letter was Mom, the U was the buggy holding the bear, and the Y was the front of the buggy. Best of all, the your smart visual learner will attach a positive emotion to this experience of learning how to read “BUY” so that rather than avoiding word work in the future, he will come to look forward to it.

Let’s throw out the labels!

I’d love to suggest something here. Please, can we be a little slower to call a child disabled? Is it not in the perfect design of a child to learn via pictures, images, movement? Is that not how she was beautifully created? What if we promised to react to a struggling child by looking FIRST at what we are doing to see if it might need changing? We could transform the world for many children! There is a better way; there is a more child-friendly way to teach.

Location, Location, Location

It is so amazing to me how a brain associate places with either good or bad experiences - or how returning to a particular place instantly throws one into a particular state of mind. When I was little, we lived overseas and Mom taught us school. While I was able to learn to read without many hiccups, math and I were not friends! Under my mom’s regime, if I missed problems, I had to fix them all. Most days it took as long for me to get my arithmetic paper done correctly as it did to do all the other subjects combined.

Given my early non-expertise in math, it was pretty interesting that when we returned to the States just as I was to begin eighth grade, I was so far ahead of my classmates that I was seated with another girl in the back of the classroom to work through a “special book.” I was enrolled in a boarding school for high school. 9th grade Algebra I didn’t cause me any problems. I was still far enough ahead that I was able to daydream through most of class, and skated by, making B’s pretty consistently.

Imagine my chagrin the following year when I had Algebra II in the same classroom with the same teacher, and I discovered that the moment I entered the room, I slipped into the familiar daydreaming mode that had come to be associated in my brain with that location. Reality set in. I had to work hard to kick the daydreaming habit; I was not going to pass Algebra II unless I stayed in complete focus during class.

Fast forward

In the past several years, I have had occasion to think about location and how it impacts a brain’s performance. While teaching Title 1 groups, I had the chance to talk quite a bit with individual students about their own habits, and what contributed to their success or failures in the regular classroom.

My room was located in a corner of the school building where two hallways intersected. There were big windows to the outside with a view of field and trees, a cozy kidney table, and two walls of whiteboards with a great supply of colored markers for the kids to use. Bulletin boards held student work, and we kept charts with stars for each group that came into my room. It was a cozy, safe place, and students did great.

In that particular room, students felt safe to venture out and take risks because they had an ample safety net. We raised the bar for achievement to 100% on quizzes, but we also had an agreement that if a student did not make 100% on the first try, he or she could elect to study a bit more and come back during lunch for a retake. Surprisingly enough, every student in 3rd grade and up who did not make a 100% on their first tries asked to come back. There were even times when a child made a 100% first time, but asked to retake the quiz anyway, just to prove they could do it again!

Venturing back out

One thing that worked so well in our room was engaging each student in conversation about what  was going on in his/her thinking when doing school work. The children learned to pay attention to how they were feeling or to what they were thinking when they did particularly well or when they failed again. Kids can be their own best allies when they learn to pay attention to their thoughts and feelings.

While the classroom teachers were satisfied that their students were learning while in my room, some grumbled a bit over the fact that the kids were still coming to me for their quizzes. “If they can do the work, they should be able to do it in my classroom” was the feeling. There was also an idea circulating that if the student failed in their room, likely we were giving too much help in my room. By mid-year, one 4th grade teacher requested that her students stay in her classroom to take their next quiz. Of course I agreed. At lunch, however, I four distressed boys rushed into my room, extremely upset that they had failed their quiz in class.

I knew the boys were prepared, knew they should have scored a 100%, but also suspected what had gone wrong. I wanted them to think through what had happened. First I asked the boys to sit down at the kidney table and I gave them the quiz again. They each scored 100%. They were gratified, but still upset. So I asked, “What were you thinking about when you were taking the quiz in your classroom?”

Three of the boys just shrugged their shoulders, but the fourth one articulated very succinctly what had happened. “I got my paper. Then I looked around and thought, ‘I’m going to have to pass my paper up the row when I am done and everyone is going to see how awful I did.' Then suddenly my brain got fuzzy and jumbled and I couldn’t remember anything.” This explanation illustrates so clearly how our emotions can hijack our thinking ability. I explained to the boys what was going on. They associated being in the regular classroom with past failures and their fear of failing was self-fulfilling. Armed with this new understanding, what remained was to work on thinking new thoughts.

What can we do to help?

 One thing we can do to help children overcome negative emotions around learning is to change the environment as much as possible. Even if the location is in the same room as before, you can make the environment new and safe by moving the children’s desks or letting them sit on bright pillows on the floor with clipboards to write on. Provide a lot of security, warmth, and scaffolding as they begin to relearn. Rather than viewing the extra support as “cheating,” let’s view it as supporting children while they learn to overcome their fear of failure. If we can take the time to remove any possibility of threat, the children will once again be able to focus on thinking about the work at hand. I read somewhere that for every negative comment a person hears, they have to hear 50 positive ones to counter the power of that one negative comment. If this is true, only imagine how much positive support a child needs who has been labeled with a disability!

Child1st Publications: www.child-1st.com

Everything Hinges on Emotion

I found a great article today on emotions in learning. It was written by Candy Lawson, Ph.D., from the Center for Development and Learning.  (Go to http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/connect_emotions.php to read the whole article).

“Priscilla Vail, an expert on learning, has described emotion as the "on-off switch to learning". According to Mrs. Vail, when the switch is off, the system is dormant and only the potential for learning is available. When the switch is on, the pathway to learning is open. When the limbic system interprets sensory information and dispatches it to the cortex for processing, it sets the emotional tone of the information before it reaches the cortex. If the limbic system interprets the information as positive, it dispatches a message of purpose and excitement and directs our behavior toward a goal. When this happens, we become motivated to act; thinking and learning are enhanced. When the interpretation is negative, the switch is turned off and thinking and learning are stifled.”

For better or for worse

Emotions, quite simply, envelop every experience we have. When I think about gardening, I remember vividly the pleasurable experiences I’ve had in the past – the sun warming my back, the fragrance of the flowers I planted last year now blooming, the humming of bees, the satisfaction of seeing the black earth turned over to welcome new plants, and the brilliance of color. I also relive the relief from stress which gardening gave me during some difficult times in my life. I have come to associate gardening with enough positives that when given the chance to repeat the experience, I’m ready to start!

Conversely, when experiences are unpleasant, we associate negative emotions with them. I remember being asked to do a training session for our staff during an in-service day. I prepared zealously for days! The day arrived in which I was to present. Everything went wrong! First of all, we all sat through four grueling hours of a different training session. As I sat through that session, I began to feel ill. I ached all over, and all I wanted to do was put my head down and cover myself up with a blanket. Lunch time came. Faculty was drained and ready to go home. But instead, they had to move to another room where they were to participate in yet another training. I stood up to begin the session, and all I can remember about it is how much I didn’t want to be there, how badly I wanted to lie down, how quickly I tried to cover the material, and how jaded everyone looked. I was happier than anyone when finally we called it quits for the day.

The next morning, however, my mortification set in. Why hadn’t I canceled and just gone home? The negative emotions I had attached to that experience made it difficult for me to agree to another in-service presentation when I was later asked again. All the mortification of that previous time flooded in to remind me of exactly why I did not want to ever repeat that experience. It didn’t matter if the place and time were different; the negative associations were that strong.

Imagine how the kids feel

 Again I quote:

“Some children (and adults) have trouble managing negative emotions. In children, emotional problems are usually manifested as behavioral problems. Some children tend to externalize or under-control their emotions and behavior. They may act out their negative thoughts and feelings by being impulsive or aggressive. Anger is the core emotion associated with externalizing behaviors.

Frustration often leads to anger. Frustration occurs when our wants, efforts and plans are blocked. We do not get what we want. Children who have a low tolerance for frustration believe that the world is "too hard" and they can't stand it. Children with learning differences are often easily frustrated because tasks, such as learning to read, are incredibly difficult for them. They try their best but don't succeed regardless of how hard they try. Children also respond with anger in situations that are perceived as threatening to their self-esteem. If a child is being picked on in school because he can't read, he might react with anger.”

All of us have worked with children who were disruptive and did not seem to be trying. What is hard to remember when we are in the middle of a teaching these children is that there is most likely a well of negative experiences behind their unacceptable behavior. The child will not be able to verbalize, “The reason I don’t want to try again is because last time I did, I failed and the kids laughed at me. From now on, I am going to do anything in my power to avoid a repeat of that awful experience.”

My dream is to work at Burger King

I will never forget an eighth grade student who informed me that his goal in life was to work at Burger King, and this being so, he didn’t really see the need to do any of the school work demanded of him. I think someone in the office had asked me to talk to him, so I was sitting with Fritz (pretend name) trying to get to the root of what caused his behaviors.

I had just read that if we can discover what the child really wants deep down inside, we can use that to motivate him to work and perform. So I asked Fritz, “If you could pick anything in the world to do when you grow up, what would it be?” At first he was adamant. He wanted to work at Burger King with an eye to management some day. It took work to get him beyond the realm of what he had come to believe was likely and into the realm of his secret dreams. Finally, Fritz told me that if anything were possible, he’d love to be in business in Asia in some field of technology. I could see Fritz come to life as he began to imagine his dream could become a reality. To make a long story short, once he believed his dream could become real, Fritz seemed to have no trouble digesting the fact that he not only would need to finish eighth grade, but would also need to go to high school and college.

Fritz said that he’d been tested and put into special education and he just gave up at that point. He was stupid, and he got mocked for his label.

We discussed strategies and goals for him, including a work ethic, all in light of getting him to his dream life. Several days later, I asked Fritz if he would mind mentoring a 5th grader, Scott, who was out of control and was repeatedly thrown out of class. I suggested he set up regular times to meet with Scott during the week and offered my break-out room for them to meet in. It was amazing to hear Fritz encouraging Scott not only with his math, but also with his goals in life. For both boys, negative behaviors nearly disappeared. Fritz had gone, in a very short time, from being the failing nobody to being a tutor and mentor and example to another student. That was powerful.

Discover their desires and follow them

Belief in oneself is paramount. But most children cannot arrive at this belief by themselves. If they have failed, it becomes even more difficult. Something radical needs to be done to rekindle their belief in themselves.

They need us to uncover their abilities, hidden behind their behaviors. They need us to believe in them, to help them write down strategies that will enable them. They need us to take the time to discover solutions for them when it is the norm and far easier to just test and label them.

If a child has been failing for years, find out what their dream is and help them follow it. The time taken to build positive emotions could impact the whole direction of a young life.

Child1st Publications, www.child-1st.com

Stylized Sight Words Capture Kids' Attention

I have some of your products and must say that they are AWESOME!!!  My son stopped complaining about sight words the moment I showed him your version :)     

                                                                          --recent customer

We're glad! The great thing about images is that they really do capture children's attention. Then, doing the suggested motion written on the back of each of our sight word cards makes the meaning of the word stick.

More information about Child1st Publications is available on our website.

Just a Bit Out of Focus

I read a couple of articles this morning, one from Ed.magazine, the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the other from NPR. The central topics had to do with how to go about improving teaching in our schools. The Ed.magazine article focused on improving the quality of walk-throughs (visits to classrooms by supervisory people) by improving the definition of what they are looking for as they observe. The article from NPR focused on the quality of teaching college programs. Here is an excerpt from that article entitled What Should Go Into A Teaching Degree? by Claudio Sanchez:

 “Christenbury [professor at VA Commonwealth U] knows all too well that some education professors are clueless about kids and just about everything else that happens in classrooms these days. She once taught at a university in another state where students were baffled that some of their professors had never set foot in a school.

It's that disconnect that makes Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, want to blow up some colleges of education and start over. "Education schools have, in many cases, become irrelevant and often of very low quality," Levine says. Levine has spent the past five years studying what he calls the "crisis" in the preparation of classroom teachers.

"The curriculum at schools of education has little to do with practice, what goes on in schools," says Levine. "There's a gap that's a mile wide. Senior professors don't participate in schools. There are universities around this country that place their students for student-teaching in failing schools with failing teachers. That's a major problem."

Camille Zombro, president of San Diego's teachers union, says she's surveyed teachers and found that it doesn't matter how good their training was. Many are still underprepared and overwhelmed. "I was stunned by the amount of paper-pushing, mind-numbing, meeting someone else's requirements," Zombro says. "That's what's pushing people out the door. It's not the kids — it's the frustration. Fifty percent of teachers are turning over within the first five years. I mean, yikes!"

Trying to make it better

We are all trying to make education better for our children. Funds are allocated for various special needs, new programs are launched, new approaches to teaching mandated and scripted for us, new textbooks to replace the ones that were the newest and best just two years ago, more and more paperwork and meetings required of teachers, SO much testing, so much required “planning” written and displayed for the frequent walk-throughs, and the list goes on and on. Announcements come on the classroom TV, intercoms buzz with questions from the office, special needs personnel tap on the door with questions, children are pulled out mid-lesson for sessions with other staff members…. Truly, when I taught in the classroom it was exceedingly difficult to have the presence of mind to do much more than get through the day.

Considering how interrupted my days became and how full of extraneous demands from above that were supposed to raise our failing school out of the ditch it had fallen into, the truth is that the “good stuff” with my children happened in small handfuls of minutes squeezed in here and there. I have had occasion to look back and really scrutinize all that went on, to honestly pinpoint exactly what helped my children learn.

Where should our focus be?

The critical question here is: “How are we going to determine where the problem lies?” In my opinion, the problem of poor education in our country is never going to get fixed no matter how much money is thrown at it, no matter how many new programs are initiated – unless we first stop to figure out exactly and in precise detail where the problem really lies. Where are we really failing? If we don’t identify this exact spot, nothing will improve.

In my opinion, the exact spot for focus was hinted at in the first paragraph I quoted above. “…some education professors are clueless about kids…” The article from Harvard also hinted at where focus should be but I had to really read between the lines. They were saying that supervisors are not in agreement about what they are looking for. Many focus on the performance of the teacher. They are warm but not hot; they have not hit the spot right on.

It is my belief, and the belief that fuels us at Child1st Publications, that the very specific target we should focus on is the child. If we do not look at the child first, we will not have the wisdom to know how to remedy education in America.

What is in a look?

There was a specific time in my life I can point to when my attention turned to the child and I see that time as pivotal in my life. I was sitting on the floor with some preschoolers and it suddenly struck me. Why are these particular children having trouble remembering what we are “learning?” I intuited that they were bright children, smart, capable, confident – but they were not learning.

From that moment on, everything I did, read, wrote, observed, and studied was motivated by my need to answer that question. I became a passionate observer of children and the more I tried to get inside their heads, the more clearly I could see what was working, what was NOT working, and what in my teaching was so much unnecessary clutter. Like any other skill we develop, the more we practice, the better we get at it. And so it was. Because I was convinced that children CAN learn and that even failing kids are smart, the onus passed from the failing kids to rest squarely on ME as their teacher. I realized that if any one of my kids failed, it was on me to find something that would jive with their brains.

It was not quick

The process of studying children was not quick. It was very long, laborious, intensive, but also thrilling, amazing, rewarding beyond belief, and life changing. It all comes down to what we focus on. PhD’s all too often spend their time exchanging brilliant deductions and studies within their rarified world. Studies are conducted, articles written, new initiatives launched. Papers are published, books written, and you know what? Kids are still failing. Nothing is getting better! Dare I suggest that maybe the focus is misplaced?

In my experience, my own best learning happened on the floor at eye level with kids I viewed as the fount of all my information. Instead of asking my profs all the questions, I asked the kids most of my questions. “How did you remember that?” was one of the most frequent questions I asked as I was learning. If I tried a little strategy with a child, I would ask him, “Did this help you understand?” My grades were assigned by the kids themselves in that when I saw the lights go on, I gave myself an A. I followed their lead. I did what worked for them, and stopped doing what seemed to yield little or no benefit.

Raising the bar

The most exciting outcome of these years spent with my eyes three feet off the ground is that I have seen scores of children go from failing to way above grade level expectation. That is what happens when we get it right. When we teach in a way that we have learned from our kids, miracles happen. Rather than cutting the spelling list in half for failing kids, teach spelling a new way and increase the list by 50%. Then raise the expectation to 100% accuracy. Does this sound outrageous? It truly is not. In my little Title 1 room, I saw upwards of 70 kids every week, 2-3 times a week, grades K through 7. This approach worked across the board. Reading scores soared.

Best of all is that the cure is not rocket science. The remedy does not lie in intricate, carefully scripted new programs. As a teacher in schools, I became incredibly stressed each time administration announced a new program we had to train for. It seemed so sad to me that we had yet another program to spend time learning. I just wanted someone to say to the staff, “Take the time to study your children first.”

More information is available at www.child-1st.com.

It's a Knotty Question

“Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.”

[September 27, 2009, New York Times Magazine, Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?  By PAUL TOUGH]

Mixed emotions

Seems lately I’ve been getting my brain fizzes from reading what others are saying in the newspaper. This article stopped me in my tracks. I had such mixed emotions as I read. Part of me was silently yelling HUZZAH and the other part was sad and horrified.

Recently, I have been hearing people talk a lot about executive function, and to tell the truth, several months ago I had to ask to what they referred. When I heard the answer, I was speechless. That’s all it is? Self-regulation? Years ago, we said “self-control” in reference to something quite similar. Both require the ability to go beyond what our emotions dictate at that moment, pause to think through the situation, visualize outcomes of either this choice or that one, and then to delay gratification long enough to see a desired outcome materialize. While all these skills make for a socially adept person, those same skills take a child far in the classroom as well.

That notion’s been around for a while

A decade ago I read and thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Goleman’s (1995) book Emotional Intelligence. Read the following book review from Amazon:

“There was a time when IQ was considered the leading determinant of success. In this fascinating book, based on brain and behavioral research, Daniel Goleman argues that our IQ-idolizing view of intelligence is far too narrow. Instead, Goleman makes the case for "emotional intelligence" being the strongest indicator of human success. He defines emotional intelligence in terms of self-awareness, altruism, personal motivation, empathy, and the ability to love and be loved by friends, partners, and family members. People who possess high emotional intelligence are the people who truly succeed in work as well as play, building flourishing careers and lasting, meaningful relationships. Because emotional intelligence isn't fixed at birth, Goleman outlines how adults as well as parents of young children can sow the seeds.”

It doesn’t come prepackaged

The book resonated with me because of my beliefs on rearing children. While I was shaped from birth by my parents and other adults in my life, another factor that contributes to my point of view is my age. My views were already pretty formed before it got to be really popular to let the child take the lead in her own upbringing. By the time my own children were grown, I found myself working with parents and children where frequently the child was clearly calling the shots. It was not a happy time for anyone--not me, not the parents, not the children in question. No one was having fun; the system was not working. Why? Because a child does not come with emotional intelligence prepackaged inside her like a little seed just waiting for the appropriate time to begin to germinate and grow. Young children quite simply act out of their emotions. If they want something, they will take it, or cry until they get it. Their world is very narrowly about them in the here and now. They have to be guided into thinking about things outside of themselves, such as other people, consequences to choices, etc. As frightening as it may be, it falls to us as parents to model and guide and shape them into competent, confident people.

Contrary to popular opinion

In grad school we were taught to never say no - about how damaging it is to the child to hear a negative word like that one. Bad for the self esteem, they said. At the time, I was 10-20 years older than my classmates, and had reared two children. For me, the topic under discussion was not theoretical; it was couched in absolute reality. I had struggled countless times with the question, “What should I do now?” when faced with a question on how to guide a child of mine. One particular day I raised my hand in class and expressed the opinion that if a child never hears no, he likely will never truly understand yes – both fundamental, real life concepts. The class fell silent as every eye was trained on me in disapproval.

My response to the theory of never saying no is that the only way a child will really understand what yes means is if you also teach her what no means. If you never say no, yes has no meaning. By the time a child gets to kindergarten, if she’s had no training in self-regulation, if she’s never heard “no” as a word that helps steer her in a wise direction, brace for a rough year. Some of the scariest people on earth are out-of-control kindergartners.

It starts shortly after birth

Reality is, if we want our children to self regulate, it is up to us to guide them into knowing how to do that. It means we have to think about what our role should be with our kids, what we desire their life to be like, and then view ourselves as responsible for getting them there. When faced with behaviors we are not keen on, we could ask the question: “What will this behavior of my two-year-old look like on a teenager?” Asking that question can bring clarity into many situations.

When a child is two and wants a sticky candy bar and it is getting close to meal time, he might not take  kindly to hearing “not now.” His reaction might be anything from asking again, to whining, to crying, to an out-and-out tantrum. We pretty much expect a toddler to behave this way. If he is never taught or guided into a more mature form of reacting, it is likely that as a teenager, tantrums will be the order of the day, only then the stakes will be much higher. Think “driver’s license” and “tantrum” for a really scary picture. Teaching a tiny child how to self-regulate is far easier than trying to begin when the child is already half-grown and his ability to do a lot of harm to himself and others is much greater.

Nip it in the bud

That term pretty much sums it up for me. We can far more easily nip naughty behaviors in the bud when the child is very young than we can when she is on the brink of adulthood and still choosing out of her emotions. When the child is two, nipping looks like guidance: no harm done and a lot of good instilled.

Overall, it's a knotty question. How do we find the balance between helping our children develop executive function so they can grow into highly successful adults, without completely stifling who they are?

 

Child1st Publications, LLC

More information is available at: www.child-1st.com