The Whole Child

Post submitted by Whole Child Blogger Chris Perez.

To keep students from feeling left out—and thus risk losing them along the way—Spence Rogers, in his ASCD Annual Conference session “Reaching Strategies That Reach Challenging Students,” urged educators to not allow students to feel embarrassed and not let them shut down in class.

Rogers, author of Teaching for Excellence, offered techniques to help engage students in classroom interaction that wouldn’t make them feel ashamed about their answers in class. The moment people feel embarrassed in front of their peers, their adrenaline kicks in, causing them to stop talking and think more about the humility they’ve endured, he explained.

He used the example of students answering questions out loud. Often kids feel humiliated if their answer is wrong, especially when they are called on. As a way to avoid this kind of situation, Rogers suggested using deflective questioning, which involves asking a question in a manner that reflects how someone else might answer it. Allowing students to feel that they are answering for someone else relieves some of the pressure on themselves.

“Ask students to repeat what they just heard you say,” Rogers said. “This type of questioning keeps them alert and allows them to be part of the activity. It also allows those who may not have heard the question the first time to actually hear it again and gives them that second opportunity to process it.”

Commanding students to comply with orders tends to lose them in the process, according to Rogers. Instead of telling the class to open their books to a particular page in the text, he said a better approach is to have their peers make sure everyone is on the same page, which makes the direction seem less authoritative.

Rogers also gave tips on making sure all students were engaged in class activities. One suggestion was to refrain from asking them to form groups, which can tempt students to form cliques with certain peers and leaves other students feeling neglected. Instead, Rogers said to instruct students to look around to make sure that no one is left out.

Using the techniques with participants during the session itself showcased how they would work in the classroom. For example, he asked everyone to thank and compliment one another to get them accustomed to doing the same in the classroom.

Post submitted by Whole Child Bloggers Barbara Michelman, Laura Berry, and Melissa McCabe.

Don Tapscott, best-selling author of Grown Up Digital and former educational researcher, got laughs and applause for his up-front, optimistic perspective of digital natives and the future of education during his general session at ASCD’s Annual Conference this weekend.

In a self-deprecating style with humorous asides, Tapscott urged educators to empower student-led collaboration and to reinvent traditional methods of instruction by embracing technology.

“Internet is not a problem; it is a learning opportunity,” Tapscott said. “Don’t blame the Internet for how our approach to learning and thinking has changed. That’s like blaming the library for ignorance.”

Tapscott spoke about the changing generations, explaining that the generation currently making its way through our education system is the first generation born into a major shift in the mode of cognition. “We are creating a generation that is thinking differently from every generation before,” he said. “[These students] are not just multitasking; they have better abilities to code-switch. They are constantly searching, storytelling, collaborating, developing, and authenticating.”

Tapscott addressed the “negative, cynical” attitudes many adults have about today’s young people, who often refer to them as an “army of narcissists” or say that they are dumb. The data, he said, prove otherwise: “They are not the dumbest generation. They are the smartest generation.”

Tapscott also noted that the family model has changed drastically from the 1950s cliché of the TV show Father Knows Best. Beyond the increase in nontraditional families, Tapscott described how today’s kids are “lapping their parents on the information track.” Because of this, relationships between parents and their children are shifting from the top-down, father-figure model to a layered model of mutual respect and partnership in which kids are at the center.

So what do these shifts mean for educators? First, the traditional mode of delivery needs to change, because lecturing is no longer effective. Tapscott noted the irony of saying that to an audience in a lecture from a stage. However, he explained that he was not trying to provide facts, but rather attempting to “change your mind about [the Net generation], and that’s all I can achieve here.”

He encouraged the educators assembled to disable the generational firewalls that have been erected between them and their students and to embrace a culture of collaboration, integration, and self-organization. Banning social media such as Facebook says “We don’t understand your tools. We don’t trust you,” Tapscott said.

Customization is also key. A one-size-fits-all approach to education won’t work when kids are used to searching online for exactly what they want, when they want it.

And it’s not just pedagogy that needs to change. Tapscott said that we need to shift how we develop content and curriculum so that it’s more collaborative and multilayered. Textbooks alone aren’t enough. We need rich, interactive material.

“For the first time in human history, kids are the authority,” he said. “They know more about the digital revolution and its implications for learning than teachers.”

ASCD’s Annual Conference 2010 is underway in San Antonio, Tex., and here at the Whole Child Blog we’ll be providing you with summaries of sessions that tackle whole child themes. First up is ASCD author Bob Sullo’s session, “The Motivated Student,” which might actually be a bit of a misnomer. Sullo began his session by saying that we need to stop motivating our students because motivating is a form of control. Instead, we need to engage and inspire students.

So how do we do that?

1. Build positive relationships. Exhibiting enthusiasm exclusively for the subject matter is only going to reach the kids who are intrinsically interested in that subject matter; relationships are essential for engaging all the other students in the material. Unsurprisingly, research shows learning improves in the presence of positive relationships.
2. Create relevant lessons. When students perceive something as important and relevant to them, they are much more likely to give it their full attention, creating the conditions for maximum achievement. Demonstrating relevance is especially important with adolescents who are in the developmental stage of identity formation.
3. Set realistic expectations. Students are most compelled to put forth sufficient effort to learn when they believe that success is within their grasp. When students can’t succeed even when they try, they typically seek power in less responsible ways, such as disrupting the class or adopting an “I don’t care” attitude. Every student deserves the chance to be successful and one way of ensuring this is to grade kids based on their own growth.
4. Create a needs-satisfying classroom. Students have five basic needs: belonging/connecting, power/competence, freedom, fun, and survival/safety. If these basic needs are being met, students are less likely to act out and more likely to be engaged in learning. Not every single classroom activity needs to meet every single need. But during a block of time, teachers should implement a plan that provides students with a reasonable chance of having these needs met.
5. Teach students to self evaluate. Self evaluation fosters decision making, creates an atmosphere of collaboration, and invites kids to take ownership of their learning.

For more information on engaging and inspiring students, visit Sullo’s author page and follow him on Twitter @bobsullo.