The Decline of Play and Rise in Children's Mental Disorders

Making Failure Harder Work Than Passing Chemistry seems to inspire a "D" mentality. A significant number of students just want to pass the class, meet their graduation requirement, and do it with as little effort as possible. Take Evelyn, for example, a junior in my chemistry class last term. Evelyn is a bright young lady, but she didn't see chemistry as relevant to her present or future, so she kept her head low, didn't engage in the material, missed about 20 percent of the class, and seemed to target a grade of 60 percent. That was at the beginning of the class. By the end of the term, Evelyn was sitting in the front row, volunteering to demonstrate how to solve problems, and getting frustrated with herself when her final grade in the class was a "B." Evelyn's grade had gone from a 60 percent to an 85 percent, but the real changes that I saw in her were much more rewarding than an improved grade point average. Many students will avoid working hard in a class that they see as challenging because of the risk involved.

How Free Play Can Define Kids’ Success Free, unstructured playtime gives kids a chance to discover their interests and tap into their creativity. It’s a crucial element for building resilience in children, an attribute they’ll need in order to become happy, productive adults. That’s Kenneth Ginsburg’s thesis and the core of his book Building Resilience in Children and Teens. Ginsburg, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who also works with homeless children, has spent a lot of time trying to help young people build tools they’ll need to succeed — even when trauma has marred early lives. But the word “success” can be loaded, often carrying different connotations. “So many of the things that we care about are completely learned through the creative process,” Ginsberg said at an event hosted by the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Ginsburg cautions parents that putting too much pressure on children’s academics might have negative effects in the long term. “All the best ideas haven’t been thought of yet.

Učitelji savjetuju: Kako djecu naučiti da uče u sedam koraka FotoliaIlustracija Svakog dana u tiskanom izdanju 24sata stručnjaci, profesori i učitelji, roditelji i djeca, obični ljudi i znanstvenici upozoravat će na probleme, otkrivati rješenja i objašnjavati slučajeve koji mogu pomoći da imamo bolje obrazovanje za bolju Hrvatsku. Najkorisnija vještina današnjice je vještina samostalnog učenja. Ta vještina nije čak ni pitanje odabira, nego pitanje opstanka. Prilike koje se svakodnevno mijenjaju traže čovjeka koji neprestano uči nešto novo da bi im mogao doskočiti. Činjenica je da učenici koji znaju učiti - vole učenje, a da ga oni koji nisu naučili učiti - ne vole, smatraju učenje nečim teškim i dosadnim pa prave probleme i sebi i učiteljima. Ne ide mu pa odustaje. 5) Odgađa primijeniti svoje znanje ili vještinu dok njome savršeno ne ovlada - jer se boji pogreške i neuspjeha. 6) Satima uči, ubija se od učenja. 7) Uči, a ne razmišlja doista o tome što uči. Što je alarmantno pogrešno u tih sedam najčešćih pogrešaka?

Failure Is Essential to Learning One of my favorite things to say when doing strategic planning with teachers is that the plan has a 50 percent chance of success and a 100 percent chance of teaching us how to get "smarter" about delivering on our mission. I love saying this because it conveys an essential truth: Failure is not a bad thing. It is a guaranteed and inevitable part of learning. In any and all endeavors, and especially as a learning organization, we will experience failure, as surely as a toddler will fall while learning to walk. Unfortunately, in education, particularly in this high-stakes accountability era, failure has become the term attached to our persistent challenges. Why Failure Is Important Early educational reformer John Dewey said it best: "Failure is instructive. Instead, we see failure as an opportunity for students to receive feedback on their strengths as well as their areas of improvement -- all for the purpose of getting better. How do you make failure students' friend? One Student's Story

Let the Child Cry: How Tears Support Social and Emotional Development The classroom is one of only a few primary places in which children can develop sense of self, communicate, and grow in relation to others. Any educator will attest to the fact that it is not a simple ride. Children experience conflicts and growing pains that can be challenging for a teacher who is balancing instruction with individual learning and group dynamics. In my work in education, I am fortunate to interact with a diversity of children and teachers in any given week, enhancing learning through the arts. This affords me the opportunity to observe a variety of class dynamics between teachers and students. Why We Cry Recently, I was working with an elementary-level class, and one of the children began to cry when conflict erupted between him and another child. Tears have many biological and psychological bases that have been discovered through research. If tears are necessary, why is crying in the classroom so difficult to deal with? 4 Ways to Stop Fighting the Tears 1. 2. 3. 4.

Larry Ferlazzo: Why I became a teacher During that period I spent most of my time working for a national organization called the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by legendary organizer Saul Alinsky in the late 1930's. Local groups of religious congregations, labor unions and community groups would come together in different cities and contract with the IAF for training and staffing needs to help them build an organization to improve their neighborhoods and change the power dynamics of their cities. I loved assisting people - who had never before been involved in public life - develop leadership skills and relationships across ethnic and neighborhood lines focused on common self-interests. Today is a great day! I will be able to own my first home, as will many others of us who have spent years working in the fields. Beginning with those students, and continuing into today's classes with Central American refugees, I have become a better teacher, and a better person, from what I have learned from my students.

Focus on the Process and Results Will Follow As I explored the correlation between great coaching and great teaching while interviewing highly successful sports coaches for a book about what teachers can learn from them, a common theme surfaced repeatedly. Several coaches stressed the importance of emphasizing the process rather than the results. This approach may seem counterintuitive, especially given the unprecedented emphasis on testing and performance in education today. However, the process-oriented approach to teaching and learning falls in line nicely with classroom instructional goals such as growth mindset and mastery. Because teachers are generally compliant, they will work diligently to produce the scores and performance that states, districts, and school leadership demand. The Problem Athletes at all levels face greater pressure today than ever before to be competitive, to score, to rack up statistics, and to produce wins. A Potential Solution Benefits of Emphasizing the Process

Education Week Published Online: November 6, 2015 Published in Print: November 11, 2015, as RTI Practice Falls Short of Promise, Research Finds Teacher Rebecca Decker works with students at Lone Star Elementary in Fresno, Calif., in 2011. The Sanger district, which includes Lone Star, was using response to intervention at the time to identify students early who were struggling in a particular subject, and get them help before they fell too far behind. —Manny Crisostomo for Education Week First Graders Who Were Identified for More Help Fell Further Behind Response to intervention has become ubiquitous as a framework to teach students to read in elementary schools, but the most comprehensive federal evaluation of the approach to date finds that it may hold back some of the children it was originally designed to support. The study, involving more than 20,000 students in 13 states, does not look at how students with more severe learning problems fare under RTI. Changes Tier to Tier Comparing Students Back to Top

Conscious Unsingle-ing Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. The courtship dance begins. Long talks, sweet texts, gradually they begin to share their life dreams and aspirations while assessing each other’s compatibility and similarities. One by one, the list of desirable characteristics check off. Boy and girl fall in lust. I’ve never been one comfortable being in the gray area. Today I find myself at an interesting intersection. Some would say that unless exclusivity is formally discussed, one should keep playing the field, an approach also known as ‘hedging’. What comes first? What you focus on manifests. Building a foundation for a potential relationship begins first and foremost with a choice. Photo by: Daniel Horacio Agostini

The Making of an Expert Thirty years ago, two Hungarian educators, László and Klara Polgár, decided to challenge the popular assumption that women don’t succeed in areas requiring spatial thinking, such as chess. They wanted to make a point about the power of education. The Polgárs homeschooled their three daughters, and as part of their education the girls started playing chess with their parents at a very young age. It’s not only assumptions about gender differences in expertise that have started to crumble. So what does correlate with success? Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born. The journey to truly superior performance is neither for the faint of heart nor for the impatient. Let’s begin our story with a little wine. What Is an Expert? In 1976, a fascinating event referred to as the “Judgment of Paris” took place. Two assumptions were challenged that day. How, then, can you tell when you’re dealing with a genuine expert? Practice Deliberately