Month: January 2018

Learning responsibility by growing salad greens

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In Montpelier, VT, biology students are tending to both their own education and a greenhouse serving their whole school district’s food system. The high school students are thriving with the responsibility of growing salad greens, which are purchased and served by all three schools in their district, as covered by Edutopia.

The greenhouse is part of an extended service-learning project led by Tom Sabo, science teacher and sustainability educator at Montpelier High School. He says, “When we’re producing food, there’s that purpose and that brings relevance. It’s all about student engagement and by engagement I’m not talking about just paying attention. I’m talking about an emotional, psychological commitment to their learning.”

All educators strive for the student engagement that Sabo describes, but it can be difficult to get there. One of the teachers he collaborates with on the project, Anne Watson, a physics teacher, breaks down the initial plan for a service-learning project: “I first look at, what are my objectives? What do I want kids to walk away with by the time this unit is over? How are the kids going to get from not knowing anything to a final product that is useful and helpful?”

In the case of Montpelier High’s greenhouse, that means all biology students tend daily to two trays of salad greens, that are harvested twice a week. Students handle all the necessary tasks of planting, watering, monitoring of harmful pests, and “thinning.” They also blog about their experience and constantly have to be on the lookout for new ways to apply their learning.

Local cafeteria staff feel that the project has positive results outside of just food production. They’ve noticed that students who played a role in the growing process are more likely to choose the nutritious greens for lunch.

Sabo reports, “The level of responsibility—we didn’t realize how big it was going to be . . . If you skip a day [the salad greens] die.”

It turns out having meaningful responsibility is the key to the engagement that Sabo described earlier, as well as forming character, and having the learning stick. As Watson reflected: “The kids are going to remember it forever.” She adds, “It’s not just about the grades for them.”

“I’ve seen students who are not really that engaged in school come alive when they get to a project that is going to mean something to someone else.”

Building responsibility and care for others through service learning is possible in all sectors of American education. The School Cultures and Student Formation project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture studied secondary schools in ten sectors—public, private, and home. Notre Dame sociologist David Sikkink studied pedagogical schools, which frequently use service learning. “Local service projects and social activism were seen as important forms of engagement” in caring for the local community, Sikkink writes in The Content of Their Character.

Vanderbilt University offers this definition of service learning: “A form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.” It doesn’t have to be a greenhouse. Edutopia offers a guide for planning a service unit.

District fights violence with conversation

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In Burien, Washington, elementary students begin their day with greetings, handshakes, eye contact, and polite questions. This activity is a cornerstone of the district’s impressive record of reducing discipline referrals—down 43% from 2014 to 2016—and suspensions and expulsions—down 70% in the same period.

But although the disciplinary overhaul at Highline Public Schools—a racially diverse district south of Seattle—has drawn praise, it has triggered criticism from teachers who worry that they weren’t trained adequately in alternative approaches to discipline. Teacher turnover has jumped, according to the Hechinger Report.

Some teachers say the changes happened too quickly and that classroom discipline has suffered. A high school special education teacher reported that students became more disrespectful after the threat of out-of-school suspensions diminished. And in-school suspensions rose dramatically as the number of students being sent home shrank.

Discipline is one of the most vexing issues for administrators. Schools often fail to initiate the teachers through formative practices, according to the Hechinger Report. At Highline, the district didn’t provide much guidance for how newly hired re-engagement specialists were expected to run their classrooms for students suspended in-school. Even where there is broad agreement among faculty and administration that a school or district needs a better formative culture, building that culture is slow and hard work.

This seems to be a challenge across urban, suburban, and rural contexts. In a chapter of The Content of their Character, a forthcoming publication from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, field researcher Richard Fournier observed: “Fragmentation also existed in the moral messaging between teachers and students, primarily as a result of the refusal or inability of school cultures to agree on deep, specific ethical and moral guidelines on serious social or academic issues that students encountered.”

At Highline, the district has committed to building a strong school culture.  The superintendent acknowledges missteps but is committed to staying the course—for the good of teachers and students.

Administrators who want to lead that sort of cultural change in a district or school are not without resources. The state of Illinois has published guidelines for implementing restorative justice in schools, and the International Institute for Restorative Practices offers graduate degrees, continuing education, and licensing opportunities.

Summer school prepares Jewish students for leadership

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A Yale University summer school is helping Jewish students who do not attend Jewish schools to study how their faith plays into a variety of issues—from public policy to economics, history and statesmanship—in a bid to cultivate young leaders.

Over the last six years, the Tikvah Institute for High School Students has hosted juniors and seniors from Jewish schools at Yale’s campus in New Haven, Connecticut, and this year the summer school is offering classes specifically designed for Jewish high-schoolers who don’t attend Jewish schools.

The new Maimonides Scholars program is sponsored by the Maimonides Fund, a Jewish philanthropy organization, according to the Jewish Standard. The Maimonides Scholars program is an addition to the current Tikvah Scholars program, which caters to Jewish students who attend Jewish day schools.

Former Orthodox Jewish school principal and Tikvah Institute dean Rabbi Mark Gottlieb explained that the new Maimonides Scholars program isn’t designed to promote a particular view of Judaism, but rather to cultivate leaders outside of the traditional Jewish school system.

“We aim to reach these students where they are, showing them the sophistication and beauty of Jewish thought in a nondenominational way,” he said. “We will have teachers representing different denominations, and students won’t be expected to adopt Orthodox practice. We don’t intend to convey an exclusive or monolithic view of Judaism. When students are exposed to Jewish texts and ideas that speak to them, we expect they’ll grow closer to Judaism, wherever they are in their practices and beliefs.”

The intent, he said, “is to train these students to take on leadership positions in the Jewish community on campus and beyond, by teaching them a broader base of knowledge and wisdom through history, politics, and philosophy,” Gottlieb said.

The Jewish Standard reports:

While the Tikvah Scholars and Maimonides Scholars sessions will be separate and geared to each cohort’s educational background, there will be integrated experiences, including a debate workshop. Both cohorts will be provided with kosher cuisine and a choice of non-mandatory Shabbat options for prayer, meditation, and study.

All 120 students are urged to “see each other as real allies in the struggle to represent and live their Judaism in a deep, sophisticated, and proud fashion, building up to the time when they arrive at college together,” Rabbi Gottlieb said.

In essence, the summer school, as a whole, draws out the unique strengths and contributions of Judaism in a way that is not “an exclusive or monolithic view of Judaism.”

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, in the final chapter of The Death of Character offers this hopeful word regarding the kind of work that the Tikvah Institute is pioneering.

Creating space in this way for different moral communities to flourish in public and private life might very well lead to conditions that are conducive to the growth of people of good character . . .

That certainly bodes well for the students accepted to the Maimonides Scholars program—and for the schools to which they will return in the fall.

Jewish families can find out more about the Maimonides Scholars program, which runs from June 24 to July 8, 2018, on the program’s website.  Applications are available online, and the deadline to apply is February 16, 2018.

Retired Air Force General wants kids to have a purpose

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Craig McKinley is a strong proponent of developing social and emotional skills in students, and the retired four-star U.S. Air Force general recently sat down with The Aspen Institute to explain why.

“I think SEL prepares young people to be part of a process where they believe in something bigger than themselves,” said McKinley, who also served as president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association.

McKinley discussed his views on social and emotional learning last fall during a meeting of The Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional & Academic Development. McKinley serves as a commissioner with the group, which is “uniting leaders to re-envision what constitutes success in our schools.”

The Commission works with teachers and students across the country to “explore how schools can fully integrate social, emotional and academic development to support the whole student,” according to The Aspen Institute website.

With social and emotional learning, students “are taught it isn’t all about them,” McKinley said, “and that they can achieve excellence by practicing integrity, and doing all the things that some kids get naturally, and some kids get late in life.” “SEL is that tool, that conveyance, that takes a young person from not believing in himself or herself to a place where he or she can be a very productive part of society and contribute as much as they can,” he said.

The Aspen Institute’s Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (SEAD) program researches and champions the role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in education because “overwhelming evidence demands that we complement the focus on academics with the development of the social and emotional skills and competencies that are equally essential for students to thrive in school, career, and life.”

When students thrive, they’re accomplishing much more than simply succeeding. As General McKinley suggests, it points to a connection to something greater than the self, and it’s an acute need in education today.

University of California, Los Angeles sociologist and researcher Jeffrey Guhin studied the formation of character in urban public schools for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s School Cultures and Student Formation Project. In contrast to General McKinley’s vision of a connection to a greater good, Guhin reported in The Content of Their Character, “[I]n the absence of a stronger ethical sensibility that could carry throughout the school community, students were left to find larger ethical visions that might work for them . . . To the extent students were committed to altruism, solidarity, or broader public virtues, it was always through this diffuse institution of individualism, of insisting that what you most owe the world is your own self-realization.”

General McKinley points out that SEL is not simply about self-realization, but rather a deep recognition among students of a purpose “bigger than themselves.”

Often, students learn to develop social and emotional skills through service to others. Edutopia featured one example of a meaningful service project that builds character with a 4-minute video about Eminence Independent Schools in Kentucky, where students collaborate twice a year on projects to help their community.

High achieving students make sacrifices for top grades

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Ambitious students at a Connecticut high school sacrifice sleep, TV, and time with friends to keep a straight-A average, a reporter for the school’s newspaper has found.

Sydney Rubin, writing for The Round Table and published in the Stamford Advocate, interviewed three high-achieving Stamford High School juniors and found that maintaining a 4.0 average while participating in extracurricular activities comes at a cost.

“I truly love all the activities I participate in,” said Samantha Heller, “but it leaves me little time to do other things I love like bake, play the piano, and read.”

Extracurricular activities such as band, sports, student government, and volunteering keep students away from home until as late as 7:00 p.m. Top students make things work by skipping dinner with their families, isolating themselves from friends, and not watching TV.

These students also sacrifice sleep. “It’s common to see plenty of sleep-deprived students in Stamford High AP classes,” Rubin writes.

Junior Rohith Naralasetty has two coffees at home after clubs, works till midnight, then gets up at 4:00 a.m. to finish anything left undone.

But in schools where achievement and performance are upheld as supreme, students often sacrifice more than sleep for grades.

Dr. Kathryn Wiens conducted field research in elite schools for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and found that “a majority of the students interviewed at each school suggested that their school did not ultimately care what kind of person they became. Instead, they felt the school was most concerned about their academic achievement and where they went to college.” At half of the schools she researched, Wiens reported, “it was clear that students often calculated the cost of sacrificing their honor as lower than the high cost of earning a bad grade.”

Parents and schools play an important role in communicating what is truly important. Indeed, Dr. Wiens found that one elite school so crafted their curriculum, discipline, and college applications process as to release the pressure—and allow students to pursue learning for its own sake. Her findings appear in The Content of Their Character, which is now available for pre-order through CultureFeed.

How can these students—and their parents—cultivate the virtue of temperance in an age of extraordinary pressure? The Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues offers a poetry anthology that provides a glimpse into this virtue. It is an adventure that one can take alone or with a class of students.

Jewish college partners with public schools to prevent violence

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After a fight at a Philadelphia area high school left eight teachers injured and four students arrested, the dean of a nearby Jewish college approached the local school board with a plan to work with younger pupils in community building and relationship skills.

The Jewish Exponent reported that the early morning fight at Cheltenham High School in May 2017 began between two female students and quickly escalated when two more girls jumped in with punches.

Rosalie Gurofsky, Gratz College dean and vice president of academic affairs, offered Cheltenham District Superintendent Wagner Marseille a proactive plan, using restorative justice practices aimed at getting to the root of violent outbreaks. Because the college offers a master’s program in safe schools, Gurofsky also pitched the idea to other Gratz faculty members. Ultimately, it was decided to start the training at the lower grade levels. In October 2017, a customized program of four contracted workshops for 5th- and 6th-graders began at nearby Elkins Park School.

Gratz now is training teachers, as Gurofsky says, as “a natural extension of the Jewish identity of Gratz.”

The School Cultures and Student Formation Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture investigated the particularities of distinctive schools—and Jewish schools were among those unique schools. Was it possible that their unique and strong moral sources could equip them to strengthen a community—rather than splinter it along religious, ethnic, or class lines? Dr. Jack Wertheimer, the lead researcher of Jewish day schools writes in The Content of Their Character: “For all their distinctives, Jewish day high schools share a good deal in common with their public and private school counterparts when they address matters of private virtue.”

In the case of Gratz, it is the combination of a unique Jewish identity and broad commonality with the public schools that catalyzed this partnership. Such collaborations underscore the vital role that distinctive institutions—religious, civic, and educational—play in forming character.

That partnership is helping teachers on the frontlines of forming school culture. At Elkins Park School, “more than 86 percent of the teachers surveyed rated the training highly impactful to their classrooms.” With sustained effort, the district trusts that this hard work in the earlier grades will shape the skills and dispositions of students before they reach the pressures of high school.

To learn more about how to use classroom circles—as the Elkins Park School teachers are learning—the Open Society Institute in Baltimore offers this guide.

Small class sizes lure teachers to rural schools

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Montana’s rural school districts are struggling to recruit and retain teachers, but administrators from small schools are pitching the benefits of a more intimate school culture to appeal to potential hires.

Funding challenges, geographic isolation, and difficulty hiring out-of-state teachers has hampered efforts by rural school administrators to draw in new talent, complicating what’s already a “Critical Quality Educator Shortage” across the state.

But officials from dozens of rural schools recently trekked to Montana State University to discuss the benefits of small schools with future educators, in hopes that some may consider the option.

The Billings Gazette outlined the problem:

Pay for beginning teachers in Montana is the lowest in the nation, and small schools typically pay less than larger districts. Factors like geographic and professional isolation play a role, and many rookie teachers feel unprepared for rural schools. Montana has a stringent process for out-of-state teachers obtaining Montana certification.

At MSU, rural administrators from across the state spoke with students about life, professional development, and financial situations, but continuously stressed the biggest benefit for small schools—an intimate culture that allows educators to have a bigger impact by working with fewer students.

“It’s easy to control five kids in a senior math class,” Colstrip Principal Aaron Skogen told the Gazette. “In smaller classes, you know those kids in a different way.”North Start superintendent Bart Hawkins joked that “if you like going to weddings, teach in a small school.”“That’s the kind of relationships you build with the kids,” he said.

Education researcher Richard Fournier also noted how rural schools bolster character formation as part of the School Cultures and Student Formation Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

Fournier documented his field research in The Content of Their Character, a new book set for publication in February.

“One got the feeling in each of these schools that because ‘everybody knows everybody,’ these school communities often provided students with deep-rooted loyalties and convictions, however parochial, that bonded each member to the character and citizenship traits so vital to each community’s moral orientation.”

It’s a unique dynamic of rural schools that’s undoubtedly attractive to many teachers: small classes mean educators bond with students and their families in ways teachers in suburban and urban schools find it harder to do.

Educators working in rural schools, or considering the option, can find more information and support through the Rural Teacher Corps, a network of rural teachers who share their stories to learn from each other.

Student wins scholarship for strength of character

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A Canadian girl who has won an award for overcoming adversity plans to use her scholarship to prepare for a career that combines her love of sports with her desire to help others.

According to the Intelligencer, Sierra Westerman, 17, of Quinte West, Ontario, is one of 85 students in financial need to receive a $5,000 Horatio Alger Canadian Scholarship, awarded for “demonstrating strength of character, strong academics, [and] a commitment to pursuing higher education, as well as a desire to contribute to society.”

Westerman’s adversity arose from living with a father suffering from post traumatic stress disorder stemming from his time as a police officer. She plans to use the scholarship to study kinesiology at Redeemer University College in Hamilton, Ontario. “I love sports and being active,” she told the Belleville Intelligencer. “I just want to be able to help people.” She also described herself as “super competitive.”

“Also, just being part of a team and getting to share the highs and lows of sports with people. That’s just the greatest fun and joy you could have. And just my faith too,” she added. “We’ll see where God leads me.”

The desire to contribute to society in the face of adversity is significant. Even students who don’t face significant adversity are  frequently prodded toward self-actualization rather than genuine care for others.

UCLA sociologist Jeffrey Guhin writes in The Content of Their Character, “My research produced a straightforward result. Urban public schools were dedicated to two layers of morality: a commitment to ‘helping’ for teachers and to ‘self-actualization’ for students. There was a kind of ‘moral invisible hand,’ a sense in which the schools’ public duty to the nation was best served by helping each student as an individual be successful in whichever way they chose.”

In contrast, David Sikkink, a sociologist at Notre Dame who studied Evangelical Protestant schools for the same study, marked the importance of serving others: “The virtuous person in small and unrecognized ways looked out for the hurting or sacrificed their time to help others, especially those who were not easy to help because, for instance, they were unpopular.”

Honoring Westerman’s achievement in overcoming adversity and desiring to contribute to society reflects well on her school community as well as on her own character.

If you know a student who has inspired you by overcoming adversity and demonstrating character in service to others, you can encourage them to apply for the Horatio Alger Scholarship program.

Learning to lead in middle school

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Officials at Riverside School in Lyndonville, Vermont, believe one of the best ways for students to learn is to lead, and they’re expanding a school advisory program to give students more opportunities to mentor younger students. Sixth-graders develop presentations and other materials to help 5th-graders transition to the middle school, while 7th- and 8th-graders talk with elementary students about issues like bullying, exclusion, and personal space, the Caledonian Record reports.

“The Riverside community fully understands that leadership is a skill,” said Head of School Michelle Ralston. “Developing skills takes time. Development takes patience. Our young students begin early and can plan on hard work, many tests of patience, but lots of support from the entire Riverside Community.”

School officials recently worked with clinical therapist Ellen Moore to develop several new learning and leadership opportunities as part of “Riverside Pride,” an expansion of the school’s advisory program. The aim is to help students gain leadership experience throughout their time at Riverside, with the ultimate goal of developing stronger problem solving, leadership, and collaboration among students across grade levels.

Eighth-graders lead groups of six to eight students of varying ages in “Buddy Families,” meeting weekly to perform community services and help maintain the school’s campus. They also plan the Riverside’s morning assembly with themes to engage their classmates on important topics and announcements. The older students lead activities for youngsters for the school’s annual Mythology Day, as well, and visit elementary classrooms to talk about bullying and respect, according to the news site. “We all know that younger students listen to and look up to their older schoolmates. We also know that students learn best when they teach,” Ralston said. “This will be a learning experience for our seventh and eighth graders as well.”

The evolving leadership experiences work in conjunction with the advisory program, which begins in 6th grade with weekly meetings focused on study skills and habits of mind. In 7th grade, the focus shifts to critical skills and dispositions for collaborating in groups.

By 8th grade, students learn to lead the broader school community, capping off their experience with a final presentation to the entire student body. Eighth-graders also gain experience teaching younger classmates during the final weeks of school, under the watchful eye of teachers. “Riverside eighth-graders benefit from years of practicing patient leadership, assisting and mentoring their peers,” Ralston said. “Working together with the school’s mission, the commitment of faculty and staff, and the Riverside Advisory Program, the Riverside Pride initiative will serve to create and value a school-wide environment that fosters integrity and kindness towards one another.”

The Riverside School is building character in its students by consistently giving them the responsibility to lead. They use the language of “dispositions” that are built by “habits.” This sets them apart from many character education initiatives that focus merely on mental recall of character strengths, recognition of one’s own character strengths, or a virtue of the month. By force of habit, they are “assisting and mentoring their peers.”

Education researcher Kathryn Wiens studied prestigious independent schools for the Institute for Advance Studies in Culture’s School Cultures and Student Formation project and found that, ironically, parents can pose a challenge in teaching character. “These parents almost appeared to view the development of character as a nice accessory to the other benefits of a prestigious education,” Wiens wrote.

With the exception of two schools studied, Wiens reported that “a majority of students interviewed at each school suggested that their school did not ultimately care what kind of person they became. Instead, they felt the school was most concerned about their academic achievement and where they went to college.” Wiens’ full research is available as a chapter in The Content of Their Character, which is available for preorder now.

The Riverside School, like other independent schools, faces similar issues, which makes its work weaving character formation and leadership development into the habits and practices of students all the more admirable.

Getting Smart author Tom Vander Ark argues that, “Advisory has to be the spine of the next generation high school,” and offers guidance on how to structure and sustain an advisory program that “really is the glue that holds it all together.”

Who we want to be is the key to how we will act

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With regard to developing people of character, I start from a simple premise: identity drives behavior.

My Stanford Business School professor, Jim March, stressed that the best way to get people to change their behavior is to get them to change their sense of who they are and want to be. Rewards and punishments have drawbacks—rewards are expensive, and punishments make people angry.

But identity is clean. Who we want to be is the key to how we will act.

I experienced this myself. From 1987 to 1998, I was Director of Stanford Business School’s Public Management Program. My goal was to inspire MBA students to make public service leadership part of their lives.

As I introduced incredible agents of social change to my MBA students—such as Ashoka’s Bill Drayton and John W. Gardner of Common Cause—I realized I wanted to be like them, which led me to embrace a new identity: social entrepreneur.

A conversation with Jim Collins (before he wrote Good to Great) planted the seed of a BIG idea in my mind—forming a social enterprise to transform youth sports so sports can transform youth.

Collins asserted that most new companies are started by individuals in an industry who see firsthand where possibilities lie. My coaching experience had alerted me to a huge opportunity: Youth sports’ endless procession of teachable moments makes it the ideal place to teach character. And our country desperately needs people of character.

But a win-at-all-costs mentality pollutes youth sports, making coaches and parents less than ideal role models for athletes. I wanted to change coach and parent behavior by harnessing the power of identity and creating a movement to use sports to develop Better Athletes, Better People.

Positive Coaching Alliance has developed an aspirational identity for youth athletes: the Triple-Impact Competitor,® who elevates self, teammates, and the game by the way he or she competes. Or, for short, an “Elevater”—a new word for a new identity. An Elevater is a person of strong character who looks to elevate every situation he or she is in.

A clear vision of the self I wanted to be had motivated me to take on the enormous challenge of layering a world-class character education on top of the vast infrastructure of youth sports with millions of athletes involved.

And, of course, it was hard. I spent a lot of time those early days lying on the couch in my Stanford office curled up in the fetal position, asking, “What have I gotten myself into?”

What kept me going during those dark moments was wanting to live up to my new identity and be the kind of person who could make it happen.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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