Educating educators:
If anyone is going to teach they are going to need to know who
they are teaching, what they are going to teach, and how to teach it.
Therefore, those who are teaching poor students are going to have to know and
be able to identify in their students the ways their students are poor, how
this effects their thinking and the hidden rules of their culture, and how to
work with them to learn and incorporate the hidden rules of the middle class. A
Framework for Understanding Poverty would be a starting point and incorporating
the curriculum that Ms. Payne has devised in her AHA process[1]
as part of standard teaching curricula would make be helpful as well.
Non-cognitive skills again are things like perseverance,
self-control, social intelligence, curiosity, gratitude, enthusiasm, and
optimism. These can be incorporated into the standard academic curriculum[2]
and taught at any age[3].
This is critical for academic achievement to translate into lifetime success.
Training in this skill set will be critical for current and future
teachers.
In addition to academic classes as part of teacher training
and continuing teacher education it would be imperative to have on site peer
reviews on a regular basis to talk about and solve problem situations. In order to do this effectively I would favor
cameras in the classroom[4]
so that issues to be addressed could be captured in real time and discussed
among colleagues in regularly scheduled review sessions. With every profession,
medicine, engineering, law, one goes through school to get the basics but hones
their craft through experience. For
teachers to share their experience and develop their craft with the help of
their peers on an ongoing basis would help to ensure that continual improvement
in that craft.
It is true in any service profession but probably more so
with teaching that the attitude of the teacher has a lot to do with their
effectiveness. Teachers deal with children so providing a caring nurturing
environment is crucial to the success of their teaching. Peer review of the
type I described can spot problems in this area and more importantly provide
support and feedback to help educators maintain the high standards we want them
to aspire to.
Measuring achievement with students:
The end points are softer in the area of cultural
intelligence and non-cognitive learning but they are measurable and they can be
incorporated into academic testing. Testing for cultural intelligence could
involve role-playing exercises. (How do I balance my checkbook? How do I budget
for the month with this income?) Testing non-cognitive skills could include
tests of perseverance and cooperation. (How does this student solve problems
and work with their team in building a robot for their science project?) Identifying these skills as learning
objectives and measuring their attainment is key to making education more
complete.
The other 60%:
Will all this extra schooling with emphasis on hidden middle
class rules and non-cognitive learning help the middle class and upper class
majority provide something vital that is missing in the current curricula? I
think there is something vital that is missing and addressing that with a
curriculum change could provide it.
6.7% of Americans are clinically depressed.[5]
But that rate is 35% among college students[6]
and 27% among medical students, [7]
those who would be considered among the most academically successful in their
age group.
I think the following additions to the academic curriculum
would be helpful for all socioeconomic classes but particularly important in
addressing this problem.
Teaching meditative practice:
Victor Frankl said, "Between stimulus and
response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In
our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Among other things meditation
trains the brain to expand that space so that those who become proficient in it
can respond to the world in a more thoughtful and rational way. This is helpful in both emotional and
intellectual health.
Teaching emotional intelligence:
Emotional
intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's
emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and
empathetically.[8] Emotional intelligence is
a subset of non-cognitive skills that can be taught and contribute
significantly to personal and academic success.[9]
The
other non-cognitive skills:
It
is hard to be anxious or depressed if a student is enthusiastic and optimistic.
Of course, sometimes the going is hard and that takes perseverance. That said even with the best attitude,
talent, and effort one can muster sometimes we just don’t succeed. Failure may
not be an option if you are member of Special Forces but it is inevitable for
the rest of us and also an opportunity. We learn and can grow from our
mistakes. How we deal with failure is as much a measure of our character as
whatever makes us successful. Teaching children to accept responsibility and to
learn and grow from their mistakes would unburden them from an unnecessary
sense of failure and give them the capacity of resilience.
Adding
meditative practice, emotional intelligence, and non-cognitive learning skills
to the cognitive academic curriculum would help all students across the socioeconomic
spectrum to have the cognitive skills emotional intelligence and strength of
character to be happy, healthy, and successful as adults.
In
the next blog I will talk about how we would pay for all of this. I didn’t
think I would write so much about something about which I know so little but I
guess that is what this whole experiment is all about.
[1]
AHAprocess.com
[2]
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20749
[3]
http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/can_non_cognitive_skills_be_taught
[4]
I can imagine some push back on this. On the one hand, the object is not at all
punitive but educational. On the other, as far as big brother in the classroom,
we are talking about public schools with up to 25 witnesses for anything that
goes on in the room.
[5]
https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics#
[6]
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/06/college-students.aspx
[7]
https://www.amsa.org/anxiety-and-depression-the-risks-of-medical-school/
[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence
[9]
http://ei.yale.edu/who-we-are/mission/
