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"content": "\n\u003cp>Deb Hill, now a middle school counselor, once met with a 4-year old who came to her grief counseling sessions after experiencing a fire that burned his house down. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“He didn’t say a word for seven sessions,” Hill said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>During each session he would silently select a toy fire truck from the toys she had available, expand the truck’s ladder, retract it and put the toy away. He repeated the same sequence each time. Then, after the seventh session, he began to talk.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This was \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812369/\">play therapy\u003c/a> in action,” Hill said. Creative interventions, like play therapy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62409/how-bibliocounseling-can-create-space-for-black-girls-and-girls-of-color-to-connect-in-school\">bibliotherapy\u003c/a>, writing and artmaking can be used to support grieving students of all ages. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Grief, Hill explained, is “internal anguish for when people feel any reaction to a loss that they have experienced.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57992/the-importance-of-mourning-losses-even-when-they-seem-small\">grief is not limited to the death of a loved one\u003c/a>, it’s a natural reaction to loss. Approximately \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11473717/\">8% of children will experience the death of a primary caregiver\u003c/a> before reaching adulthood. For school counselors, supporting grieving students can be a regular part of the job.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Creative interventions can be adapted to meet kids’ needs at a variety of developmental levels. They can give students a way to create something visual and tangible while exploring conflicting and complicated feelings. Additionally, creative interventions allow for expression when vocabulary isn’t available. “Especially with traumatic grief. They are not always going to have access to their language centers. Even if developmentally, they have access to the vocabulary,” said Hill. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At the \u003ca href=\"https://ascaconferences.org/2026/\">American School Counselor’s Association\u003c/a> Conference, Hill and her colleague Dr. Anita Pool, an associate professor and School Counseling Coordinator at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, shared creative interventions that school counselors can use to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60125/3-things-we-get-wrong-in-responding-to-child-grief-and-how-to-do-better\">support grieving students\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bibliotherapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Books about grief or books that include characters that are grieving can give students an opportunity to explore their own emotions through someone else’s story. They can help kids relate with characters and normalize their emotions and experiences. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read a book on a difficult topic and almost always they’ll say, ‘That’s just like me,’” said Dr. Pool. That recognition can be particularly meaningful for younger children. Because of their developmental stage, Pool said, little kids can be especially egocentric and think they are the only one experiencing something difficult. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of her favorite books to use as a counselor is “\u003ca href=\"https://kristinbartleylenz.com/the-art-of-holding-on-and-letting-go\">The Art of Holding on and Letting Go\u003c/a>,” by Kristen Bartley Lenz, about a competitive climber who experiences a tragedy on an Ecuadorian mountaintop. Books can also address forms of loss that aren’t related to death but can still trigger grief for children, including military deployment or parental incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool cautions counselors to be thoughtful about the books they choose. Stories with magical resolutions or explanations can be confusing for younger children, particularly when they are trying to understand the reality of what has happened.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp> “We want to be sure that we’re giving them accurate, real information, but can provide hope for the future,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool suggests reading young adult fiction before making recommendations. “It may include education and information about other topics within that book that might be too much for that particular child,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>How counselors use books can also change depending on a student’s age. “With our teens, we wouldn’t necessarily sit side by side and read the book during the session like we would with young kids,” Pool said. “I would assign a section or a chapter and have them read it outside of the session or outside of school and come back to discuss it.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crafting and writing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sometimes, the adults in a student’s life may have difficulty hearing them talk about the person or experience they’ve lost. Counselors can provide a dedicated space where students can talk about their memories or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">explore them without having to talk at all.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool recommends activities such as creating a memory book, box or collage using photographs, magazine images and mementos to provide a tangible way to remember someone who has died or to acknowledge feelings of missing someone who is absent. Counselors can also purchase premade vision-board kits from craft stores if they don’t have the time or resources to cut out materials themselves. Around the holidays, which are times when grief can feel intense, Pool invites students to make paper chains with memories written on them, also called memory chains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Simple art supplies can be just as useful. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of markers and crayons and paper,” Pool said. She keeps those materials readily available in her office. She advises counselors to consider whether paint is appropriate for their students. “Paint is harder to control,” Pool said, adding that the lack of control can be triggering for students.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Writing can also give students a private way to process grief. Students might create an acrostic poem using the name of a loved one, write an epitaph or compose a letter to someone they have lost. Letter writing can be especially useful for expressing things a student wasn’t able to say while the person was alive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894260/how-journaling-can-help-us-make-sense-of-our-lives\">Journaling\u003c/a> with or without a prompt is another option. Providing a journal for a student can be a small but meaningful intervention, particularly when cost is a barrier to obtaining one. Hill keeps a storage file of adolescents’ journals at school so students could write without worrying that someone at home might read them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Toys and play therapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hill described play-based interventions as a “slam dunk” for younger students. “Kids don’t always have access to the vocabulary or the language they need to be able to express themselves in a way that we understand,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">Play allows children to communicate symbolically\u003c/a> instead. Rather than having to explain what happened, a child can act it out, recreate elements of an experience or use toys to represent feelings and relationships. The process can also give children a sense of control and agency at a time when their lives may feel out of their control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That can be especially important when a child is confused about a loss or believes they somehow caused it. Through play, counselors can help children explore those beliefs and begin to make sense of what happened.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Different toys can support play therapy and counselors do not have to have a huge collection. Pool uses \u003ca href=\"https://www.kimochis.com/\">Kimochis , small character toys\u003c/a> in which each character has a distinct personality, as well as diverse dolls, emergency vehicles, medical toys and dollhouses.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s not about the amount of toys that you have, it’s about the quality of the toys,” Hill said. “Not just the build quality, but the intent behind it.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The goal is to provide enough variety for students to find objects that resonate with their experiences, while making sure the materials reflect different families, identities and circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sand trays\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sand trays offer a nonverbal and tactile way for students to communicate and process information. The trays are typically blue, creating an environment that is both expansive and contained. Students can use sand and small figurines or objects to construct scenes inside the tray. The physical sensation of working with sand can also be grounding for some children.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As with play therapy, counselors can provide a range of miniatures, including diverse people, families, animals and emergency vehicles, and allow students to decide what belongs in their scene.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For a grieving child, the tray can create psychological distance from an experience that feels overwhelming. Instead of having to say, “This is happening to me,” a student can create a scene and talk about what is happening to the figures. That distance can make it easier for students to explore difficult experiences. Sand trays can also engage multiple forms of expression at once, combining sensory, visual and verbal processing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There are different types of sand that counselors can use, each offering a different sensory experience. And for schools that don’t have the space or resources for a physical sand tray, free digital versions allow students to construct scenes using images from the internet. Some students may not want to destroy their sand tray scene and counselors can take photos to capture the scenes before they are cleaned up. These also can be helpful for the counselor to track changes over time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The flexibility of creative interventions is part of their appeal. “It’s multi-culturally appropriate because [they don’t] require a specific language or a specific cultural context” Hill said. For counselors supporting bereaved students, creating a space where there isn’t a single right way to experience or talk about their feelings, can help students be the drivers of their grieving process.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Creative interventions can be adapted to meet kids’ needs at a variety of developmental levels. They can give students a way to create something visual and tangible while exploring conflicting and complicated feelings. Additionally, creative interventions allow for expression when vocabulary isn’t available. “Especially with traumatic grief. They are not always going to have access to their language centers. Even if developmentally, they have access to the vocabulary,” said Hill. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At the \u003ca href=\"https://ascaconferences.org/2026/\">American School Counselor’s Association\u003c/a> Conference, Hill and her colleague Dr. Anita Pool, an associate professor and School Counseling Coordinator at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, shared creative interventions that school counselors can use to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60125/3-things-we-get-wrong-in-responding-to-child-grief-and-how-to-do-better\">support grieving students\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>At the \u003ca href=\"https://ascaconferences.org/2026/\">American School Counselor’s Association\u003c/a> Conference, Hill and her colleague Dr. Anita Pool, an associate professor and School Counseling Coordinator at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, shared creative interventions that school counselors can use to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60125/3-things-we-get-wrong-in-responding-to-child-grief-and-how-to-do-better\">support grieving students\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bibliotherapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bibliotherapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Books about grief or books that include characters that are grieving can give students an opportunity to explore their own emotions through someone else’s story. They can help kids relate with characters and normalize their emotions and experiences. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read a book on a difficult topic and almost always they’ll say, ‘That’s just like me,’” said Dr. Pool. That recognition can be particularly meaningful for younger children. Because of their developmental stage, Pool said, little kids can be especially egocentric and think they are the only one experiencing something difficult. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Books about grief or books that include characters that are grieving can give students an opportunity to explore their own emotions through someone else’s story. They can help kids relate with characters and normalize their emotions and experiences. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read a book on a difficult topic and almost always they’ll say, ‘That’s just like me,’” said Dr. Pool. That recognition can be particularly meaningful for younger children. Because of their developmental stage, Pool said, little kids can be especially egocentric and think they are the only one experiencing something difficult. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One of her favorite books to use as a counselor is “\u003ca href=\"https://kristinbartleylenz.com/the-art-of-holding-on-and-letting-go\">The Art of Holding on and Letting Go\u003c/a>,” by Kristen Bartley Lenz, about a competitive climber who experiences a tragedy on an Ecuadorian mountaintop. Books can also address forms of loss that aren’t related to death but can still trigger grief for children, including military deployment or parental incarceration.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>One of her favorite books to use as a counselor is “\u003ca href=\"https://kristinbartleylenz.com/the-art-of-holding-on-and-letting-go\">The Art of Holding on and Letting Go\u003c/a>,” by Kristen Bartley Lenz, about a competitive climber who experiences a tragedy on an Ecuadorian mountaintop. Books can also address forms of loss that aren’t related to death but can still trigger grief for children, including military deployment or parental incarceration.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Pool cautions counselors to be thoughtful about the books they choose. Stories with magical resolutions or explanations can be confusing for younger children, particularly when they are trying to understand the reality of what has happened.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Pool cautions counselors to be thoughtful about the books they choose. Stories with magical resolutions or explanations can be confusing for younger children, particularly when they are trying to understand the reality of what has happened.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp> “We want to be sure that we’re giving them accurate, real information, but can provide hope for the future,” she said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp> “We want to be sure that we’re giving them accurate, real information, but can provide hope for the future,” she said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Pool suggests reading young adult fiction before making recommendations. “It may include education and information about other topics within that book that might be too much for that particular child,” she said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Pool suggests reading young adult fiction before making recommendations. “It may include education and information about other topics within that book that might be too much for that particular child,” she said. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>How counselors use books can also change depending on a student’s age. “With our teens, we wouldn’t necessarily sit side by side and read the book during the session like we would with young kids,” Pool said. “I would assign a section or a chapter and have them read it outside of the session or outside of school and come back to discuss it.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>How counselors use books can also change depending on a student’s age. “With our teens, we wouldn’t necessarily sit side by side and read the book during the session like we would with young kids,” Pool said. “I would assign a section or a chapter and have them read it outside of the session or outside of school and come back to discuss it.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crafting and writing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crafting and writing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Sometimes, the adults in a student’s life may have difficulty hearing them talk about the person or experience they’ve lost. Counselors can provide a dedicated space where students can talk about their memories or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">explore them without having to talk at all.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Sometimes, the adults in a student’s life may have difficulty hearing them talk about the person or experience they’ve lost. Counselors can provide a dedicated space where students can talk about their memories or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">explore them without having to talk at all.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Pool recommends activities such as creating a memory book, box or collage using photographs, magazine images and mementos to provide a tangible way to remember someone who has died or to acknowledge feelings of missing someone who is absent. Counselors can also purchase premade vision-board kits from craft stores if they don’t have the time or resources to cut out materials themselves. Around the holidays, which are times when grief can feel intense, Pool invites students to make paper chains with memories written on them, also called memory chains. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Pool recommends activities such as creating a memory book, box or collage using photographs, magazine images and mementos to provide a tangible way to remember someone who has died or to acknowledge feelings of missing someone who is absent. Counselors can also purchase premade vision-board kits from craft stores if they don’t have the time or resources to cut out materials themselves. Around the holidays, which are times when grief can feel intense, Pool invites students to make paper chains with memories written on them, also called memory chains. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Simple art supplies can be just as useful. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of markers and crayons and paper,” Pool said. She keeps those materials readily available in her office. She advises counselors to consider whether paint is appropriate for their students. “Paint is harder to control,” Pool said, adding that the lack of control can be triggering for students.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Simple art supplies can be just as useful. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of markers and crayons and paper,” Pool said. She keeps those materials readily available in her office. She advises counselors to consider whether paint is appropriate for their students. “Paint is harder to control,” Pool said, adding that the lack of control can be triggering for students.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Writing can also give students a private way to process grief. Students might create an acrostic poem using the name of a loved one, write an epitaph or compose a letter to someone they have lost. Letter writing can be especially useful for expressing things a student wasn’t able to say while the person was alive.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Writing can also give students a private way to process grief. Students might create an acrostic poem using the name of a loved one, write an epitaph or compose a letter to someone they have lost. Letter writing can be especially useful for expressing things a student wasn’t able to say while the person was alive.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894260/how-journaling-can-help-us-make-sense-of-our-lives\">Journaling\u003c/a> with or without a prompt is another option. Providing a journal for a student can be a small but meaningful intervention, particularly when cost is a barrier to obtaining one. Hill keeps a storage file of adolescents’ journals at school so students could write without worrying that someone at home might read them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894260/how-journaling-can-help-us-make-sense-of-our-lives\">Journaling\u003c/a> with or without a prompt is another option. Providing a journal for a student can be a small but meaningful intervention, particularly when cost is a barrier to obtaining one. Hill keeps a storage file of adolescents’ journals at school so students could write without worrying that someone at home might read them.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Toys and play therapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Toys and play therapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Hill described play-based interventions as a “slam dunk” for younger students. “Kids don’t always have access to the vocabulary or the language they need to be able to express themselves in a way that we understand,” she said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Hill described play-based interventions as a “slam dunk” for younger students. “Kids don’t always have access to the vocabulary or the language they need to be able to express themselves in a way that we understand,” she said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">Play allows children to communicate symbolically\u003c/a> instead. Rather than having to explain what happened, a child can act it out, recreate elements of an experience or use toys to represent feelings and relationships. The process can also give children a sense of control and agency at a time when their lives may feel out of their control.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">Play allows children to communicate symbolically\u003c/a> instead. Rather than having to explain what happened, a child can act it out, recreate elements of an experience or use toys to represent feelings and relationships. The process can also give children a sense of control and agency at a time when their lives may feel out of their control.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That can be especially important when a child is confused about a loss or believes they somehow caused it. Through play, counselors can help children explore those beliefs and begin to make sense of what happened.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>That can be especially important when a child is confused about a loss or believes they somehow caused it. Through play, counselors can help children explore those beliefs and begin to make sense of what happened.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Different toys can support play therapy and counselors do not have to have a huge collection. Pool uses \u003ca href=\"https://www.kimochis.com/\">Kimochis , small character toys\u003c/a> in which each character has a distinct personality, as well as diverse dolls, emergency vehicles, medical toys and dollhouses.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Different toys can support play therapy and counselors do not have to have a huge collection. Pool uses \u003ca href=\"https://www.kimochis.com/\">Kimochis , small character toys\u003c/a> in which each character has a distinct personality, as well as diverse dolls, emergency vehicles, medical toys and dollhouses.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“It’s not about the amount of toys that you have, it’s about the quality of the toys,” Hill said. “Not just the build quality, but the intent behind it.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“It’s not about the amount of toys that you have, it’s about the quality of the toys,” Hill said. “Not just the build quality, but the intent behind it.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The goal is to provide enough variety for students to find objects that resonate with their experiences, while making sure the materials reflect different families, identities and circumstances.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The goal is to provide enough variety for students to find objects that resonate with their experiences, while making sure the materials reflect different families, identities and circumstances.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sand trays\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sand trays\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Sand trays offer a nonverbal and tactile way for students to communicate and process information. The trays are typically blue, creating an environment that is both expansive and contained. Students can use sand and small figurines or objects to construct scenes inside the tray. The physical sensation of working with sand can also be grounding for some children.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Sand trays offer a nonverbal and tactile way for students to communicate and process information. The trays are typically blue, creating an environment that is both expansive and contained. Students can use sand and small figurines or objects to construct scenes inside the tray. The physical sensation of working with sand can also be grounding for some children.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As with play therapy, counselors can provide a range of miniatures, including diverse people, families, animals and emergency vehicles, and allow students to decide what belongs in their scene.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>As with play therapy, counselors can provide a range of miniatures, including diverse people, families, animals and emergency vehicles, and allow students to decide what belongs in their scene.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For a grieving child, the tray can create psychological distance from an experience that feels overwhelming. Instead of having to say, “This is happening to me,” a student can create a scene and talk about what is happening to the figures. That distance can make it easier for students to explore difficult experiences. Sand trays can also engage multiple forms of expression at once, combining sensory, visual and verbal processing.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For a grieving child, the tray can create psychological distance from an experience that feels overwhelming. Instead of having to say, “This is happening to me,” a student can create a scene and talk about what is happening to the figures. That distance can make it easier for students to explore difficult experiences. Sand trays can also engage multiple forms of expression at once, combining sensory, visual and verbal processing.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>There are different types of sand that counselors can use, each offering a different sensory experience. And for schools that don’t have the space or resources for a physical sand tray, free digital versions allow students to construct scenes using images from the internet. Some students may not want to destroy their sand tray scene and counselors can take photos to capture the scenes before they are cleaned up. These also can be helpful for the counselor to track changes over time. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>There are different types of sand that counselors can use, each offering a different sensory experience. And for schools that don’t have the space or resources for a physical sand tray, free digital versions allow students to construct scenes using images from the internet. Some students may not want to destroy their sand tray scene and counselors can take photos to capture the scenes before they are cleaned up. These also can be helpful for the counselor to track changes over time. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The flexibility of creative interventions is part of their appeal. “It’s multi-culturally appropriate because [they don’t] require a specific language or a specific cultural context” Hill said. For counselors supporting bereaved students, creating a space where there isn’t a single right way to experience or talk about their feelings, can help students be the drivers of their grieving process.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The flexibility of creative interventions is part of their appeal. “It’s multi-culturally appropriate because [they don’t] require a specific language or a specific cultural context” Hill said. For counselors supporting bereaved students, creating a space where there isn’t a single right way to experience or talk about their feelings, can help students be the drivers of their grieving process.\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "\t\nPlay therapy, books, journaling and sand trays can help students express themselves when they are struggling with feelings and experiences that are hard to understand.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Deb Hill, now a middle school counselor, once met with a 4-year old who came to her grief counseling sessions after experiencing a fire that burned his house down. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“He didn’t say a word for seven sessions,” Hill said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>During each session he would silently select a toy fire truck from the toys she had available, expand the truck’s ladder, retract it and put the toy away. He repeated the same sequence each time. Then, after the seventh session, he began to talk.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This was \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812369/\">play therapy\u003c/a> in action,” Hill said. Creative interventions, like play therapy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62409/how-bibliocounseling-can-create-space-for-black-girls-and-girls-of-color-to-connect-in-school\">bibliotherapy\u003c/a>, writing and artmaking can be used to support grieving students of all ages. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Grief, Hill explained, is “internal anguish for when people feel any reaction to a loss that they have experienced.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57992/the-importance-of-mourning-losses-even-when-they-seem-small\">grief is not limited to the death of a loved one\u003c/a>, it’s a natural reaction to loss. Approximately \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11473717/\">8% of children will experience the death of a primary caregiver\u003c/a> before reaching adulthood. For school counselors, supporting grieving students can be a regular part of the job.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Creative interventions can be adapted to meet kids’ needs at a variety of developmental levels. They can give students a way to create something visual and tangible while exploring conflicting and complicated feelings. Additionally, creative interventions allow for expression when vocabulary isn’t available. “Especially with traumatic grief. They are not always going to have access to their language centers. Even if developmentally, they have access to the vocabulary,” said Hill. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At the \u003ca href=\"https://ascaconferences.org/2026/\">American School Counselor’s Association\u003c/a> Conference, Hill and her colleague Dr. Anita Pool, an associate professor and School Counseling Coordinator at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, shared creative interventions that school counselors can use to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60125/3-things-we-get-wrong-in-responding-to-child-grief-and-how-to-do-better\">support grieving students\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bibliotherapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Books about grief or books that include characters that are grieving can give students an opportunity to explore their own emotions through someone else’s story. They can help kids relate with characters and normalize their emotions and experiences. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read a book on a difficult topic and almost always they’ll say, ‘That’s just like me,’” said Dr. Pool. That recognition can be particularly meaningful for younger children. Because of their developmental stage, Pool said, little kids can be especially egocentric and think they are the only one experiencing something difficult. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of her favorite books to use as a counselor is “\u003ca href=\"https://kristinbartleylenz.com/the-art-of-holding-on-and-letting-go\">The Art of Holding on and Letting Go\u003c/a>,” by Kristen Bartley Lenz, about a competitive climber who experiences a tragedy on an Ecuadorian mountaintop. Books can also address forms of loss that aren’t related to death but can still trigger grief for children, including military deployment or parental incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool cautions counselors to be thoughtful about the books they choose. Stories with magical resolutions or explanations can be confusing for younger children, particularly when they are trying to understand the reality of what has happened.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp> “We want to be sure that we’re giving them accurate, real information, but can provide hope for the future,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool suggests reading young adult fiction before making recommendations. “It may include education and information about other topics within that book that might be too much for that particular child,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>How counselors use books can also change depending on a student’s age. “With our teens, we wouldn’t necessarily sit side by side and read the book during the session like we would with young kids,” Pool said. “I would assign a section or a chapter and have them read it outside of the session or outside of school and come back to discuss it.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Crafting and writing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sometimes, the adults in a student’s life may have difficulty hearing them talk about the person or experience they’ve lost. Counselors can provide a dedicated space where students can talk about their memories or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">explore them without having to talk at all.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pool recommends activities such as creating a memory book, box or collage using photographs, magazine images and mementos to provide a tangible way to remember someone who has died or to acknowledge feelings of missing someone who is absent. Counselors can also purchase premade vision-board kits from craft stores if they don’t have the time or resources to cut out materials themselves. Around the holidays, which are times when grief can feel intense, Pool invites students to make paper chains with memories written on them, also called memory chains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Simple art supplies can be just as useful. “Don’t ever underestimate the power of markers and crayons and paper,” Pool said. She keeps those materials readily available in her office. She advises counselors to consider whether paint is appropriate for their students. “Paint is harder to control,” Pool said, adding that the lack of control can be triggering for students.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Writing can also give students a private way to process grief. Students might create an acrostic poem using the name of a loved one, write an epitaph or compose a letter to someone they have lost. Letter writing can be especially useful for expressing things a student wasn’t able to say while the person was alive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894260/how-journaling-can-help-us-make-sense-of-our-lives\">Journaling\u003c/a> with or without a prompt is another option. Providing a journal for a student can be a small but meaningful intervention, particularly when cost is a barrier to obtaining one. Hill keeps a storage file of adolescents’ journals at school so students could write without worrying that someone at home might read them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Toys and play therapy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hill described play-based interventions as a “slam dunk” for younger students. “Kids don’t always have access to the vocabulary or the language they need to be able to express themselves in a way that we understand,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">Play allows children to communicate symbolically\u003c/a> instead. Rather than having to explain what happened, a child can act it out, recreate elements of an experience or use toys to represent feelings and relationships. The process can also give children a sense of control and agency at a time when their lives may feel out of their control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That can be especially important when a child is confused about a loss or believes they somehow caused it. Through play, counselors can help children explore those beliefs and begin to make sense of what happened.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Different toys can support play therapy and counselors do not have to have a huge collection. Pool uses \u003ca href=\"https://www.kimochis.com/\">Kimochis , small character toys\u003c/a> in which each character has a distinct personality, as well as diverse dolls, emergency vehicles, medical toys and dollhouses.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s not about the amount of toys that you have, it’s about the quality of the toys,” Hill said. “Not just the build quality, but the intent behind it.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The goal is to provide enough variety for students to find objects that resonate with their experiences, while making sure the materials reflect different families, identities and circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sand trays\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sand trays offer a nonverbal and tactile way for students to communicate and process information. The trays are typically blue, creating an environment that is both expansive and contained. Students can use sand and small figurines or objects to construct scenes inside the tray. The physical sensation of working with sand can also be grounding for some children.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As with play therapy, counselors can provide a range of miniatures, including diverse people, families, animals and emergency vehicles, and allow students to decide what belongs in their scene.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For a grieving child, the tray can create psychological distance from an experience that feels overwhelming. Instead of having to say, “This is happening to me,” a student can create a scene and talk about what is happening to the figures. That distance can make it easier for students to explore difficult experiences. Sand trays can also engage multiple forms of expression at once, combining sensory, visual and verbal processing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There are different types of sand that counselors can use, each offering a different sensory experience. And for schools that don’t have the space or resources for a physical sand tray, free digital versions allow students to construct scenes using images from the internet. Some students may not want to destroy their sand tray scene and counselors can take photos to capture the scenes before they are cleaned up. These also can be helpful for the counselor to track changes over time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The flexibility of creative interventions is part of their appeal. “It’s multi-culturally appropriate because [they don’t] require a specific language or a specific cultural context” Hill said. For counselors supporting bereaved students, creating a space where there isn’t a single right way to experience or talk about their feelings, can help students be the drivers of their grieving process.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: NPR uses only the first names of minors in this story because it discusses their learning disabilities and placement in special education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BAY POINT, Calif. — The sun would just be rising when teacher Mary Acebu began her days. She’d blast music on the way to work to get energized and get to her classroom by 6:30 to prepare for her students’ arrival at 8. Often, it’d be dark by the time she headed home, sometimes with paperwork in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like so many special education teachers around the country, this was Acebu’s life for much of the 10 years she’s been teaching at Riverview Middle School, in this small, unincorporated northern California town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t do that anymore,” she says with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Acebu has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for the last two years to get through paperwork more quickly and says it’s helped her instead use precious time for student interaction. “I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships,” she says, “instead of sitting here in front of my computer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, schools nationwide have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1247795768/children-disabilities-special-education-teacher-shortage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">struggled with hiring and retaining\u003c/a> special educators. In the 2024-25 school year, \u003ca href=\"https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-shortages-subjects-across-states-factsheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">45 states reported\u003c/a> special education teacher shortages, and staff turnover is worse in schools that largely serve low-income students, like Riverview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of those teachers around the nation using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including for writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that outline goals and services students need to meet those goals at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-10-28-CDT-AI-IEP-Brief-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a recent survey\u003c/a> by the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% of special education teachers polled nationwide said they used AI to help develop individualized plans for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39% the previous school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the survey results, the CDT warned of privacy, legal and ethical risks around using AI. Other research, however, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more face time a student with a disability has with a teacher, that often yields better outcomes for them, both educationally, functionally — just across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that rings true in her classroom. She points out King, one of her eighth graders, as an example. “He was a non-reader, beginning of seventh grade. He’s reading now.” That, for Acebu, is the \u003cem>point\u003c/em> of IEPs — to put what’s on paper into practice for her students. She says that is only possible with intentional, hands-on work in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What IEPs are and why they matter\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every seventh and eighth grader in Mary Acebu’s class learns differently — some work independently, some in pairs, others with headphones on and yet others with speech-to-text technology. Those differences are captured in each child’s IEP, a document required by federal law for each of the over 8 million students with disabilities in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8d%2F57%2F8601fa57482dbd294f690c16221d%2F36a0496-tif.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\">\u003cfigcaption>Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s present needs, but importantly, “also where you want them to go within the next year,” says Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Coleman and Waterfield say while many teachers report feeling bogged down by the work that goes into developing IEPs, teachers also recognize they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to get a quality education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that to develop those goals, teachers must know each student’s learning style intimately. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two kids are the same,” she says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and a deep knowledge of complex education law and policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It used to take Acebu around 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. She points to a big, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on her bookshelf that contains California’s education standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages,” to find the right standard to match unique student goals, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI — with a ‘human touch’ \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of years ago, Acebu began taking courses on how to safely and effectively use AI. Around the same time, her district, Mt. Diablo Unified, entered agreements with companies that offer education-focused AI tools including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a primary concern for those who warn against the risks of using AI in schools. A growing number of districts are adopting such products, though \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/which-states-require-schools-to-have-ai-policies/2025/09\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">only a few states\u003c/a> have official AI education policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, using a district-vetted tool, Acebu customized chatbots for her school and trained them on state standards, assessments and other special education data. She now uses her “little assistants” for a wide range of tasks, from creating personalized worksheets to developing IEP goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, she says, “you’re double-checking everything. Like you have to put that human touch, that’s the final step.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5c%2F9b%2F7917c6324542801ed762bdb30d77%2F36a9904-tif.jpg\" alt=\"King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu's class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\">\u003cfigcaption>King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu’s class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F00%2F54e6a456459fa6fb438ca613f8a0%2F36a9793-tif.jpg\" alt=\"For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu's help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\">\u003cfigcaption>For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu’s help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01626434261419099\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In their research,\u003c/a> Coleman and Waterfield found special education teachers nationwide are using AI to help write IEP goals, track student progress, synthesize data and create differentiated learning materials, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu is uniquely equipped to use tech-tools: She just earned her doctorate in instructional technology and is on her district’s AI task force, which is developing an official AI policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues, however, were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special educator at Riverview for 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the number of students he serves shot up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it has put a huge stressor on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of his work this year. “It would be kind of nice if there were two jobs, like one paperwork job and one working with the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, a few weeks ago, after a tutorial from Acebu, he gave her chatbot a shot. He was surprised by the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an amazing time-saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for a number of things including producing simple summaries of complicated data to present to parents at IEP meetings. “I mean, it’s not like ‘that’s it, I’m done.’ I still have to go through and check it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and Acebu both say it could help them, and other educators, avoid burnout. Yet, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of CDT’s report, calls AI tools “a Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overworked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI in special education — with guardrails\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Band-Aid or not, more teachers \u003cem>are \u003c/em>using AI around the country. There are a litany of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is number one,” says Acebu. “Don’t put information there that’s gonna identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while the risks around privacy may be reduced if a school is using a vetted vendor, data breaches could still make that information vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers are using district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield and CDT’s research all found that educators around the country are using AI both formally and informally — from free consumer platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complicated landscape, Waterfield and Coleman \u003ca href=\"https://ciddl.org/navigating-ai-in-iep-development-a-framework-for-ethical-practice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">developed a “decision tree”\u003c/a> for ethical AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, she worries AI models built on pattern recognition are, “to a certain extent, inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15% of teachers CDT’s survey found have been relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There must always be a “human in the loop,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days, she comes to class just 30 minutes before her students, and leaves just after the last bell. This has improved her work-life balance and the quality of her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King, the eighth grader in her class who has evolved into a confident reader, also goes to math class now without any additional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the dream of every special educator,” she says, beaming. “But guess what? That takes a lot of hard work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI tools, Acebu says, have given her more time for that kind of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Edited by: Nirvi Shah\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Visual design and development by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348775569/la-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>LA Johnson\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: NPR uses only the first names of minors in this story because it discusses their learning disabilities and placement in special education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BAY POINT, Calif. — The sun would just be rising when teacher Mary Acebu began her days. She’d blast music on the way to work to get energized and get to her classroom by 6:30 to prepare for her students’ arrival at 8. Often, it’d be dark by the time she headed home, sometimes with paperwork in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like so many special education teachers around the country, this was Acebu’s life for much of the 10 years she’s been teaching at Riverview Middle School, in this small, unincorporated northern California town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t do that anymore,” she says with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Acebu has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for the last two years to get through paperwork more quickly and says it’s helped her instead use precious time for student interaction. “I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships,” she says, “instead of sitting here in front of my computer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, schools nationwide have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1247795768/children-disabilities-special-education-teacher-shortage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">struggled with hiring and retaining\u003c/a> special educators. In the 2024-25 school year, \u003ca href=\"https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-shortages-subjects-across-states-factsheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">45 states reported\u003c/a> special education teacher shortages, and staff turnover is worse in schools that largely serve low-income students, like Riverview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of those teachers around the nation using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including for writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that outline goals and services students need to meet those goals at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-10-28-CDT-AI-IEP-Brief-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a recent survey\u003c/a> by the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% of special education teachers polled nationwide said they used AI to help develop individualized plans for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39% the previous school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the survey results, the CDT warned of privacy, legal and ethical risks around using AI. Other research, however, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more face time a student with a disability has with a teacher, that often yields better outcomes for them, both educationally, functionally — just across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that rings true in her classroom. She points out King, one of her eighth graders, as an example. “He was a non-reader, beginning of seventh grade. He’s reading now.” That, for Acebu, is the \u003cem>point\u003c/em> of IEPs — to put what’s on paper into practice for her students. She says that is only possible with intentional, hands-on work in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What IEPs are and why they matter\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every seventh and eighth grader in Mary Acebu’s class learns differently — some work independently, some in pairs, others with headphones on and yet others with speech-to-text technology. Those differences are captured in each child’s IEP, a document required by federal law for each of the over 8 million students with disabilities in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8d%2F57%2F8601fa57482dbd294f690c16221d%2F36a0496-tif.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\">\u003cfigcaption>Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s present needs, but importantly, “also where you want them to go within the next year,” says Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Coleman and Waterfield say while many teachers report feeling bogged down by the work that goes into developing IEPs, teachers also recognize they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to get a quality education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that to develop those goals, teachers must know each student’s learning style intimately. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two kids are the same,” she says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and a deep knowledge of complex education law and policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It used to take Acebu around 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. She points to a big, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on her bookshelf that contains California’s education standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages,” to find the right standard to match unique student goals, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI — with a ‘human touch’ \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of years ago, Acebu began taking courses on how to safely and effectively use AI. Around the same time, her district, Mt. Diablo Unified, entered agreements with companies that offer education-focused AI tools including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a primary concern for those who warn against the risks of using AI in schools. A growing number of districts are adopting such products, though \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/which-states-require-schools-to-have-ai-policies/2025/09\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">only a few states\u003c/a> have official AI education policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, using a district-vetted tool, Acebu customized chatbots for her school and trained them on state standards, assessments and other special education data. She now uses her “little assistants” for a wide range of tasks, from creating personalized worksheets to developing IEP goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, she says, “you’re double-checking everything. Like you have to put that human touch, that’s the final step.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5c%2F9b%2F7917c6324542801ed762bdb30d77%2F36a9904-tif.jpg\" alt=\"King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu's class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\">\u003cfigcaption>King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu’s class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F00%2F54e6a456459fa6fb438ca613f8a0%2F36a9793-tif.jpg\" alt=\"For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu's help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\">\u003cfigcaption>For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu’s help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01626434261419099\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In their research,\u003c/a> Coleman and Waterfield found special education teachers nationwide are using AI to help write IEP goals, track student progress, synthesize data and create differentiated learning materials, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu is uniquely equipped to use tech-tools: She just earned her doctorate in instructional technology and is on her district’s AI task force, which is developing an official AI policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues, however, were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special educator at Riverview for 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the number of students he serves shot up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it has put a huge stressor on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of his work this year. “It would be kind of nice if there were two jobs, like one paperwork job and one working with the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, a few weeks ago, after a tutorial from Acebu, he gave her chatbot a shot. He was surprised by the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an amazing time-saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for a number of things including producing simple summaries of complicated data to present to parents at IEP meetings. “I mean, it’s not like ‘that’s it, I’m done.’ I still have to go through and check it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and Acebu both say it could help them, and other educators, avoid burnout. Yet, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of CDT’s report, calls AI tools “a Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overworked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI in special education — with guardrails\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Band-Aid or not, more teachers \u003cem>are \u003c/em>using AI around the country. There are a litany of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is number one,” says Acebu. “Don’t put information there that’s gonna identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while the risks around privacy may be reduced if a school is using a vetted vendor, data breaches could still make that information vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers are using district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield and CDT’s research all found that educators around the country are using AI both formally and informally — from free consumer platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complicated landscape, Waterfield and Coleman \u003ca href=\"https://ciddl.org/navigating-ai-in-iep-development-a-framework-for-ethical-practice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">developed a “decision tree”\u003c/a> for ethical AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, she worries AI models built on pattern recognition are, “to a certain extent, inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15% of teachers CDT’s survey found have been relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There must always be a “human in the loop,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days, she comes to class just 30 minutes before her students, and leaves just after the last bell. This has improved her work-life balance and the quality of her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King, the eighth grader in her class who has evolved into a confident reader, also goes to math class now without any additional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the dream of every special educator,” she says, beaming. “But guess what? That takes a lot of hard work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI tools, Acebu says, have given her more time for that kind of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "cursive-is-back-but-should-students-be-learning-the-skill",
"title": "Cursive Is Back. But Should Students Be Learning the Skill?",
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"headTitle": "Cursive Is Back. But Should Students Be Learning the Skill? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor when she grows up. But that’s not why she memorized one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/longest-words-ever\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>longest medical terms\u003c/u>\u003c/a> in the English language:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school classroom, Sandi takes out a piece of paper and fills up a whole line to spell the word that describes a type of lung disease. The word allows her to practice cursive — her new favorite method of writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she becomes a doctor, Sandi, who signs her cursive autograph with a heart above the i, is determined to have a perfect signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Halle O’Brien, Sandi’s cursive partner-in-crime, agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I prefer writing in cursive,” Halle said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pair are proud members of the Holmes Middle School cursive club in Virginia. Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1140610714/what-students-lost-since-cursive-writing-was-cut-from-the-common-core-standards\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>two dozen states now require cursive instructio\u003c/u>n\u003c/a> in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards \u003ca href=\"https://learning.ccsso.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ELA_Standards1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>omitted the skill\u003c/u>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at Holmes, started the middle school club when students couldn’t read her writing on the board. They just stared at her blankly, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized they didn’t know how to write or read in cursive,” Kenerson said. For an educator who firmly believes that quotes deserve to be written in cursive, and has a new one on her board each month, Kenerson wanted to give students a chance to understand the magic of the loopy writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5b%2Fdc%2F3a1883bf4278b19875abe8a604a5%2Farl-020526-06.JPG\" alt=\"Halle O'Brien writes during after-school cursive club, held by teacher Sherisse Kenerson, at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\">Halle O’Brien writes during after-school cursive club, held by teacher Sherisse Kenerson, at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The club exploded in popularity this past winter, with local news stations and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/01/03/cursive-writing-school-clubs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>\u003cu>Washington Post\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/a> crediting it for “keeping cursive alive.” Since then, Kenerson has been racking her brain trying to figure out why it has drawn so much attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She has received fan mail from retirees and teachers (written in cursive, of course). She has heard from people in Idaho, Pennsylvania and Florida. She has even had Zoom calls with educators in Oklahoma and Maryland to explain how she runs the club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m flabbergasted,” Kenerson said. “I’m just going along with the ride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She decided that cursive is a way to hold on to the past, and many people are not ready to let it go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe3%2F70%2F5d77fe2c45c58b9cd6bc213bd455%2Farl-020526-24-edit.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher Sherisse Kenerson has received fan mail from retirees and teachers for starting the club.\">\u003cfigcaption>Teacher Sherisse Kenerson has received fan mail from retirees and teachers for starting the club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kenerson’s after-school club is a local example of a nationwide trend — cursive handwriting is back in many classrooms across the country. Teachers and legislators credit the resurgence to nostalgia and some \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>evidence of educational benefits\u003c/u>\u003c/a>. But surprisingly, the curves and swoops are contentious among experts, and some argue that cursive does not add any real value for students, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have seen no evidence that cursive brings any particular cognitive or learning benefit beyond that brought by hand printing,” wrote Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, in an email to NPR. He noted that the cognitive benefits of young students writing by hand in general are already well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warschauer, who founded the UC Irvine \u003ca href=\"https://www.digitallearninglab.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>Digital Learning Lab\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, opposes teaching cursive in schools because of the “waste of time and effort” when print handwriting, voice-to-text applications, and keyboards are easily accessible to students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the cursive debate centers around time in the classroom. Should educators spend precious minutes teaching another way to write on paper when technology is so prevalent?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa, said the answer does not have to be one or the other. In his college classroom, he sees students increasingly using tablets and a stylus to take notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What that means is that as a country, we likely need to help our students become multi-modal,” Datchuk said. They need to not only be able to handwrite using print, but also use cursive, type, and interact with technology, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x5147+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F52%2Ffe%2F828bec1f44d8997d36f515c5d336%2Farl-020526-28-trio.jpg\" alt=\"Top left: Kenerson demonstrates writing cursive letters on the whiteboard. Right: Kenerson helps a student with their worksheet. Bottom: Sandi Chandee (right) and Halle O'Brien practice their writing during cursive club.\">\u003cfigcaption>\u003cstrong>Top left:\u003c/strong> Kenerson demonstrates writing cursive letters on the whiteboard. \u003cstrong>Right:\u003c/strong> Kenerson helps a student with their worksheet. \u003cstrong>Bottom:\u003c/strong> Sandi Chandee (right) and Halle O’Brien practice their writing during cursive club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Technology is not a fix-all for students, though, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the dirty secrets behind spell checker and artificial intelligence is that you still need to be able to spell in order to use those well,” Datchuk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and a team of researchers compiled the known studies on cursive teaching. Some studies used antiquated technology like ink wells and quill tips, so they were cut. A few of the others were missing details on how the instruction was implemented. With those caveats, Datchuk said, preliminary evidence shows cursive writing could improve spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Datchuk said the “special sauce” for cursive is that students have to pay closer attention to how letters connect when they write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenerson, the cursive club’s founder, said she’s seen anecdotal evidence that cursive helps students with dyslexia. Sharon Quirk-Silva, a California assemblymember who introduced the cursive bill in the state, said she’s also heard anecdotal evidence that cursive can be therapeutic for students with special needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Quirk-Silva’s 2023 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/10/23/1207933434/california-mandates-cursive-handwriting-instruction-in-elementary-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>cursive mandate\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, she said the reception from constituents has been overwhelmingly positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Datchuk, the University of Iowa professor, said he receives a constant stream of emails from people asking about cursive, but his reason for studying the technique was personal — his 8-year-old son, who is reading Harry Potter, still passes his grandmother’s birthday cards to his dad to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That brings up the larger generational divide that’s probably happened not only with my sons, but with kids and young adults across the United States who just never received instruction in cursive,” Datchuk, a former elementary school teacher, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antonio Benavides, an 11-year-old in Kenerson’s cursive club, is an example of that divide. His dad heard about the club and immediately sent Antonio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3a%2Fc0%2F35729fa64c67966b065749b8d376%2Farl-020526-15.JPG\" alt=\"Antonio Benavides says his penmanship has improved since joining cursive club.\">\u003cfigcaption>Antonio Benavides says his penmanship has improved since joining cursive club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, he sticks his tongue out and stares intently at the loops in front of him. He enjoys practicing the curves, and he said his normally sprawling print penmanship has improved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me, cursive club, what do I need that for?'” Benavides remembered telling his dad. But now, “Yeah, I like it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When there’s a moment of silence as the students practice their i’s and t’s, Antonio whispers, “I love that sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The sound of a pencil when it’s silent is just so nice,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Graham, the Regents Professor at Arizona State University’s College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, argues that despite the media attention, cursive never really went anywhere. Graham, who has authored numerous books about writing, said he has been hearing about the “death of handwriting or the death of cursive” for about 50 years. At one point, his responses to questions from reporters became “snarky,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d say, ‘Well, damn, I didn’t hear it was buried,'” Graham said. “Can you tell me where? I’d like to visit the grave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graham is ambivalent about whether cursive or print is a more effective tool for students. He said he thinks the fixation on cursive is an adult phenomenon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F93%2Fc3%2Ff55bb4a04fd7b8737da498c8eea5%2Farl-020526-26.JPG\" alt=\"Kenerson started the club after she realized students could not read her cursive handwriting on the board.\">\u003cfigcaption>Kenerson started the club after she realized students could not read her cursive handwriting on the board. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m often amazed at how much attention it gets,” Graham said. With more studies, Graham said he thinks the differences in benefits between the two types of handwriting will be insignificant. He said what’s more important is spending the time to teach kids to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Kenerson’s cursive club, 11-year-old Conrad Thompson said she’s the only student in her history class who can read her teacher’s huge Declaration of Independence printout. It makes her proud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc7%2Fb9%2F885944e54205a0f4780fd0938a24%2Farl-020526-11.JPG\" alt=\"Conrad Thompson is proud of her cursive skills.\">\u003cfigcaption>Conrad Thompson is proud of her cursive skills. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Hopefully, one day, me and my family will get to go see it in person,” Conrad said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Sandi and Halle, the pair have no doubts about their newfound skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Will you be back next week?” Halle asked Sandi about the after-school club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of course I will,” Sandi responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF CHIMES RINGING)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good afternoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open your books. It’s time for Cursive Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHERISSE KENERSON: And down. And then lower these. All right, and so now, you can officially write a word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AILSA CHANG, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is Sherisse Kenerson, a middle school teacher who runs the club in Alexandria, Virginia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: What are the two rules when it comes to cursive?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Two rules, OK. One of them has got to be the biggie – you don’t lift your pencil from the page. Don’t pick it up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Ooh, Mary Louise, it sounds like you learned cursive in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: (Laughter) Well, the skill was booted out of most public schools when the Common Core Standards in 2010 did not recommend teaching it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: And it is not back just for some after-school fun. More than two dozen states have introduced cursive back into their classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: Can I get another person to tell me the second rule? Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CONRAD THOMPSON: Always tilt your paper or board, depending on which hand you use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: Exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: That is Conrad Thompson (ph). She’s 11 and a total pro and says Cursive Club is the most fun after-school option. She now has a special skill for her history class, reading the Declaration of Independence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CONRAD: My teacher, Mr. Rosen, has this huge copy, and I read it one time. I don’t think anyone in my class can read a cursive except me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Love it. Now, she’s not the only one, though, who is excited about cursive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SANDI CHANDEE: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Across the classroom, that is 12-year-old Sandi Chandee (ph). She is using her cursive to write one of the longest words in the English language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Wait, wait, wait. I need to hear that word again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SANDI: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: (Laughter) OK, got it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: That is impressive skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But, you know, some experts are more skeptical of jumping on the cursive train, like Steve Graham, a professor at Arizona State University. He has written many books about handwriting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: He says the most important thing is kids just need to learn how to write, whether it’s cursive or print – less important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>STEVE GRAHAM: One of these forms needs to be taught. I personally don’t care which one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: In fact, he is a little sick of the cursive hoopla.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GRAHAM: This is more a phenomena – an adult phenomena – you know, a feeling of something lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But other educators like Shawn Datchuk, a professor of Special Education at the University of Iowa, says 2026 is a different learning environment, one where students need to learn loads of different communication methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHAWN DATCHUK: As a country, we likely need to help our students become multimodal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Multimodal – Datchuk says multimodal means this generation needs to know how to write in cursive and use a computer and use AI, and the list goes on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: And on and on. The students in Mrs. Kenerson’s Cursive Club certainly are becoming multimodal, like Antonio Benavides (ph). His dad made him go to Cursive Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO BENAVIDES: I’m like, are you kidding me, Cursive Club? What do I need that for?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But now…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: Yeah. OK, I like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: When you go up, go back. And when you’re coming back up, then that’s when you plan to do your hoop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: Oh. You go…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: So look. Up, go back down. When you come up here, you do your hoop. Great job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: And Mrs. Kenerson’s red apple candy jar – always sure to sweeten the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: I need to find the best one. OK, quick, the Jolly Ranchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Maybe at the end of the day, kids just need to get bribed with candy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: (Laughter).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF DAFT PUNK SONG, “INSTANT CRUSH”)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"title": "Cursive Is Back. But Should Students Be Learning the Skill? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor when she grows up. But that’s not why she memorized one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/longest-words-ever\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>longest medical terms\u003c/u>\u003c/a> in the English language:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school classroom, Sandi takes out a piece of paper and fills up a whole line to spell the word that describes a type of lung disease. The word allows her to practice cursive — her new favorite method of writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she becomes a doctor, Sandi, who signs her cursive autograph with a heart above the i, is determined to have a perfect signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twelve-year-old Halle O’Brien, Sandi’s cursive partner-in-crime, agrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I prefer writing in cursive,” Halle said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pair are proud members of the Holmes Middle School cursive club in Virginia. Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1140610714/what-students-lost-since-cursive-writing-was-cut-from-the-common-core-standards\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cu>two dozen states now require cursive instructio\u003c/u>n\u003c/a> in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards \u003ca href=\"https://learning.ccsso.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ELA_Standards1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>omitted the skill\u003c/u>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at Holmes, started the middle school club when students couldn’t read her writing on the board. They just stared at her blankly, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized they didn’t know how to write or read in cursive,” Kenerson said. For an educator who firmly believes that quotes deserve to be written in cursive, and has a new one on her board each month, Kenerson wanted to give students a chance to understand the magic of the loopy writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5b%2Fdc%2F3a1883bf4278b19875abe8a604a5%2Farl-020526-06.JPG\" alt=\"Halle O'Brien writes during after-school cursive club, held by teacher Sherisse Kenerson, at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\">Halle O’Brien writes during after-school cursive club, held by teacher Sherisse Kenerson, at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The club exploded in popularity this past winter, with local news stations and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/01/03/cursive-writing-school-clubs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>\u003cu>Washington Post\u003c/u>\u003c/em>\u003c/a> crediting it for “keeping cursive alive.” Since then, Kenerson has been racking her brain trying to figure out why it has drawn so much attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She has received fan mail from retirees and teachers (written in cursive, of course). She has heard from people in Idaho, Pennsylvania and Florida. She has even had Zoom calls with educators in Oklahoma and Maryland to explain how she runs the club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m flabbergasted,” Kenerson said. “I’m just going along with the ride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She decided that cursive is a way to hold on to the past, and many people are not ready to let it go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe3%2F70%2F5d77fe2c45c58b9cd6bc213bd455%2Farl-020526-24-edit.jpg\" alt=\"Teacher Sherisse Kenerson has received fan mail from retirees and teachers for starting the club.\">\u003cfigcaption>Teacher Sherisse Kenerson has received fan mail from retirees and teachers for starting the club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kenerson’s after-school club is a local example of a nationwide trend — cursive handwriting is back in many classrooms across the country. Teachers and legislators credit the resurgence to nostalgia and some \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>evidence of educational benefits\u003c/u>\u003c/a>. But surprisingly, the curves and swoops are contentious among experts, and some argue that cursive does not add any real value for students, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have seen no evidence that cursive brings any particular cognitive or learning benefit beyond that brought by hand printing,” wrote Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, in an email to NPR. He noted that the cognitive benefits of young students writing by hand in general are already well established.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warschauer, who founded the UC Irvine \u003ca href=\"https://www.digitallearninglab.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>Digital Learning Lab\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, opposes teaching cursive in schools because of the “waste of time and effort” when print handwriting, voice-to-text applications, and keyboards are easily accessible to students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of the cursive debate centers around time in the classroom. Should educators spend precious minutes teaching another way to write on paper when technology is so prevalent?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa, said the answer does not have to be one or the other. In his college classroom, he sees students increasingly using tablets and a stylus to take notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What that means is that as a country, we likely need to help our students become multi-modal,” Datchuk said. They need to not only be able to handwrite using print, but also use cursive, type, and interact with technology, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x5147+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F52%2Ffe%2F828bec1f44d8997d36f515c5d336%2Farl-020526-28-trio.jpg\" alt=\"Top left: Kenerson demonstrates writing cursive letters on the whiteboard. Right: Kenerson helps a student with their worksheet. Bottom: Sandi Chandee (right) and Halle O'Brien practice their writing during cursive club.\">\u003cfigcaption>\u003cstrong>Top left:\u003c/strong> Kenerson demonstrates writing cursive letters on the whiteboard. \u003cstrong>Right:\u003c/strong> Kenerson helps a student with their worksheet. \u003cstrong>Bottom:\u003c/strong> Sandi Chandee (right) and Halle O’Brien practice their writing during cursive club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Technology is not a fix-all for students, though, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the dirty secrets behind spell checker and artificial intelligence is that you still need to be able to spell in order to use those well,” Datchuk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and a team of researchers compiled the known studies on cursive teaching. Some studies used antiquated technology like ink wells and quill tips, so they were cut. A few of the others were missing details on how the instruction was implemented. With those caveats, Datchuk said, preliminary evidence shows cursive writing could improve spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Datchuk said the “special sauce” for cursive is that students have to pay closer attention to how letters connect when they write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenerson, the cursive club’s founder, said she’s seen anecdotal evidence that cursive helps students with dyslexia. Sharon Quirk-Silva, a California assemblymember who introduced the cursive bill in the state, said she’s also heard anecdotal evidence that cursive can be therapeutic for students with special needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Quirk-Silva’s 2023 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/10/23/1207933434/california-mandates-cursive-handwriting-instruction-in-elementary-schools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>cursive mandate\u003c/u>\u003c/a>, she said the reception from constituents has been overwhelmingly positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Datchuk, the University of Iowa professor, said he receives a constant stream of emails from people asking about cursive, but his reason for studying the technique was personal — his 8-year-old son, who is reading Harry Potter, still passes his grandmother’s birthday cards to his dad to read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That brings up the larger generational divide that’s probably happened not only with my sons, but with kids and young adults across the United States who just never received instruction in cursive,” Datchuk, a former elementary school teacher, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antonio Benavides, an 11-year-old in Kenerson’s cursive club, is an example of that divide. His dad heard about the club and immediately sent Antonio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3a%2Fc0%2F35729fa64c67966b065749b8d376%2Farl-020526-15.JPG\" alt=\"Antonio Benavides says his penmanship has improved since joining cursive club.\">\u003cfigcaption>Antonio Benavides says his penmanship has improved since joining cursive club. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, he sticks his tongue out and stares intently at the loops in front of him. He enjoys practicing the curves, and he said his normally sprawling print penmanship has improved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me, cursive club, what do I need that for?'” Benavides remembered telling his dad. But now, “Yeah, I like it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When there’s a moment of silence as the students practice their i’s and t’s, Antonio whispers, “I love that sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The sound of a pencil when it’s silent is just so nice,” he explained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steve Graham, the Regents Professor at Arizona State University’s College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, argues that despite the media attention, cursive never really went anywhere. Graham, who has authored numerous books about writing, said he has been hearing about the “death of handwriting or the death of cursive” for about 50 years. At one point, his responses to questions from reporters became “snarky,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d say, ‘Well, damn, I didn’t hear it was buried,'” Graham said. “Can you tell me where? I’d like to visit the grave.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graham is ambivalent about whether cursive or print is a more effective tool for students. He said he thinks the fixation on cursive is an adult phenomenon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F93%2Fc3%2Ff55bb4a04fd7b8737da498c8eea5%2Farl-020526-26.JPG\" alt=\"Kenerson started the club after she realized students could not read her cursive handwriting on the board.\">\u003cfigcaption>Kenerson started the club after she realized students could not read her cursive handwriting on the board. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m often amazed at how much attention it gets,” Graham said. With more studies, Graham said he thinks the differences in benefits between the two types of handwriting will be insignificant. He said what’s more important is spending the time to teach kids to write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Kenerson’s cursive club, 11-year-old Conrad Thompson said she’s the only student in her history class who can read her teacher’s huge Declaration of Independence printout. It makes her proud.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3001+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc7%2Fb9%2F885944e54205a0f4780fd0938a24%2Farl-020526-11.JPG\" alt=\"Conrad Thompson is proud of her cursive skills.\">\u003cfigcaption>Conrad Thompson is proud of her cursive skills. \u003ccite> (Anna Rose Layden for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Hopefully, one day, me and my family will get to go see it in person,” Conrad said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Sandi and Halle, the pair have no doubts about their newfound skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Will you be back next week?” Halle asked Sandi about the after-school club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of course I will,” Sandi responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF CHIMES RINGING)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good afternoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open your books. It’s time for Cursive Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHERISSE KENERSON: And down. And then lower these. All right, and so now, you can officially write a word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AILSA CHANG, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is Sherisse Kenerson, a middle school teacher who runs the club in Alexandria, Virginia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: What are the two rules when it comes to cursive?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Two rules, OK. One of them has got to be the biggie – you don’t lift your pencil from the page. Don’t pick it up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Ooh, Mary Louise, it sounds like you learned cursive in school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: (Laughter) Well, the skill was booted out of most public schools when the Common Core Standards in 2010 did not recommend teaching it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: And it is not back just for some after-school fun. More than two dozen states have introduced cursive back into their classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: Can I get another person to tell me the second rule? Yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CONRAD THOMPSON: Always tilt your paper or board, depending on which hand you use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: Exactly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: That is Conrad Thompson (ph). She’s 11 and a total pro and says Cursive Club is the most fun after-school option. She now has a special skill for her history class, reading the Declaration of Independence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CONRAD: My teacher, Mr. Rosen, has this huge copy, and I read it one time. I don’t think anyone in my class can read a cursive except me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Love it. Now, she’s not the only one, though, who is excited about cursive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SANDI CHANDEE: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Across the classroom, that is 12-year-old Sandi Chandee (ph). She is using her cursive to write one of the longest words in the English language.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Wait, wait, wait. I need to hear that word again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SANDI: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: (Laughter) OK, got it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: That is impressive skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But, you know, some experts are more skeptical of jumping on the cursive train, like Steve Graham, a professor at Arizona State University. He has written many books about handwriting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: He says the most important thing is kids just need to learn how to write, whether it’s cursive or print – less important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>STEVE GRAHAM: One of these forms needs to be taught. I personally don’t care which one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: In fact, he is a little sick of the cursive hoopla.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GRAHAM: This is more a phenomena – an adult phenomena – you know, a feeling of something lost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But other educators like Shawn Datchuk, a professor of Special Education at the University of Iowa, says 2026 is a different learning environment, one where students need to learn loads of different communication methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SHAWN DATCHUK: As a country, we likely need to help our students become multimodal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: Multimodal – Datchuk says multimodal means this generation needs to know how to write in cursive and use a computer and use AI, and the list goes on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: And on and on. The students in Mrs. Kenerson’s Cursive Club certainly are becoming multimodal, like Antonio Benavides (ph). His dad made him go to Cursive Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO BENAVIDES: I’m like, are you kidding me, Cursive Club? What do I need that for?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: But now…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: Yeah. OK, I like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: When you go up, go back. And when you’re coming back up, then that’s when you plan to do your hoop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: Oh. You go…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KENERSON: So look. Up, go back down. When you come up here, you do your hoop. Great job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: And Mrs. Kenerson’s red apple candy jar – always sure to sweeten the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ANTONIO: I need to find the best one. OK, quick, the Jolly Ranchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHANG: Maybe at the end of the day, kids just need to get bribed with candy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KELLY: (Laughter).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF DAFT PUNK SONG, “INSTANT CRUSH”)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>With their still-developing brains, adolescents can shrink from behaving in ways that serve their long-term interests. It’s easier to punt on geometry homework when Instagram beckons, and delay turning out the light when friends are sending midnight texts. Soiled clothing in a pile on the floor? Not a priority. Like everyone else, even teenagers with the best intentions can fall into habits that undermine their goals and are bewildered about how to construct the habits that will improve their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James Clear’s blockbuster, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59910150\">Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Ways to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones\u003c/a>,” explores the underlying principles of habit formation and destruction and explains in simple steps how to change them. Intended for readers who have an appetite for altering their own habits, the book also provides tools for parents whose children need help adjusting theirs. If 40 to 50 percent of daily behavior is a function of habits, as researchers suggest, then these automatic actions can alter the shape of a life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are four essential ways to build the habits you want: “make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To shed a bad habit, consider the inverse: “make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult and make it unsatisfying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suppose a 14-year-old wants to be more disciplined about exercising after school. Most days, the teenager flops on the couch and scrolls through her social media when she gets home. In this case, she wants to replace a bad habit (scrolling) with a good one (going for a run.) To make the desired habit obvious, she might put her workout clothes right by the door she enters. This new context—clothes right there—is the cue to change and go. To make it attractive, she might try what Clear calls “temptation bundling,” attaching the sought-after habit with something she already enjoys. For example, if she likes listening to podcasts, she can stack that habit (listening to podcasts) with the one she avoids (exercising). To make it easy, she should start small, by exercising for just a short amount of time; when building new habits, it’s the consistency in carrying them out rather than the duration of the activity itself that makes them stick. Finally, to make it satisfying, she can reward achieving that goal with some small incentive that reinforces her new, desired habit. A week of daily exercising might warrant a pedicure or massage, for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another teenager longs to give up junk food. He can start to make this food invisible by storing the chips and cookies in a high cupboard, out of sight; just catching a glimpse of the Chips-A-Hoy is a cue to eat them. To make the snacks unattractive, he can consciously reflect on the drawbacks to filling up on food created in industrial-sized vats and consider the advantages of giving up processed confections. To make it difficult, he might up the “friction” between himself and the food by keeping it out of the house entirely, so that the only way to give in is to travel to the grocery store. And to make the habit unsatisfying, he can conspire with a friend to report back if he slips up. The social cost of admitting the weakness taints the habit further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The four steps Clear proposes are grounded in the science of habit formation. A four-part feedback loop occurs unconsciously in the brain and compels much of our behavior: it starts with a cue, which prompts a craving, then triggers a response, which provides a reward. Clear’s system for creating new habits and eliminating old ones manipulates the cue-craving-response-reward cycle to generate the sought-after behavior change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atomic Habits includes more tips that teenagers might find helpful:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Be specific.\u003c/strong> When trying to change behavior, start by composing an “implementation intention.” This is a short statement asserting what, when and where you will make the adjustment: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” For example, “I will run for ten minutes at 3:30 on the treadmill in the basement.” Vague and sweeping goals are easy to ignore; a precise plan that’s tailored to one’s life, much less so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Little changes compound over time.\u003c/strong> The high school freshman who decides she wants to exercise right after school does not need to overhaul her very existence to improve her fitness. By making slight adjustments to her daily habits, she can make substantial progress over time. The key to solidifying habits is to do them repeatedly, day after day; consistency in carrying out the behavior is what matters, even if these adjustments seem tiny. Small, achievable goals—say, exercising for two minutes—can grow and lead to significant change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adjust systems, not goals.\u003c/strong> When a teenager gives in to the craving for Doritos, he might be tempted to blame himself and rethink the intended junk-food ban. Instead, he might modify the system he has set up to prompt better eating. Did he delete the food delivery app that makes giving in easy? Has he found an accountability partner to report on his progress? A better system will prevent lapsing into bad habits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don’t miss two days in a row.\u003c/strong> It’s human to err, especially when trying to alter unconscious behavior. What’s important is getting back on track the next day. After tweaking the system, return to the new habit right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Thresholds are good times to change habits.\u003c/strong> Adolescence is defined by change, which gives kids abundant opportunities to try altering their behavior. The beginning of the school year, the start of a new semester or transition into another athletic season are natural times for kids to start fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Consider the social environment\u003c/strong>. Embracing new behaviors is more natural when peers reinforce them; taking up running will be easier if friends are runners, too. Whether trying to create new habits or break old ones, the larger environment can either aid or thwart the plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teenagers are famously striving to figure out who they are. “The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself,” Clear writes. Working to develop habits that align with their burgeoning identities can help kids in that discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With their still-developing brains, adolescents can shrink from behaving in ways that serve their long-term interests. It’s easier to punt on geometry homework when Instagram beckons, and delay turning out the light when friends are sending midnight texts. Soiled clothing in a pile on the floor? Not a priority. Like everyone else, even teenagers with the best intentions can fall into habits that undermine their goals and are bewildered about how to construct the habits that will improve their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>James Clear’s blockbuster, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59910150\">Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Ways to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones\u003c/a>,” explores the underlying principles of habit formation and destruction and explains in simple steps how to change them. Intended for readers who have an appetite for altering their own habits, the book also provides tools for parents whose children need help adjusting theirs. If 40 to 50 percent of daily behavior is a function of habits, as researchers suggest, then these automatic actions can alter the shape of a life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are four essential ways to build the habits you want: “make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To shed a bad habit, consider the inverse: “make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult and make it unsatisfying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suppose a 14-year-old wants to be more disciplined about exercising after school. Most days, the teenager flops on the couch and scrolls through her social media when she gets home. In this case, she wants to replace a bad habit (scrolling) with a good one (going for a run.) To make the desired habit obvious, she might put her workout clothes right by the door she enters. This new context—clothes right there—is the cue to change and go. To make it attractive, she might try what Clear calls “temptation bundling,” attaching the sought-after habit with something she already enjoys. For example, if she likes listening to podcasts, she can stack that habit (listening to podcasts) with the one she avoids (exercising). To make it easy, she should start small, by exercising for just a short amount of time; when building new habits, it’s the consistency in carrying them out rather than the duration of the activity itself that makes them stick. Finally, to make it satisfying, she can reward achieving that goal with some small incentive that reinforces her new, desired habit. A week of daily exercising might warrant a pedicure or massage, for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another teenager longs to give up junk food. He can start to make this food invisible by storing the chips and cookies in a high cupboard, out of sight; just catching a glimpse of the Chips-A-Hoy is a cue to eat them. To make the snacks unattractive, he can consciously reflect on the drawbacks to filling up on food created in industrial-sized vats and consider the advantages of giving up processed confections. To make it difficult, he might up the “friction” between himself and the food by keeping it out of the house entirely, so that the only way to give in is to travel to the grocery store. And to make the habit unsatisfying, he can conspire with a friend to report back if he slips up. The social cost of admitting the weakness taints the habit further.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The four steps Clear proposes are grounded in the science of habit formation. A four-part feedback loop occurs unconsciously in the brain and compels much of our behavior: it starts with a cue, which prompts a craving, then triggers a response, which provides a reward. Clear’s system for creating new habits and eliminating old ones manipulates the cue-craving-response-reward cycle to generate the sought-after behavior change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atomic Habits includes more tips that teenagers might find helpful:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Be specific.\u003c/strong> When trying to change behavior, start by composing an “implementation intention.” This is a short statement asserting what, when and where you will make the adjustment: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” For example, “I will run for ten minutes at 3:30 on the treadmill in the basement.” Vague and sweeping goals are easy to ignore; a precise plan that’s tailored to one’s life, much less so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Little changes compound over time.\u003c/strong> The high school freshman who decides she wants to exercise right after school does not need to overhaul her very existence to improve her fitness. By making slight adjustments to her daily habits, she can make substantial progress over time. The key to solidifying habits is to do them repeatedly, day after day; consistency in carrying out the behavior is what matters, even if these adjustments seem tiny. Small, achievable goals—say, exercising for two minutes—can grow and lead to significant change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adjust systems, not goals.\u003c/strong> When a teenager gives in to the craving for Doritos, he might be tempted to blame himself and rethink the intended junk-food ban. Instead, he might modify the system he has set up to prompt better eating. Did he delete the food delivery app that makes giving in easy? Has he found an accountability partner to report on his progress? A better system will prevent lapsing into bad habits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Don’t miss two days in a row.\u003c/strong> It’s human to err, especially when trying to alter unconscious behavior. What’s important is getting back on track the next day. After tweaking the system, return to the new habit right away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Thresholds are good times to change habits.\u003c/strong> Adolescence is defined by change, which gives kids abundant opportunities to try altering their behavior. The beginning of the school year, the start of a new semester or transition into another athletic season are natural times for kids to start fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Consider the social environment\u003c/strong>. Embracing new behaviors is more natural when peers reinforce them; taking up running will be easier if friends are runners, too. Whether trying to create new habits or break old ones, the larger environment can either aid or thwart the plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teenagers are famously striving to figure out who they are. “The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself,” Clear writes. Working to develop habits that align with their burgeoning identities can help kids in that discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Words Matter: Teachers Who Use Math Vocabulary Help Students Do Better in Math",
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"content": "\u003cp>Students, parents and school principals all instinctively know that some teachers are better than others. Education researchers have spent decades trying — with \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ismail-Aslantas/publication/347514070_The_Stability_Problem_of_Value-added_Models_in_Teacher_Effectiveness_Estimations_A_Systematic_Review_Study/links/5fdfcd2192851c13fea95412/The-Stability-Problem-of-Value-added-Models-in-Teacher-Effectiveness-Estimations-A-Systematic-Review-Study.pdf\">mixed success\u003c/a> — to calculate exactly how much better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What remains far more elusive is why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X251393232\">new study\u003c/a> suggests that one surprisingly simple difference between stronger and weaker math teachers may be how often they use mathematical vocabulary, words such as “factors,” “denominators” and “multiples,” in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers who used more math vocabulary had students who scored higher on math tests, according to a team of data scientists and education researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Maryland. The size of the test score boost was substantial. It amounted to about half of the benefit researchers typically attribute to having a highly effective teacher, which is among the most important school-based factors that help children learn. Students with highly effective teachers can end up months ahead of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re looking for a good math teacher, you’re probably looking for somebody who’s exposing their students to more mathematical vocabulary,” said Harvard data scientist Zachary Himmelsbach, lead author of the \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X251393232\">study\u003c/a>, which was published online in November 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The finding aligns with a growing body of research suggesting that language plays a critical role in math learning. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712504\">2021 meta-analysis\u003c/a> of 40 studies found that students with stronger math vocabularies tend to perform better in math, particularly on multi-step, complex problems. Understanding what a “radius” is, for example, can make it more efficient to talk about perimeter and area and understand geometric concepts. Some math curricula explicitly teach vocabulary and include glossaries to reinforce these terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But vocabulary alone is unlikely to be a magic ingredient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If a teacher just stood in front of the classroom and recited lists of mathematical vocabulary terms, nobody’s learning anything,” said Himmelsbach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Himmelsbach suspects that vocabulary is part of a broader constellation of effective teaching practices. Teachers who use more math terms may also be providing clearer explanations, walking students through lots of examples step-by-step, and offering engaging puzzles. These teachers might also have a stronger conceptual understanding of math themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to isolate what exactly is driving the students’ math learning and what role vocabulary, in and of itself, is playing, Himmelsbach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Himmelsbach and his research team analyzed transcripts from more than 1,600 fourth- and fifth-grade math lessons in four school districts recorded for research purposes about 15 years ago. They counted how often teachers used more than \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1acNLeOvUjW1-29p2K05BNN_Mtx_SfbNf/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116671581412148583978&rtpof=true&sd=true\">200 common math terms\u003c/a> drawn from elementary math curriculum glossaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average teacher used 140 math-related words per lesson. But there was wide variation. The top quarter of the teachers used at least 28 more math terms per lesson than the quarter of the teachers who spoke the fewest math words. Over the course of a school year, that difference amounted to roughly 4,480 additional math terms, meaning that some students were exposed to far richer mathematical language than others, depending on which teacher they happened to have that year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study linked these differences to student achievement. One hundred teachers were recorded over three years, and in the third year, students were randomly assigned to classrooms. That random assignment allowed the researchers to rule out the possibility that higher performing students were simply being clustered with stronger teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lessons came from districts serving mostly low-income students. About two-thirds of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, more than 40 percent were Black, and nearly a quarter were Hispanic — the very populations that tend to struggle the most in math and stand to gain the most from effective instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, student use of math vocabulary did not appear to matter as much as teacher use. Although the researchers also tracked how often students used math terms in class, they found no clear link between teachers who used more vocabulary and students who spoke more math words themselves. Exposure and comprehension, rather than verbal facility, may be enough to support stronger math performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers also looked for clues as to why some teachers used more math vocabulary than others. Years of teaching experience made no difference. Nor did the number of math or math pedagogy courses teachers had taken in college. Teachers with stronger mathematical knowledge did tend to use more math terms, but the relationship was modest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Himmelsbach suspects that personal beliefs play an important role. Some teachers, he said, worry that formal math language will confuse students and instead favor more familiar phrasing, such as “put together” instead of addition, or “take away” instead of subtraction. While those colloquial expressions can be helpful, students ultimately need to understand how they correspond to formal mathematical concepts, Himmelsbach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This study is part of a new wave of education research that uses machine learning and natural language processing — computer techniques that analyze large volumes of text — to peer inside the classroom, which has long remained a black box. With enough recorded lessons, researchers hope not only to identify which teaching practices matter most, but also provide teachers with concrete, data-driven feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers did not examine whether teachers used math terms correctly, but they noted that future models could be trained to do just that, offering feedback on accuracy and context, not just frequency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, the takeaway is more modest but still meaningful: Students appear to learn more math when their teachers speak the language of math more often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or \u003c/em>\u003cem>barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-math-vocabulary/\">\u003cem>math vocabulary\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Students, parents and school principals all instinctively know that some teachers are better than others. Education researchers have spent decades trying — with \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ismail-Aslantas/publication/347514070_The_Stability_Problem_of_Value-added_Models_in_Teacher_Effectiveness_Estimations_A_Systematic_Review_Study/links/5fdfcd2192851c13fea95412/The-Stability-Problem-of-Value-added-Models-in-Teacher-Effectiveness-Estimations-A-Systematic-Review-Study.pdf\">mixed success\u003c/a> — to calculate exactly how much better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What remains far more elusive is why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X251393232\">new study\u003c/a> suggests that one surprisingly simple difference between stronger and weaker math teachers may be how often they use mathematical vocabulary, words such as “factors,” “denominators” and “multiples,” in class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers who used more math vocabulary had students who scored higher on math tests, according to a team of data scientists and education researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Maryland. The size of the test score boost was substantial. It amounted to about half of the benefit researchers typically attribute to having a highly effective teacher, which is among the most important school-based factors that help children learn. Students with highly effective teachers can end up months ahead of their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re looking for a good math teacher, you’re probably looking for somebody who’s exposing their students to more mathematical vocabulary,” said Harvard data scientist Zachary Himmelsbach, lead author of the \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X251393232\">study\u003c/a>, which was published online in November 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The finding aligns with a growing body of research suggesting that language plays a critical role in math learning. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712504\">2021 meta-analysis\u003c/a> of 40 studies found that students with stronger math vocabularies tend to perform better in math, particularly on multi-step, complex problems. Understanding what a “radius” is, for example, can make it more efficient to talk about perimeter and area and understand geometric concepts. Some math curricula explicitly teach vocabulary and include glossaries to reinforce these terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But vocabulary alone is unlikely to be a magic ingredient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If a teacher just stood in front of the classroom and recited lists of mathematical vocabulary terms, nobody’s learning anything,” said Himmelsbach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Himmelsbach suspects that vocabulary is part of a broader constellation of effective teaching practices. Teachers who use more math terms may also be providing clearer explanations, walking students through lots of examples step-by-step, and offering engaging puzzles. These teachers might also have a stronger conceptual understanding of math themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to isolate what exactly is driving the students’ math learning and what role vocabulary, in and of itself, is playing, Himmelsbach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Himmelsbach and his research team analyzed transcripts from more than 1,600 fourth- and fifth-grade math lessons in four school districts recorded for research purposes about 15 years ago. They counted how often teachers used more than \u003ca href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1acNLeOvUjW1-29p2K05BNN_Mtx_SfbNf/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116671581412148583978&rtpof=true&sd=true\">200 common math terms\u003c/a> drawn from elementary math curriculum glossaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average teacher used 140 math-related words per lesson. But there was wide variation. The top quarter of the teachers used at least 28 more math terms per lesson than the quarter of the teachers who spoke the fewest math words. Over the course of a school year, that difference amounted to roughly 4,480 additional math terms, meaning that some students were exposed to far richer mathematical language than others, depending on which teacher they happened to have that year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study linked these differences to student achievement. One hundred teachers were recorded over three years, and in the third year, students were randomly assigned to classrooms. That random assignment allowed the researchers to rule out the possibility that higher performing students were simply being clustered with stronger teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lessons came from districts serving mostly low-income students. About two-thirds of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, more than 40 percent were Black, and nearly a quarter were Hispanic — the very populations that tend to struggle the most in math and stand to gain the most from effective instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Interestingly, student use of math vocabulary did not appear to matter as much as teacher use. Although the researchers also tracked how often students used math terms in class, they found no clear link between teachers who used more vocabulary and students who spoke more math words themselves. Exposure and comprehension, rather than verbal facility, may be enough to support stronger math performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers also looked for clues as to why some teachers used more math vocabulary than others. Years of teaching experience made no difference. Nor did the number of math or math pedagogy courses teachers had taken in college. Teachers with stronger mathematical knowledge did tend to use more math terms, but the relationship was modest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Himmelsbach suspects that personal beliefs play an important role. Some teachers, he said, worry that formal math language will confuse students and instead favor more familiar phrasing, such as “put together” instead of addition, or “take away” instead of subtraction. While those colloquial expressions can be helpful, students ultimately need to understand how they correspond to formal mathematical concepts, Himmelsbach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This study is part of a new wave of education research that uses machine learning and natural language processing — computer techniques that analyze large volumes of text — to peer inside the classroom, which has long remained a black box. With enough recorded lessons, researchers hope not only to identify which teaching practices matter most, but also provide teachers with concrete, data-driven feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers did not examine whether teachers used math terms correctly, but they noted that future models could be trained to do just that, offering feedback on accuracy and context, not just frequency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, the takeaway is more modest but still meaningful: Students appear to learn more math when their teachers speak the language of math more often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or \u003c/em>\u003cem>barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-math-vocabulary/\">\u003cem>math vocabulary\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Cynicism is all around us; it’s contagious, and it can permeate an entire generation’s thinking quickly. Young people today are faced with mental health, physical health, social, democracy and climate crises in the classroom. And when crisis is all around us, it can be easy to fall into patterns of cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, Gen Z is the most cynical generation and this is learned behavior. An \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64886/the-benefits-of-raising-hopeful-kids-in-cynical-times\">uptick in cynicism\u003c/a> has also led to a glamorization of a cynical mindset or the illusion of the “cynical genius,” said Zaki at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.learningandthebrain.com/\">Learning & the Brain\u003c/a> conference earlier this year. Cynicism isn’t isolated to our attitudes; it can lead to chronic stress, earlier mortality, social division and extremism, and broken social relationships, Zaki added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12022760/wired-for-connection-what-science-tells-us-about-why-we-should-be-hopeful-even-in-hard-times\">But there’s hope\u003c/a> – or at least, the science of hope, a measurable ability to set goals, push forward and track your own path to completion of those goals, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.uttyler.edu/directory/som-student-affairs/crystal-bryce.php\">Crystal Bryce\u003c/a>, an associate professor and assistant dean at The University of Texas at Tyler, who also presented at this year’s conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until Bryce was in the early stages of her career that she realized that hope could be measured. Previously, Bryce had done research focused on how to promote hope by studying the benefits of having a caring teacher, positive peer interactions and student motivation. But as it turns out, hope is tangible, “and it is something that we can teach,” Bryce told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This isn’t the type of hope that we use to define blanket optimism in our everyday life; this type of hope is a cognitive skill, Bryce continued, and it “helps us reach our goals by helping us identify how we get there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using \u003ca href=\"https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/resources/questionnaires-researchers/adult-hope-scale\">Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale\u003c/a>, Bryce and her team were able to measure pathway thinking, which helps people get from a to b, and agency thinking, which demonstrates a person’s belief in their ability to reach their goals. Bryce’s team found that increased hope outcomes were related to greater academic achievement, reduced stress and anxiety; and for college students, increased hope was related to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/06/17/1182941164/to-improve-student-retention-some-colleges-consider-ungrading\">higher retention rates\u003c/a> from their first to their second year of college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, her team applied \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/38827/why-understanding-obstacles-is-essential-to-achieving-goals\">WOOP\u003c/a> — wish, outcome, obstacle, plan — which creates a framework for hope in the classroom. Developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, the WOOP method allows educators to guide students throughout an effective \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41110/how-writing-down-specific-goals-can-empower-struggling-students\">goal-setting\u003c/a> process. The wish and outcome steps of WOOP are self explanatory; a basic scaffold for a project, lesson, or the school year can be created by having students state their goal and desired outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Bryce, the obstacle and planning steps of the WOOP method are the most important. Identifying potential obstacles during goal setting allows students to think about the future and build extra scaffolding to help them reach their goals and desired outcomes. And planning practice helps to build students’ self-confidence — increasing their hopefulness, and strengthening their ability to pivot when faced with barriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Extending Hope Into Later Years\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hope isn’t just a scientific practice; it can also come organically. Young children are really good at having hope, said Bryce. Take a 4-year-old attempting and failing to climb to the top of a structure at the playground. They might fall, but they believe in their ability to reach their goal and will naturally get up to try again, and maybe even try again in a different way. As kids get older, Bryce continued, they start to doubt themselves and their ability to reach their goals. Bryce suggested that this could be due to growing cynicism in early adolescence, or a dwindling support system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bryce and fellow researchers have found that there is a marked decline in hope for adolescents in eighth grade. And this finding was consistent across countries. While there is no definitive answer for why the decline exists for this particular age group, Bryce postulated that the decrease could be related to a combination of puberty, developmental changes, and the generally difficult \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/59687/middle-schoolers-are-social-what-opportunity-does-that-create-for-learning\">transitional period between seventh and ninth grades\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, having a peer or older adult as a sounding board can help combat cynicism and keep you looking forward to the future, said Bryce. That sounding board isn’t necessarily there to commiserate or ruminate. “They’re going to say, ‘yeah let’s keep going; what is the next step?’” according to Bryce.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Cynicism is all around us; it’s contagious, and it can permeate an entire generation’s thinking quickly. Young people today are faced with mental health, physical health, social, democracy and climate crises in the classroom. And when crisis is all around us, it can be easy to fall into patterns of cynicism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, Gen Z is the most cynical generation and this is learned behavior. An \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64886/the-benefits-of-raising-hopeful-kids-in-cynical-times\">uptick in cynicism\u003c/a> has also led to a glamorization of a cynical mindset or the illusion of the “cynical genius,” said Zaki at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.learningandthebrain.com/\">Learning & the Brain\u003c/a> conference earlier this year. Cynicism isn’t isolated to our attitudes; it can lead to chronic stress, earlier mortality, social division and extremism, and broken social relationships, Zaki added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12022760/wired-for-connection-what-science-tells-us-about-why-we-should-be-hopeful-even-in-hard-times\">But there’s hope\u003c/a> – or at least, the science of hope, a measurable ability to set goals, push forward and track your own path to completion of those goals, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.uttyler.edu/directory/som-student-affairs/crystal-bryce.php\">Crystal Bryce\u003c/a>, an associate professor and assistant dean at The University of Texas at Tyler, who also presented at this year’s conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until Bryce was in the early stages of her career that she realized that hope could be measured. Previously, Bryce had done research focused on how to promote hope by studying the benefits of having a caring teacher, positive peer interactions and student motivation. But as it turns out, hope is tangible, “and it is something that we can teach,” Bryce told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This isn’t the type of hope that we use to define blanket optimism in our everyday life; this type of hope is a cognitive skill, Bryce continued, and it “helps us reach our goals by helping us identify how we get there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using \u003ca href=\"https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/resources/questionnaires-researchers/adult-hope-scale\">Snyder’s Adult Hope Scale\u003c/a>, Bryce and her team were able to measure pathway thinking, which helps people get from a to b, and agency thinking, which demonstrates a person’s belief in their ability to reach their goals. Bryce’s team found that increased hope outcomes were related to greater academic achievement, reduced stress and anxiety; and for college students, increased hope was related to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/06/17/1182941164/to-improve-student-retention-some-colleges-consider-ungrading\">higher retention rates\u003c/a> from their first to their second year of college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, her team applied \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/38827/why-understanding-obstacles-is-essential-to-achieving-goals\">WOOP\u003c/a> — wish, outcome, obstacle, plan — which creates a framework for hope in the classroom. Developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, the WOOP method allows educators to guide students throughout an effective \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41110/how-writing-down-specific-goals-can-empower-struggling-students\">goal-setting\u003c/a> process. The wish and outcome steps of WOOP are self explanatory; a basic scaffold for a project, lesson, or the school year can be created by having students state their goal and desired outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Bryce, the obstacle and planning steps of the WOOP method are the most important. Identifying potential obstacles during goal setting allows students to think about the future and build extra scaffolding to help them reach their goals and desired outcomes. And planning practice helps to build students’ self-confidence — increasing their hopefulness, and strengthening their ability to pivot when faced with barriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Extending Hope Into Later Years\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hope isn’t just a scientific practice; it can also come organically. Young children are really good at having hope, said Bryce. Take a 4-year-old attempting and failing to climb to the top of a structure at the playground. They might fall, but they believe in their ability to reach their goal and will naturally get up to try again, and maybe even try again in a different way. As kids get older, Bryce continued, they start to doubt themselves and their ability to reach their goals. Bryce suggested that this could be due to growing cynicism in early adolescence, or a dwindling support system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bryce and fellow researchers have found that there is a marked decline in hope for adolescents in eighth grade. And this finding was consistent across countries. While there is no definitive answer for why the decline exists for this particular age group, Bryce postulated that the decrease could be related to a combination of puberty, developmental changes, and the generally difficult \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/59687/middle-schoolers-are-social-what-opportunity-does-that-create-for-learning\">transitional period between seventh and ninth grades\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, having a peer or older adult as a sounding board can help combat cynicism and keep you looking forward to the future, said Bryce. That sounding board isn’t necessarily there to commiserate or ruminate. “They’re going to say, ‘yeah let’s keep going; what is the next step?’” according to Bryce.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Georgia State University professor G. Sue Kasun taught a new course this summer, she used generative artificial intelligence to help her brainstorm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun, a professor of language, culture and education, teaches current and future language educators. And she used Gemini — Google’s generative AI chatbot — to come up with ideas for readings and activities for a course on integrating identity and culture in language education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were suggestions of offering different choices like having students generate an image, having students write a poem. And these are things that I could maybe think of but we have limits on our time, which is probably our most valuable resource as faculty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun also uses Gemini to create grading rubrics. She says she always checks to make sure that what it generates is accurate “and importantly representative of what my learning objectives are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a massive time-saver, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun is one of an increasing number of higher education faculty using generative AI models in their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One \u003ca href=\"https://tytonpartners.com/time-for-class-2025/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">national survey\u003c/a> of more than 1,800 higher education staff members conducted by consulting firm Tyton Partners earlier this year found that about 40% of administrators and 30% of instructions use generative AI daily or weekly — that’s up from just 2% and 4%, respectively, in the spring of 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New research\u003c/a> from Anthropic — the company behind the AI chatbot Claude — suggests professors around the world are using AI for curriculum development, designing lessons, conducting research, writing grant proposals, managing budgets, grading student work and designing their own interactive learning tools, among other uses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we looked into the data late last year, we saw that of all the ways people were using Claude, education made up two out of the top four use cases,” says Drew Bent, education lead at Anthropic and one of the researchers who led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes both students and professors. Bent says those findings inspired a report on \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-university-students-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how university students use the AI chatbot\u003c/a> and the most recent research on professor use of Claude.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How professors are using AI \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Anthropic’s report is based on roughly 74,000 conversations that users with higher education email addresses had with Claude over an 11-day period in late May and early June of this year. The company used an automated tool to analyze the conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority — or 57% of the conversations analyzed — related to curriculum development, like designing lesson plans and assignments. Bent says one of the more surprising findings was professors using Claude to develop interactive simulations for students, like web-based games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s helping write the code so that you can have an interactive simulation that you as an educator can share with students in your class for them to help understand a concept,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second most common way professors used Claude was for academic research — this comprised 13% of conversations. Educators also used the AI chatbot to complete administrative tasks, including budget plans, drafting letters of recommendation and creating meeting agendas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their analysis suggests professors tend to automate more tedious and routine work, including financial and administrative tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But for other areas like teaching and lesson design, it was much more of a collaborative process, where the educators and the AI assistant are going back and forth and collaborating on it together,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data comes with caveats – Anthropic \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published its findings\u003c/a> but did not release the full data behind them – including how many professors were in the analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the research captured a snapshot in time; the period studied encompassed the tail end of the academic year. Had they analyzed an 11-day period in October, Bent says, for example, the results could have been different.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Grading student work with AI\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>About 7% of the conversations Anthropic analyzed were about grading student work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When educators use AI for grading, they often automate a lot of it away, and they have AI do significant parts of the grading,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company partnered with Northeastern University on this research – surveying 22 faculty members about how and why they use Claude. In their survey responses, university faculty said grading student work was the task the chatbot was least effective at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear whether any of the assessments Claude produced actually factored into the grades and feedback students received.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, Marc Watkins, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Mississippi, fears that Anthropic’s findings signal a disturbing trend. Watkins studies the impact of AI on higher education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This sort of nightmare scenario that we might be running into is students using AI to write papers and teachers using AI to grade the same papers. If that’s the case, then what’s the purpose of education?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watkins says he’s also alarmed by the use of AI in ways that he says, devalue professor-student relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re just using this to automate some portion of your life, whether that’s writing emails to students, letters of recommendation, grading or providing feedback, I’m really against that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Professors and faculty need guidance \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Kasun — the professor from Georgia State — also doesn’t believe professors should use AI for grading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wishes colleges and universities had more support and guidance on how best to use this new technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are here, sort of alone in the forest, fending for ourselves,” Kasun says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drew Bent, with Anthropic, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-higher-education-initiatives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">companies like his should partner\u003c/a> with higher education institutions. He cautions: “Us as a tech company, telling educators what to do or what not to do is not the right way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But educators and those working in AI, like Bent, agree that the decisions made now over how to incorporate AI in college and university courses will impact students for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Georgia State University professor G. Sue Kasun taught a new course this summer, she used generative artificial intelligence to help her brainstorm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun, a professor of language, culture and education, teaches current and future language educators. And she used Gemini — Google’s generative AI chatbot — to come up with ideas for readings and activities for a course on integrating identity and culture in language education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were suggestions of offering different choices like having students generate an image, having students write a poem. And these are things that I could maybe think of but we have limits on our time, which is probably our most valuable resource as faculty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun also uses Gemini to create grading rubrics. She says she always checks to make sure that what it generates is accurate “and importantly representative of what my learning objectives are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a massive time-saver, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kasun is one of an increasing number of higher education faculty using generative AI models in their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One \u003ca href=\"https://tytonpartners.com/time-for-class-2025/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">national survey\u003c/a> of more than 1,800 higher education staff members conducted by consulting firm Tyton Partners earlier this year found that about 40% of administrators and 30% of instructions use generative AI daily or weekly — that’s up from just 2% and 4%, respectively, in the spring of 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New research\u003c/a> from Anthropic — the company behind the AI chatbot Claude — suggests professors around the world are using AI for curriculum development, designing lessons, conducting research, writing grant proposals, managing budgets, grading student work and designing their own interactive learning tools, among other uses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we looked into the data late last year, we saw that of all the ways people were using Claude, education made up two out of the top four use cases,” says Drew Bent, education lead at Anthropic and one of the researchers who led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes both students and professors. Bent says those findings inspired a report on \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-university-students-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how university students use the AI chatbot\u003c/a> and the most recent research on professor use of Claude.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How professors are using AI \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Anthropic’s report is based on roughly 74,000 conversations that users with higher education email addresses had with Claude over an 11-day period in late May and early June of this year. The company used an automated tool to analyze the conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The majority — or 57% of the conversations analyzed — related to curriculum development, like designing lesson plans and assignments. Bent says one of the more surprising findings was professors using Claude to develop interactive simulations for students, like web-based games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s helping write the code so that you can have an interactive simulation that you as an educator can share with students in your class for them to help understand a concept,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second most common way professors used Claude was for academic research — this comprised 13% of conversations. Educators also used the AI chatbot to complete administrative tasks, including budget plans, drafting letters of recommendation and creating meeting agendas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their analysis suggests professors tend to automate more tedious and routine work, including financial and administrative tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But for other areas like teaching and lesson design, it was much more of a collaborative process, where the educators and the AI assistant are going back and forth and collaborating on it together,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data comes with caveats – Anthropic \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-how-educators-use-claude\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published its findings\u003c/a> but did not release the full data behind them – including how many professors were in the analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the research captured a snapshot in time; the period studied encompassed the tail end of the academic year. Had they analyzed an 11-day period in October, Bent says, for example, the results could have been different.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Grading student work with AI\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>About 7% of the conversations Anthropic analyzed were about grading student work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When educators use AI for grading, they often automate a lot of it away, and they have AI do significant parts of the grading,” Bent says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company partnered with Northeastern University on this research – surveying 22 faculty members about how and why they use Claude. In their survey responses, university faculty said grading student work was the task the chatbot was least effective at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear whether any of the assessments Claude produced actually factored into the grades and feedback students received.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, Marc Watkins, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Mississippi, fears that Anthropic’s findings signal a disturbing trend. Watkins studies the impact of AI on higher education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This sort of nightmare scenario that we might be running into is students using AI to write papers and teachers using AI to grade the same papers. If that’s the case, then what’s the purpose of education?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Watkins says he’s also alarmed by the use of AI in ways that he says, devalue professor-student relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you’re just using this to automate some portion of your life, whether that’s writing emails to students, letters of recommendation, grading or providing feedback, I’m really against that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Professors and faculty need guidance \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Kasun — the professor from Georgia State — also doesn’t believe professors should use AI for grading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wishes colleges and universities had more support and guidance on how best to use this new technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are here, sort of alone in the forest, fending for ourselves,” Kasun says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drew Bent, with Anthropic, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-higher-education-initiatives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">companies like his should partner\u003c/a> with higher education institutions. He cautions: “Us as a tech company, telling educators what to do or what not to do is not the right way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But educators and those working in AI, like Bent, agree that the decisions made now over how to incorporate AI in college and university courses will impact students for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teacher Ivy Mitchell has spent two decades helping students understand how government works. But recently, her \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58660/teaching-civics-soft-skills-how-do-civics-education-and-social-emotional-learning-overlap\">eighth-grade civics students \u003c/a>didn’t see a clear role for themselves in democracy, particularly because they were learning within the confines of the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, she tried something new – she invited \u003ca href=\"https://secure.smore.com/n/x2yqe\">older adults into her classroom to participate on a panel to answer a basic question\u003c/a>, “Why do we have civics?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Panelists shared first-hand stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and women’s rights, which brought history to life for students in a way textbooks rarely do. In turn, the older adults asked students about their views on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> and whether they were interested in civic life and volunteering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her hope for both the older adults and students was that they would connect with one another through learning about each other and start building community connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6728408/\">Research shows intergenerational programs\u003c/a> can improve students’ empathy, literacy and\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54968/how-classroom-political-discussions-controversies-too-prepare-students-for-needed-civic-participation\"> civic engagement\u003c/a>, but opportunities to develop those relationships outside of the home are hard to come by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65780\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 249px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-65780\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"249\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780-160x200.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 249px) 100vw, 249px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ivy Mitchell has spent two decades helping students understand how government works.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are the \u003ca href=\"https://cogenerate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Beyond-Passing-The-Torch.pdf\">most age segregated society,” said Mitchell.\u003c/a> “There’s a lot of research out there on how seniors are dealing with their lack of connection to the community, because a lot of those community resources have eroded over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some schools like \u003ca href=\"https://www.jenksps.org/o/west-elementary/page/grace-skilled-nursing-and-therapy-center\">Jenks West Elementary in Oklahoma\u003c/a> have built daily intergenerational interaction into their infrastructure, Mitchell shows that powerful learning experiences can happen within a single classroom. Her approach to intergenerational learning is supported by four takeaways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 24px;color: #2b2b2b\">1. Have Conversations With Students Before An Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nBefore the panel, Mitchell guided students through a structured \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54378/how-to-create-deeper-student-learning-experiences-through-questions\">question-generating process\u003c/a>. She gave them broad topics to brainstorm around and encouraged them to think about what they were genuinely curious to ask someone from an older generation. After reviewing their suggestions, she selected the questions that would work best for the event and assigned student volunteers to ask them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help the older adult panelists feel comfortable, Mitchell also hosted a brunch before the event. It gave panelists a chance to meet each other and ease into the school environment before stepping in front of a room full of eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of preparation makes a big difference, said Ruby Belle Booth, a researcher from the \u003ca href=\"https://circle.tufts.edu/\">Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement\u003c/a> at Tufts University. “Having really clear goals and expectations is one of the easiest ways to facilitate this process for young people or for older adults,” she said. When students know what to expect, they’re more confident stepping into unfamiliar conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That scaffolding helped students ask thoughtful, big-picture questions like: “What were the major civic issues of your life?” and “What was it like to be in a country at war?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>2. Build Connections Into Work You’re Already Doing\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mitchell didn’t start from scratch. In the past, she had assigned students to interview older adults. But she noticed those conversations often stayed surface level. “How’s school? How’s soccer?” Mitchell said, summarizing the questions often asked. “The moment for reflecting on your life and sharing that is pretty rare.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She saw an opportunity to go deeper. By bringing those intergenerational conversations into her civics class, Mitchell hoped students would hear first-hand how older adults experienced civic life and begin to see themselves as future voters and engaged citizens. “\u003ca href=\"https://www.democraticknowledgeproject.org/\">[A majority] of baby boomers believe that democracy is the best system\u003c/a>,” she said. “But a third of young people are like, ‘Yeah, we don’t really have to vote.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Integrating this work into existing curriculum can be practical and powerful. “Thinking about how you can start with what you have is a really great way to implement this kind of intergenerational learning without fully reinventing the wheel,” said Booth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That could mean taking a guest speaker visit and building in time for students to ask questions or even inviting the speaker to ask questions of the students. The key, said Booth, is shifting from one-way learning to a more reciprocal exchange. “Start to think about little places where you can implement this, or where these intergenerational connections might already be happening, and try to enhance the benefits and learning outcomes,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65769\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65769 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Panelists from Ivy Mitchell’s intergenerational event shared first-hand stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and women’s rights.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>3. Don’t Get Into Divisive Issues Off The Bat\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For the first event, Mitchell and her students intentionally stayed away from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63250/politicians-love-to-talk-about-race-and-lgbtq-issues-in-school-teachers-and-teens-not-so-much\">controversial topics\u003c/a>. That decision helped create a space where both panelists and students could feel more at ease. Booth agreed that it’s important to start slow. “You don’t want to jump headfirst into some of these more sensitive issues,” she said.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65502/how-better-conversations-can-help-fight-misinformation-and-build-media-literacy\"> A structured conversation\u003c/a> can help build comfort and trust, which lays the groundwork for deeper, more challenging discussions down the line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to prepare older adults for how certain topics may be deeply personal to students. “A big one that we see divides with between generations is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61031/teen-girls-and-lgbtq-youth-plagued-by-violence-and-trauma-survey-says\">LGBTQ identities\u003c/a>,” said Booth. “Being a young person with one of those identities in the classroom and then talking to older adults who may not have this similar understanding of the expansiveness of gender identity or sexuality can be challenging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without diving into the most divisive topics, Mitchell felt the panel sparked rich and meaningful conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>4. Leave Time For Reflection Afterwards\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Leaving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">space for students to reflect\u003c/a> after an intergenerational event is crucial, said Booth. “Talking about how it went — not just about the things you talked about, but the process of having this intergenerational conversation — is vital,” she said. “It helps cement and deepen the learnings and takeaways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell could tell the event resonated with her students in real time. “In our auditorium, the chairs are squeaky,” she said. “Whenever we have an event they’re not interested in, the squeaking starts and you know they’re not focused. And we didn’t have that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterward, Mitchell invited students to write thank-you notes to the senior panelists and reflect on the experience. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive with one common theme. “All my students said consistently, ‘We wish we had more time,’” Mitchell said. “‘And we wish we’d been able to have a more authentic conversation with them.’” That feedback is shaping how Mitchell plans her next event. She wants to loosen the structure and give students more space to guide the dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Mitchell, the impact is clear. “The intergenerational voice brings so much more value and deepens the meaning of what you’re trying to do,” she said. “It makes civics come alive when you bring in people who have lived a civic life to talk about the things they’ve done and the ways they’ve connected to their community. And that can inspire kids to also connect to their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2332768897\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> It’s 10am at Grace Skilled Nursing Facility in Oklahoma and a cluster of 4- and 5-year-olds bounce with excitement, their sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor of the rec room. Around them, seniors in wheelchairs and armchairs follow along as a teacher counts off stretches. They shake out limb by limb and every once in a while a kid adds a silly flair to one of the movements and everyone cracks a little smile as they try and keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"633\" data-end=\"678\">\u003cem data-start=\"633\" data-end=\"676\">[Audio of teacher counting with students]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"680\" data-end=\"786\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"680\" data-end=\"696\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Kids and seniors are moving together in rhythm. This is just another Wednesday morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"788\" data-end=\"820\">\u003cem data-start=\"788\" data-end=\"818\">[Audio of grands exercising]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"822\" data-end=\"1094\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"822\" data-end=\"838\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> These preschoolers and kindergartners go to school here, inside of the senior living facility. The children are here every day—learning their ABCs, doing art projects, and eating snacks alongside the senior residents of Grace – who they call the grands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1096\" data-end=\"1390\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1096\" data-end=\"1113\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> When it originally started, it was the nursing home. And beside the nursing home was an early childhood center, which was like a daycare that was tied to our district. And so the residents and the students there at our early childhood center started making some connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1392\" data-end=\"1694\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1392\" data-end=\"1408\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> This is Amanda Moore, the principal of Jenks West Elementary, the school inside of Grace. In the early days, the childhood center noticed the bonds that were forming between the youngest and oldest members of the community. The owners of Grace saw how much it meant to the residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1696\" data-end=\"1784\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1696\" data-end=\"1713\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> They decided, okay, what can we do to make this a full-time program?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1786\" data-end=\"1930\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1786\" data-end=\"1803\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> They did a renovation and they built on space so that we could have our students there housed in the nursing home every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1953\" data-end=\"2075\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1953\" data-end=\"1969\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> This is MindShift, the podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir. Today we’ll explore how intergenerational learning works and why it might be exactly what schools need more of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2300\" data-end=\"2518\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2300\" data-end=\"2316\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Book Buddies is one of the regular activities students at Jenks West Elementary do with the grands. Every other week, kids walk in an orderly line through the facility to meet their reading partners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2520\" data-end=\"2660\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2520\" data-end=\"2536\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Katy Wilson, a Kindergarten teacher at the school, says just being around older adults changes how students move and act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2662\" data-end=\"2742\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2662\" data-end=\"2678\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> They start to learn body control more than a typical student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2744\" data-end=\"2933\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2744\" data-end=\"2760\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> We know we can’t run out there with the grands. We know it’s not safe. We could trip somebody. They could get hurt. We learn that balance more because it’s higher stakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2935\" data-end=\"2987\">\u003cem data-start=\"2935\" data-end=\"2985\">[Mariah giving students their grands assignment]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2989\" data-end=\"3098\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2989\" data-end=\"3005\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> In the common room, kids settle in at tables. A teacher pairs students up with the grands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3208\" data-end=\"3276\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3208\" data-end=\"3224\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Sometimes the kids read. Sometimes the grands do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3278\" data-end=\"3351\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3278\" data-end=\"3294\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Either way, it’s one-on-one time with a trusted adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3377\" data-end=\"3528\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3377\" data-end=\"3393\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> And that’s something that I couldn’t accomplish in a typical classroom without all those tutors essentially built in to the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3530\" data-end=\"3701\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3530\" data-end=\"3546\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And it’s working. Jenks West has tracked student progress. Kids who go through the program tend to score higher on reading assessments than their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3703\" data-end=\"3952\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3703\" data-end=\"3719\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> They get to read books that maybe we don’t cover on the academic side that are more fun books, which is great because they get to read about what they’re interested in that maybe we wouldn’t have time for in the typical classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3954\" data-end=\"4020\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3954\" data-end=\"3970\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Grandma Margaret enjoys her time with the kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4022\" data-end=\"4191\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4022\" data-end=\"4043\">Grandma Margaret:\u003c/strong> I get to work with the children, and you’ll go down to read a book. Sometimes they’ll read it to you because they’ve got it memorized. Life would be kind of boring without them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4262\" data-end=\"4409\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4262\" data-end=\"4278\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> There’s also research that kids in these types of programs are more likely to have better attendance and stronger social skills. One of the long-term benefits is that students become more comfortable being around people who are different from them. Like a grand in a wheelchair, or one who doesn’t communicate easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4624\" data-end=\"4740\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4624\" data-end=\"4640\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Amanda told me a story about a student who left Jenks West and later attended a different school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4742\" data-end=\"5230\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4742\" data-end=\"4759\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> There were some students in her class that were in wheelchairs. She said her daughter naturally befriended these students and the teacher had actually recognized that and told the mom that. And she said, I truly believe it was the interactions that she had with the residents at Grace that helped her to have that understanding and empathy and not feel like there was anything that she needed to be worried about or afraid of, that it was just a part of her every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5232\" data-end=\"5418\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5232\" data-end=\"5248\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> The program benefits the grands too. There’s evidence that older adults experience improved mental health and less social isolation when they spend time with children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5467\" data-end=\"5628\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5467\" data-end=\"5483\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Even the grands who are bedbound benefit. Just having kids in the building—hearing their laughter and songs in the hallway—makes a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5630\" data-end=\"5694\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5630\" data-end=\"5646\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> So why don’t more places have these programs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5696\" data-end=\"5759\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5696\" data-end=\"5713\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> You really have to have everybody on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5761\" data-end=\"5800\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5761\" data-end=\"5777\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Here’s Amanda again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5802\" data-end=\"5908\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5802\" data-end=\"5819\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> Because both sides saw the benefits, we were able to create that partnership together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5910\" data-end=\"5989\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5910\" data-end=\"5926\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> It’s likely not something that a school could do on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5991\" data-end=\"6200\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5991\" data-end=\"6008\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> Because it is expensive. They maintain that facility for us. If anything goes wrong in the rooms, they’re the ones that are taking care of all of that. They built a playground there for us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6202\" data-end=\"6335\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6202\" data-end=\"6218\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Grace even employs a full-time liaison, who is in charge of communication between the nursing home and the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6337\" data-end=\"6503\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6337\" data-end=\"6354\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> She is always there and she helps organize our activities. We meet monthly to plan out the activities residents are going to do with the students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6526\" data-end=\"6814\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6526\" data-end=\"6542\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Younger people interacting with older people has tons of advantages. But what if your school doesn’t have the resources to build a senior center? After the break, we look at how a middle school is making intergenerational learning work in a different way. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6856\" data-end=\"7206\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6856\" data-end=\"6872\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Before the break we learned about how intergenerational learning can boost literacy and empathy in younger children, not to mention a bunch of benefits for older adults. In a middle school classroom, those same ideas are being used in a new way—to help strengthen something that many people worry is on shaky ground: our democracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7229\" data-end=\"7319\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7229\" data-end=\"7246\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> My name is Ivy Mitchell. I teach eighth grade civics in Massachusetts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7321\" data-end=\"7642\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7321\" data-end=\"7337\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> In Ivy’s civics class, students learn how to be active members of the community. They also learn that they’ll need to work with people of all ages. After more than 20 years of teaching, Ivy noticed that older and younger generations don’t often get a chance to talk to each other—unless they’re family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7644\" data-end=\"7949\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7644\" data-end=\"7661\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> We are the most age-segregated society. This is the time when our age segregation has been the most extreme. There’s a lot of research out there on how seniors are dealing with their lack of connection to the community, because a lot of those community resources have eroded over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7974\" data-end=\"8047\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7974\" data-end=\"7990\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> When kids do talk to adults, it’s often surface level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8049\" data-end=\"8168\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8049\" data-end=\"8066\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> How’s school? How’s soccer? The moment for reflecting on your life and sharing that is pretty rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8170\" data-end=\"8567\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8170\" data-end=\"8186\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> That’s a missed opportunity for all kinds of reasons. But as a civics teacher Ivy is especially concerned about one thing: cultivating students who are interested in voting when they get older. She believes that having deeper conversations with older adults about their experiences can help students better understand the past—and maybe feel more invested in shaping the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8569\" data-end=\"8764\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8569\" data-end=\"8586\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> Ninety percent of baby boomers believe that democracy is the best way, the only best way. Whereas like a third of young people are like, yeah, you know, we don’t have to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8766\" data-end=\"8839\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8766\" data-end=\"8782\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ivy wants to close that gap by connecting generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8862\" data-end=\"9109\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8862\" data-end=\"8879\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> Democracy is a very valuable thing. And the only place my students are hearing it is in my classroom. And if I could bring more voices in to say no, democracy has its flaws, but it’s still the best system we’ve ever discovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9111\" data-end=\"9228\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9111\" data-end=\"9127\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> The idea that civic learning can come from cross-generational relationships is backed by research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9230\" data-end=\"9421\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9230\" data-end=\"9250\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> I do a lot of thinking about youth voice and institutions, youth civic development, and how young people can be more involved in our democracy and in their communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9446\" data-end=\"9525\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9446\" data-end=\"9462\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ruby Belle Booth wrote a report about youth civic engagement. In it she says together young people and older adults can tackle big challenges facing our democracy—like polarization, culture wars, extremism, and misinformation. But sometimes, misunderstandings between generations get in the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9764\" data-end=\"10137\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9764\" data-end=\"9784\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Young people, I think, tend to look at older generations as having sort of antiquated views on everything. And that’s largely in part because younger generations have different views on issues. They have different experiences. They have different understandings of modern technology. And as a result, they sort of judge older generations accordingly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10139\" data-end=\"10249\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10139\" data-end=\"10155\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Young people’s feelings towards older generations can be summed up in two dismissive words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10272\" data-end=\"10375\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10272\" data-end=\"10288\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> “OK, Boomer,” which is often said in response to an older person being out of touch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10377\" data-end=\"10506\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10377\" data-end=\"10397\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> There’s a lot of humor and sass and attitude that young people bring to that relationship and that divide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10508\" data-end=\"10698\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10508\" data-end=\"10528\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> It speaks to the challenges that young people face in feeling like they have a voice and they feel like they’re often dismissed by older people—because often they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10700\" data-end=\"10780\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10700\" data-end=\"10716\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And older people have thoughts about younger generations too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10782\" data-end=\"10890\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10782\" data-end=\"10802\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Sometimes older generations are like, okay, it’s all good. Gen Z is going to save us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10892\" data-end=\"11053\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10892\" data-end=\"10912\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> That puts a lot of pressure on the very small group of Gen Z who is really activist and engaged and trying to make a lot of social change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11055\" data-end=\"11255\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11055\" data-end=\"11071\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One of the big challenges that educators face in creating intergenerational learning opportunities is the power imbalance between adults and students. And schools only amplify that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11257\" data-end=\"11611\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11257\" data-end=\"11277\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> When you move that already existing age dynamic into a school setting where all the adults in the room are holding additional power—teachers giving out grades, principals calling students to their office and having disciplinary powers—it makes it so that those already entrenched age dynamics are even more challenging to overcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11636\" data-end=\"11839\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11636\" data-end=\"11652\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One way to offset this power imbalance could be bringing people from outside of the school into the classroom, which is exactly what Ivy Mitchell, our teacher in Boston, decided to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11841\" data-end=\"11896\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11841\" data-end=\"11866\">Ivy Mitchell :\u003c/strong> Thank you for coming today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11898\" data-end=\"12021\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11898\" data-end=\"11914\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Her students came up with a list of questions, and Ivy assembled a panel of older adults to answer them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12023\" data-end=\"12377\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12023\" data-end=\"12048\">Ivy Mitchell (event):\u003c/strong> The idea behind this event is I saw a problem and I’m trying to solve it. And the idea is to bring the generations together to help answer the question, why do we have civics? I know a lot of you wonder about that. And also to have them share their life experience and start building community connections, which are so vital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12379\" data-end=\"12510\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12379\" data-end=\"12395\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One by one, students took the mic and asked questions to Berta, Steve, Tony, Eileen, and Jane. Questions like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12512\" data-end=\"12570\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12512\" data-end=\"12524\">Student:\u003c/strong> Do any of you think it’s hard to pay taxes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12572\" data-end=\"12655\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12572\" data-end=\"12584\">Student:\u003c/strong> What is it like to be in a country at war, either at home or abroad?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12657\" data-end=\"12774\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12657\" data-end=\"12669\">Student:\u003c/strong> What were the major civic issues of your life, and what experiences shaped your views on these issues?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12776\" data-end=\"12844\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12776\" data-end=\"12792\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And one by one they gave answers to the students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12846\" data-end=\"13001\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12846\" data-end=\"12865\">Steve Humphrey:\u003c/strong> I mean, I think for me, the Vietnam War, for example, was a huge issue in my lifetime, and, you know, still is. I mean, it shaped us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13003\" data-end=\"13311\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13003\" data-end=\"13018\">Tony Surge:\u003c/strong> Yeah, we had, in our generation, we had a lot going on at once. We also had a big civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, that you probably will study, all very historical, if you go back and look at that. So during our generation, we saw a lot of major changes inside the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13313\" data-end=\"13546\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13313\" data-end=\"13329\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> The one that I kind of remember, I was young during the Vietnam War, but women’s rights. So back in ‘74 is when women could actually get a credit card without—if they were married—without their husband’s signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13548\" data-end=\"13648\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13548\" data-end=\"13564\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And then they flipped the panel around so elders could ask questions to students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13650\" data-end=\"13728\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13650\" data-end=\"13666\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> What are the concerns that those of you in school have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13730\" data-end=\"13897\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13730\" data-end=\"13746\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> I mean, especially with computers and AI—does the AI scare any of you? Or do you feel that this is something you can really adapt to and understand?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13899\" data-end=\"14200\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13899\" data-end=\"13911\">Student:\u003c/strong> AI is starting to do new things. It can start to take over people’s jobs, which is concerning. There’s AI music now and my dad’s a musician, and that’s concerning because it’s not good right now, but it’s starting to get better. And it could end up taking over people’s jobs eventually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14202\" data-end=\"14416\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14202\" data-end=\"14214\">Student:\u003c/strong> I think it really depends on how you’re using it. Like, it can definitely be used for good and helpful things, but if you’re using it to fake images of people or things that they said, it’s not good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14439\" data-end=\"14607\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14439\" data-end=\"14455\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> When Ivy debriefed with students after the event, they had overwhelmingly positive things to say. But there was one piece of feedback that stood out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14609\" data-end=\"14764\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14609\" data-end=\"14626\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> All my students said consistently, we wish we had more time and we wish we’d been able to have a more authentic conversation with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14766\" data-end=\"14840\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14766\" data-end=\"14783\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> They wanted to be able to talk, to really get into it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14842\" data-end=\"14950\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14842\" data-end=\"14858\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Next time, she’s planning to loosen the reins and make space for more authentic dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14952\" data-end=\"15115\">Some of Ruby Belle Booth’s research inspired Ivy’s project. She noted some things that make intergenerational activities a success. Ivy did a lot of these things!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15117\" data-end=\"15341\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15117\" data-end=\"15133\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One: Ivy had conversations with her students where they came up with questions and talked about the event with students and older folks. This can make everyone feel a lot more comfortable and less nervous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15343\" data-end=\"15500\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15343\" data-end=\"15363\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Having really clear goals and expectations is one of the easiest ways to facilitate this process for young people or for older adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15502\" data-end=\"15681\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15502\" data-end=\"15518\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Two: They didn’t get into tough and divisive questions during this first event. Maybe you don’t want to jump headfirst into some of these more sensitive issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15683\" data-end=\"15919\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15683\" data-end=\"15699\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Three: Ivy built these connections into the work she was already doing. Ivy had assigned students to interview older adults before, but she wanted to take it further. So she made those conversations part of her class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15921\" data-end=\"16124\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15921\" data-end=\"15941\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Thinking about how you can start with what you have I think is a really great way to start to implement this kind of intergenerational learning without fully reinventing the wheel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16126\" data-end=\"16202\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16126\" data-end=\"16142\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Four: Ivy had time for reflection and feedback afterward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16204\" data-end=\"16472\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16204\" data-end=\"16224\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Talking about how it went—not just about the things you talked about, but the process of having this intergenerational conversation for both parties—is vital to really cement, deepen, and further the learnings and takeaways from the opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16474\" data-end=\"16641\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16474\" data-end=\"16490\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ruby doesn’t say that intergenerational connections are the only solution for the problems our democracy faces. In fact, on its own it’s not enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16664\" data-end=\"17207\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16664\" data-end=\"16684\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> I think that when we’re thinking about the long-term health of democracy, it needs to be grounded in communities and connection and reciprocity. A piece of that, when we’re thinking about including more young people in democracy—having more young people turn out to vote, having more young people who see a pathway to create change in their communities—we have to be thinking about what an inclusive democracy looks like, what a democracy that welcomes young voices looks like. Our democracy has to be intergenerational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"17209\" data-end=\"17477\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"17209\" data-end=\"17225\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> For the students, having conversations with older adults can help make history feel personal. And for the older adults, it’s a chance to share their stories and maybe even see the future a little more clearly through the eyes of the next generation.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teacher Ivy Mitchell has spent two decades helping students understand how government works. But recently, her \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58660/teaching-civics-soft-skills-how-do-civics-education-and-social-emotional-learning-overlap\">eighth-grade civics students \u003c/a>didn’t see a clear role for themselves in democracy, particularly because they were learning within the confines of the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, she tried something new – she invited \u003ca href=\"https://secure.smore.com/n/x2yqe\">older adults into her classroom to participate on a panel to answer a basic question\u003c/a>, “Why do we have civics?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Panelists shared first-hand stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and women’s rights, which brought history to life for students in a way textbooks rarely do. In turn, the older adults asked students about their views on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> and whether they were interested in civic life and volunteering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her hope for both the older adults and students was that they would connect with one another through learning about each other and start building community connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6728408/\">Research shows intergenerational programs\u003c/a> can improve students’ empathy, literacy and\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54968/how-classroom-political-discussions-controversies-too-prepare-students-for-needed-civic-participation\"> civic engagement\u003c/a>, but opportunities to develop those relationships outside of the home are hard to come by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65780\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 249px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-65780\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"249\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/0780-160x200.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 249px) 100vw, 249px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ivy Mitchell has spent two decades helping students understand how government works.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are the \u003ca href=\"https://cogenerate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Beyond-Passing-The-Torch.pdf\">most age segregated society,” said Mitchell.\u003c/a> “There’s a lot of research out there on how seniors are dealing with their lack of connection to the community, because a lot of those community resources have eroded over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some schools like \u003ca href=\"https://www.jenksps.org/o/west-elementary/page/grace-skilled-nursing-and-therapy-center\">Jenks West Elementary in Oklahoma\u003c/a> have built daily intergenerational interaction into their infrastructure, Mitchell shows that powerful learning experiences can happen within a single classroom. Her approach to intergenerational learning is supported by four takeaways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 24px;color: #2b2b2b\">1. Have Conversations With Students Before An Event\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nBefore the panel, Mitchell guided students through a structured \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54378/how-to-create-deeper-student-learning-experiences-through-questions\">question-generating process\u003c/a>. She gave them broad topics to brainstorm around and encouraged them to think about what they were genuinely curious to ask someone from an older generation. After reviewing their suggestions, she selected the questions that would work best for the event and assigned student volunteers to ask them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To help the older adult panelists feel comfortable, Mitchell also hosted a brunch before the event. It gave panelists a chance to meet each other and ease into the school environment before stepping in front of a room full of eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of preparation makes a big difference, said Ruby Belle Booth, a researcher from the \u003ca href=\"https://circle.tufts.edu/\">Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement\u003c/a> at Tufts University. “Having really clear goals and expectations is one of the easiest ways to facilitate this process for young people or for older adults,” she said. When students know what to expect, they’re more confident stepping into unfamiliar conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That scaffolding helped students ask thoughtful, big-picture questions like: “What were the major civic issues of your life?” and “What was it like to be in a country at war?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>2. Build Connections Into Work You’re Already Doing\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Mitchell didn’t start from scratch. In the past, she had assigned students to interview older adults. But she noticed those conversations often stayed surface level. “How’s school? How’s soccer?” Mitchell said, summarizing the questions often asked. “The moment for reflecting on your life and sharing that is pretty rare.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She saw an opportunity to go deeper. By bringing those intergenerational conversations into her civics class, Mitchell hoped students would hear first-hand how older adults experienced civic life and begin to see themselves as future voters and engaged citizens. “\u003ca href=\"https://www.democraticknowledgeproject.org/\">[A majority] of baby boomers believe that democracy is the best system\u003c/a>,” she said. “But a third of young people are like, ‘Yeah, we don’t really have to vote.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Integrating this work into existing curriculum can be practical and powerful. “Thinking about how you can start with what you have is a really great way to implement this kind of intergenerational learning without fully reinventing the wheel,” said Booth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That could mean taking a guest speaker visit and building in time for students to ask questions or even inviting the speaker to ask questions of the students. The key, said Booth, is shifting from one-way learning to a more reciprocal exchange. “Start to think about little places where you can implement this, or where these intergenerational connections might already be happening, and try to enhance the benefits and learning outcomes,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65769\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 960px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65769 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/Ivy-Mitchel-2-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Panelists from Ivy Mitchell’s intergenerational event shared first-hand stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and women’s rights.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>3. Don’t Get Into Divisive Issues Off The Bat\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For the first event, Mitchell and her students intentionally stayed away from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63250/politicians-love-to-talk-about-race-and-lgbtq-issues-in-school-teachers-and-teens-not-so-much\">controversial topics\u003c/a>. That decision helped create a space where both panelists and students could feel more at ease. Booth agreed that it’s important to start slow. “You don’t want to jump headfirst into some of these more sensitive issues,” she said.\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65502/how-better-conversations-can-help-fight-misinformation-and-build-media-literacy\"> A structured conversation\u003c/a> can help build comfort and trust, which lays the groundwork for deeper, more challenging discussions down the line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to prepare older adults for how certain topics may be deeply personal to students. “A big one that we see divides with between generations is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61031/teen-girls-and-lgbtq-youth-plagued-by-violence-and-trauma-survey-says\">LGBTQ identities\u003c/a>,” said Booth. “Being a young person with one of those identities in the classroom and then talking to older adults who may not have this similar understanding of the expansiveness of gender identity or sexuality can be challenging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without diving into the most divisive topics, Mitchell felt the panel sparked rich and meaningful conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>4. Leave Time For Reflection Afterwards\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Leaving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60009/keep-those-diaries-strategies-for-centering-student-voices-and-improving-reflection-habits\">space for students to reflect\u003c/a> after an intergenerational event is crucial, said Booth. “Talking about how it went — not just about the things you talked about, but the process of having this intergenerational conversation — is vital,” she said. “It helps cement and deepen the learnings and takeaways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mitchell could tell the event resonated with her students in real time. “In our auditorium, the chairs are squeaky,” she said. “Whenever we have an event they’re not interested in, the squeaking starts and you know they’re not focused. And we didn’t have that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterward, Mitchell invited students to write thank-you notes to the senior panelists and reflect on the experience. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive with one common theme. “All my students said consistently, ‘We wish we had more time,’” Mitchell said. “‘And we wish we’d been able to have a more authentic conversation with them.’” That feedback is shaping how Mitchell plans her next event. She wants to loosen the structure and give students more space to guide the dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Mitchell, the impact is clear. “The intergenerational voice brings so much more value and deepens the meaning of what you’re trying to do,” she said. “It makes civics come alive when you bring in people who have lived a civic life to talk about the things they’ve done and the ways they’ve connected to their community. And that can inspire kids to also connect to their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2332768897\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> It’s 10am at Grace Skilled Nursing Facility in Oklahoma and a cluster of 4- and 5-year-olds bounce with excitement, their sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor of the rec room. Around them, seniors in wheelchairs and armchairs follow along as a teacher counts off stretches. They shake out limb by limb and every once in a while a kid adds a silly flair to one of the movements and everyone cracks a little smile as they try and keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"633\" data-end=\"678\">\u003cem data-start=\"633\" data-end=\"676\">[Audio of teacher counting with students]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"680\" data-end=\"786\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"680\" data-end=\"696\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Kids and seniors are moving together in rhythm. This is just another Wednesday morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"788\" data-end=\"820\">\u003cem data-start=\"788\" data-end=\"818\">[Audio of grands exercising]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"822\" data-end=\"1094\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"822\" data-end=\"838\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> These preschoolers and kindergartners go to school here, inside of the senior living facility. The children are here every day—learning their ABCs, doing art projects, and eating snacks alongside the senior residents of Grace – who they call the grands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1096\" data-end=\"1390\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1096\" data-end=\"1113\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> When it originally started, it was the nursing home. And beside the nursing home was an early childhood center, which was like a daycare that was tied to our district. And so the residents and the students there at our early childhood center started making some connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1392\" data-end=\"1694\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1392\" data-end=\"1408\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> This is Amanda Moore, the principal of Jenks West Elementary, the school inside of Grace. In the early days, the childhood center noticed the bonds that were forming between the youngest and oldest members of the community. The owners of Grace saw how much it meant to the residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1696\" data-end=\"1784\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1696\" data-end=\"1713\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> They decided, okay, what can we do to make this a full-time program?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1786\" data-end=\"1930\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1786\" data-end=\"1803\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> They did a renovation and they built on space so that we could have our students there housed in the nursing home every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"1953\" data-end=\"2075\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"1953\" data-end=\"1969\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> This is MindShift, the podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir. Today we’ll explore how intergenerational learning works and why it might be exactly what schools need more of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2300\" data-end=\"2518\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2300\" data-end=\"2316\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Book Buddies is one of the regular activities students at Jenks West Elementary do with the grands. Every other week, kids walk in an orderly line through the facility to meet their reading partners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2520\" data-end=\"2660\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2520\" data-end=\"2536\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Katy Wilson, a Kindergarten teacher at the school, says just being around older adults changes how students move and act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2662\" data-end=\"2742\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2662\" data-end=\"2678\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> They start to learn body control more than a typical student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2744\" data-end=\"2933\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2744\" data-end=\"2760\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> We know we can’t run out there with the grands. We know it’s not safe. We could trip somebody. They could get hurt. We learn that balance more because it’s higher stakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2935\" data-end=\"2987\">\u003cem data-start=\"2935\" data-end=\"2985\">[Mariah giving students their grands assignment]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"2989\" data-end=\"3098\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"2989\" data-end=\"3005\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> In the common room, kids settle in at tables. A teacher pairs students up with the grands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3208\" data-end=\"3276\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3208\" data-end=\"3224\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Sometimes the kids read. Sometimes the grands do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3278\" data-end=\"3351\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3278\" data-end=\"3294\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Either way, it’s one-on-one time with a trusted adult.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3377\" data-end=\"3528\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3377\" data-end=\"3393\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> And that’s something that I couldn’t accomplish in a typical classroom without all those tutors essentially built in to the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3530\" data-end=\"3701\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3530\" data-end=\"3546\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And it’s working. Jenks West has tracked student progress. Kids who go through the program tend to score higher on reading assessments than their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3703\" data-end=\"3952\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3703\" data-end=\"3719\">Katy Wilson:\u003c/strong> They get to read books that maybe we don’t cover on the academic side that are more fun books, which is great because they get to read about what they’re interested in that maybe we wouldn’t have time for in the typical classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"3954\" data-end=\"4020\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"3954\" data-end=\"3970\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Grandma Margaret enjoys her time with the kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4022\" data-end=\"4191\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4022\" data-end=\"4043\">Grandma Margaret:\u003c/strong> I get to work with the children, and you’ll go down to read a book. Sometimes they’ll read it to you because they’ve got it memorized. Life would be kind of boring without them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4262\" data-end=\"4409\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4262\" data-end=\"4278\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> There’s also research that kids in these types of programs are more likely to have better attendance and stronger social skills. One of the long-term benefits is that students become more comfortable being around people who are different from them. Like a grand in a wheelchair, or one who doesn’t communicate easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4624\" data-end=\"4740\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4624\" data-end=\"4640\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Amanda told me a story about a student who left Jenks West and later attended a different school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"4742\" data-end=\"5230\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"4742\" data-end=\"4759\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> There were some students in her class that were in wheelchairs. She said her daughter naturally befriended these students and the teacher had actually recognized that and told the mom that. And she said, I truly believe it was the interactions that she had with the residents at Grace that helped her to have that understanding and empathy and not feel like there was anything that she needed to be worried about or afraid of, that it was just a part of her every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5232\" data-end=\"5418\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5232\" data-end=\"5248\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> The program benefits the grands too. There’s evidence that older adults experience improved mental health and less social isolation when they spend time with children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5467\" data-end=\"5628\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5467\" data-end=\"5483\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Even the grands who are bedbound benefit. Just having kids in the building—hearing their laughter and songs in the hallway—makes a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5630\" data-end=\"5694\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5630\" data-end=\"5646\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> So why don’t more places have these programs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5696\" data-end=\"5759\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5696\" data-end=\"5713\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> You really have to have everybody on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5761\" data-end=\"5800\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5761\" data-end=\"5777\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Here’s Amanda again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5802\" data-end=\"5908\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5802\" data-end=\"5819\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> Because both sides saw the benefits, we were able to create that partnership together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5910\" data-end=\"5989\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5910\" data-end=\"5926\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> It’s likely not something that a school could do on its own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"5991\" data-end=\"6200\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"5991\" data-end=\"6008\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> Because it is expensive. They maintain that facility for us. If anything goes wrong in the rooms, they’re the ones that are taking care of all of that. They built a playground there for us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6202\" data-end=\"6335\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6202\" data-end=\"6218\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Grace even employs a full-time liaison, who is in charge of communication between the nursing home and the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6337\" data-end=\"6503\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6337\" data-end=\"6354\">Amanda Moore:\u003c/strong> She is always there and she helps organize our activities. We meet monthly to plan out the activities residents are going to do with the students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6526\" data-end=\"6814\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6526\" data-end=\"6542\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Younger people interacting with older people has tons of advantages. But what if your school doesn’t have the resources to build a senior center? After the break, we look at how a middle school is making intergenerational learning work in a different way. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"6856\" data-end=\"7206\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"6856\" data-end=\"6872\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Before the break we learned about how intergenerational learning can boost literacy and empathy in younger children, not to mention a bunch of benefits for older adults. In a middle school classroom, those same ideas are being used in a new way—to help strengthen something that many people worry is on shaky ground: our democracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7229\" data-end=\"7319\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7229\" data-end=\"7246\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> My name is Ivy Mitchell. I teach eighth grade civics in Massachusetts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7321\" data-end=\"7642\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7321\" data-end=\"7337\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> In Ivy’s civics class, students learn how to be active members of the community. They also learn that they’ll need to work with people of all ages. After more than 20 years of teaching, Ivy noticed that older and younger generations don’t often get a chance to talk to each other—unless they’re family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7644\" data-end=\"7949\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7644\" data-end=\"7661\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> We are the most age-segregated society. This is the time when our age segregation has been the most extreme. There’s a lot of research out there on how seniors are dealing with their lack of connection to the community, because a lot of those community resources have eroded over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"7974\" data-end=\"8047\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"7974\" data-end=\"7990\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> When kids do talk to adults, it’s often surface level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8049\" data-end=\"8168\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8049\" data-end=\"8066\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> How’s school? How’s soccer? The moment for reflecting on your life and sharing that is pretty rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8170\" data-end=\"8567\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8170\" data-end=\"8186\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> That’s a missed opportunity for all kinds of reasons. But as a civics teacher Ivy is especially concerned about one thing: cultivating students who are interested in voting when they get older. She believes that having deeper conversations with older adults about their experiences can help students better understand the past—and maybe feel more invested in shaping the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8569\" data-end=\"8764\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8569\" data-end=\"8586\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> Ninety percent of baby boomers believe that democracy is the best way, the only best way. Whereas like a third of young people are like, yeah, you know, we don’t have to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8766\" data-end=\"8839\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8766\" data-end=\"8782\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ivy wants to close that gap by connecting generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"8862\" data-end=\"9109\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"8862\" data-end=\"8879\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> Democracy is a very valuable thing. And the only place my students are hearing it is in my classroom. And if I could bring more voices in to say no, democracy has its flaws, but it’s still the best system we’ve ever discovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9111\" data-end=\"9228\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9111\" data-end=\"9127\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> The idea that civic learning can come from cross-generational relationships is backed by research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9230\" data-end=\"9421\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9230\" data-end=\"9250\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> I do a lot of thinking about youth voice and institutions, youth civic development, and how young people can be more involved in our democracy and in their communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9446\" data-end=\"9525\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9446\" data-end=\"9462\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ruby Belle Booth wrote a report about youth civic engagement. In it she says together young people and older adults can tackle big challenges facing our democracy—like polarization, culture wars, extremism, and misinformation. But sometimes, misunderstandings between generations get in the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"9764\" data-end=\"10137\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"9764\" data-end=\"9784\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Young people, I think, tend to look at older generations as having sort of antiquated views on everything. And that’s largely in part because younger generations have different views on issues. They have different experiences. They have different understandings of modern technology. And as a result, they sort of judge older generations accordingly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10139\" data-end=\"10249\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10139\" data-end=\"10155\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Young people’s feelings towards older generations can be summed up in two dismissive words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10272\" data-end=\"10375\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10272\" data-end=\"10288\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> “OK, Boomer,” which is often said in response to an older person being out of touch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10377\" data-end=\"10506\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10377\" data-end=\"10397\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> There’s a lot of humor and sass and attitude that young people bring to that relationship and that divide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10508\" data-end=\"10698\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10508\" data-end=\"10528\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> It speaks to the challenges that young people face in feeling like they have a voice and they feel like they’re often dismissed by older people—because often they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10700\" data-end=\"10780\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10700\" data-end=\"10716\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And older people have thoughts about younger generations too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10782\" data-end=\"10890\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10782\" data-end=\"10802\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Sometimes older generations are like, okay, it’s all good. Gen Z is going to save us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"10892\" data-end=\"11053\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"10892\" data-end=\"10912\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> That puts a lot of pressure on the very small group of Gen Z who is really activist and engaged and trying to make a lot of social change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11055\" data-end=\"11255\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11055\" data-end=\"11071\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One of the big challenges that educators face in creating intergenerational learning opportunities is the power imbalance between adults and students. And schools only amplify that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11257\" data-end=\"11611\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11257\" data-end=\"11277\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> When you move that already existing age dynamic into a school setting where all the adults in the room are holding additional power—teachers giving out grades, principals calling students to their office and having disciplinary powers—it makes it so that those already entrenched age dynamics are even more challenging to overcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11636\" data-end=\"11839\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11636\" data-end=\"11652\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One way to offset this power imbalance could be bringing people from outside of the school into the classroom, which is exactly what Ivy Mitchell, our teacher in Boston, decided to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11841\" data-end=\"11896\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11841\" data-end=\"11866\">Ivy Mitchell :\u003c/strong> Thank you for coming today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"11898\" data-end=\"12021\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"11898\" data-end=\"11914\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Her students came up with a list of questions, and Ivy assembled a panel of older adults to answer them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12023\" data-end=\"12377\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12023\" data-end=\"12048\">Ivy Mitchell (event):\u003c/strong> The idea behind this event is I saw a problem and I’m trying to solve it. And the idea is to bring the generations together to help answer the question, why do we have civics? I know a lot of you wonder about that. And also to have them share their life experience and start building community connections, which are so vital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12379\" data-end=\"12510\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12379\" data-end=\"12395\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One by one, students took the mic and asked questions to Berta, Steve, Tony, Eileen, and Jane. Questions like…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12512\" data-end=\"12570\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12512\" data-end=\"12524\">Student:\u003c/strong> Do any of you think it’s hard to pay taxes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12572\" data-end=\"12655\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12572\" data-end=\"12584\">Student:\u003c/strong> What is it like to be in a country at war, either at home or abroad?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12657\" data-end=\"12774\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12657\" data-end=\"12669\">Student:\u003c/strong> What were the major civic issues of your life, and what experiences shaped your views on these issues?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12776\" data-end=\"12844\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12776\" data-end=\"12792\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And one by one they gave answers to the students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"12846\" data-end=\"13001\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"12846\" data-end=\"12865\">Steve Humphrey:\u003c/strong> I mean, I think for me, the Vietnam War, for example, was a huge issue in my lifetime, and, you know, still is. I mean, it shaped us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13003\" data-end=\"13311\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13003\" data-end=\"13018\">Tony Surge:\u003c/strong> Yeah, we had, in our generation, we had a lot going on at once. We also had a big civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, that you probably will study, all very historical, if you go back and look at that. So during our generation, we saw a lot of major changes inside the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13313\" data-end=\"13546\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13313\" data-end=\"13329\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> The one that I kind of remember, I was young during the Vietnam War, but women’s rights. So back in ‘74 is when women could actually get a credit card without—if they were married—without their husband’s signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13548\" data-end=\"13648\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13548\" data-end=\"13564\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> And then they flipped the panel around so elders could ask questions to students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13650\" data-end=\"13728\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13650\" data-end=\"13666\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> What are the concerns that those of you in school have now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13730\" data-end=\"13897\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13730\" data-end=\"13746\">Eileen Hill:\u003c/strong> I mean, especially with computers and AI—does the AI scare any of you? Or do you feel that this is something you can really adapt to and understand?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"13899\" data-end=\"14200\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"13899\" data-end=\"13911\">Student:\u003c/strong> AI is starting to do new things. It can start to take over people’s jobs, which is concerning. There’s AI music now and my dad’s a musician, and that’s concerning because it’s not good right now, but it’s starting to get better. And it could end up taking over people’s jobs eventually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14202\" data-end=\"14416\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14202\" data-end=\"14214\">Student:\u003c/strong> I think it really depends on how you’re using it. Like, it can definitely be used for good and helpful things, but if you’re using it to fake images of people or things that they said, it’s not good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14439\" data-end=\"14607\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14439\" data-end=\"14455\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> When Ivy debriefed with students after the event, they had overwhelmingly positive things to say. But there was one piece of feedback that stood out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14609\" data-end=\"14764\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14609\" data-end=\"14626\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> All my students said consistently, we wish we had more time and we wish we’d been able to have a more authentic conversation with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14766\" data-end=\"14840\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14766\" data-end=\"14783\">Ivy Mitchell:\u003c/strong> They wanted to be able to talk, to really get into it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14842\" data-end=\"14950\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"14842\" data-end=\"14858\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Next time, she’s planning to loosen the reins and make space for more authentic dialogue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"14952\" data-end=\"15115\">Some of Ruby Belle Booth’s research inspired Ivy’s project. She noted some things that make intergenerational activities a success. Ivy did a lot of these things!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15117\" data-end=\"15341\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15117\" data-end=\"15133\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> One: Ivy had conversations with her students where they came up with questions and talked about the event with students and older folks. This can make everyone feel a lot more comfortable and less nervous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15343\" data-end=\"15500\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15343\" data-end=\"15363\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Having really clear goals and expectations is one of the easiest ways to facilitate this process for young people or for older adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15502\" data-end=\"15681\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15502\" data-end=\"15518\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Two: They didn’t get into tough and divisive questions during this first event. Maybe you don’t want to jump headfirst into some of these more sensitive issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15683\" data-end=\"15919\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15683\" data-end=\"15699\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Three: Ivy built these connections into the work she was already doing. Ivy had assigned students to interview older adults before, but she wanted to take it further. So she made those conversations part of her class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"15921\" data-end=\"16124\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"15921\" data-end=\"15941\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Thinking about how you can start with what you have I think is a really great way to start to implement this kind of intergenerational learning without fully reinventing the wheel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16126\" data-end=\"16202\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16126\" data-end=\"16142\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Four: Ivy had time for reflection and feedback afterward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16204\" data-end=\"16472\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16204\" data-end=\"16224\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> Talking about how it went—not just about the things you talked about, but the process of having this intergenerational conversation for both parties—is vital to really cement, deepen, and further the learnings and takeaways from the opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16474\" data-end=\"16641\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16474\" data-end=\"16490\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> Ruby doesn’t say that intergenerational connections are the only solution for the problems our democracy faces. In fact, on its own it’s not enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"16664\" data-end=\"17207\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"16664\" data-end=\"16684\">Ruby Belle Booth:\u003c/strong> I think that when we’re thinking about the long-term health of democracy, it needs to be grounded in communities and connection and reciprocity. A piece of that, when we’re thinking about including more young people in democracy—having more young people turn out to vote, having more young people who see a pathway to create change in their communities—we have to be thinking about what an inclusive democracy looks like, what a democracy that welcomes young voices looks like. Our democracy has to be intergenerational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp data-start=\"17209\" data-end=\"17477\">\u003cstrong data-start=\"17209\" data-end=\"17225\">Nimah Gobir:\u003c/strong> For the students, having conversations with older adults can help make history feel personal. And for the older adults, it’s a chance to share their stories and maybe even see the future a little more clearly through the eyes of the next generation.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>(Note: This is the second piece in a two-part series on absenteeism in schools. Read the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-7-insights-chronic-absenteeism/\">\u003cem>first part\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, on seven insights from researchers.)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chronic absenteeism, when students miss 10 percent or more of the school year, is 50 percent higher across the nation than before the pandemic. Researchers say it’s difficult for schools to address the problem because it is both so intense, with students missing huge chunks of the school year, and so extensive, affecting both rich and poor students and even high achievers. And the reasons vary widely, from asthma and bullying to transportation problems and the feeling that school is boring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to know where and when to target resources,” said Sam Hollon, a data analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, which hosted a symposium on the problem in May. “Who do you help when every student potentially can be a candidate for help?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration’s \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/they-crossed-the-border-for-better-schools-now-some-families-are-leaving-the-us/\">immigration enforcement\u003c/a> is exacerbating the problem. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ai25-1202.pdf\">June draft paper\u003c/a> by Stanford University professor Thomas Dee calculated that recent raids coincided with a 22 percent increase in daily student absences with particularly large increases in absenteeism among the youngest students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking about the problem isn’t enough. Researchers say they want to study more schools that are making headway. It remains unclear if there are broadly applicable fixes or if each school or even each student needs individual solutions. Some underlying root causes for skipping school are more complex than others, requiring psychotherapy or housing assistance, which schools can’t provide. Here are a few examples of how very different communities are tackling the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Providence: Bus stops and weekend food bags\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Principal W. Jackson Reilly of Nathanael Greene Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island, said that when he arrived in April 2023, half of his 900 students in grades six to eight were chronically absent, up from 30 percent of students before the pandemic. Thirty percent of his teachers were also chronically absent. Achievement scores were in the state’s bottom 1 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reilly managed to slash his chronic absenteeism rate in half to 25 percent this past 2024-25 year. That’s still high. One in four students missed more than 18 days of school a year. But, it’s better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He began by identifying 150 kids who were just over the threshold for chronic absenteeism, those who missed between 18 and 35 days, hoping that these kids would be easier to lure back to school than those who were more disengaged. Reilly and a group of administrators and guidance counselors each took 10 to 15 students and showed their families how much school they had missed and how low their grades were. His team asked, “What do you need in order for your kid to be coming to school?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two most common replies: transportation and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many students lived only a mile away, too close to school to qualify for bus service. Yet the walk deterred many, especially if it was raining or snowing. Yellow buses often passed these children’s homes as they were transporting children who lived farther out, and Reilly convinced the district to add stops for these chronically absent children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ninety percent of his students come from families who are poor enough to qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program and 80 percent are Hispanic. Although many children were fed breakfast and lunch at school, their families admitted that their kids would get so hungry over the weekend that they didn’t want to wake up and come to school on Mondays. Reilly partnered with a food pantry and sent bags of meat and pasta home with students on Fridays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual attention also helped. At the start of each school day, Reilly and his team check in with their assigned students. Kids who show up get five “green bucks” to spend on snacks and prizes. Administrators call the homes of those who didn’t come to school. “If they did not answer the phone, we’d make a home visit,” said Reilly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most dramatic overhaul was scheduling. Reilly scrapped individual schedules for students and assigned four teachers to every 104 students. The kids now move in pods of 26 that take all their classes together, rotating through the same four teachers throughout the day. The classrooms are right near each other, creating a smaller community within the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about relationship building,” said Reilly. When students look forward to seeing their classmates and teachers, he said, they’re more motivated to come to school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say fostering relationships is effective. Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization that advises schools on how to boost attendance rates, said it’s still a battle to persuade school leaders (and school board members) that making school a more welcoming place is more productive than punishing kids and families for skipping school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reilly said his school now posts the lowest student and teacher chronic absenteeism rates in Providence. And he said his school is the highest performing middle school in the city and among the highest statewide in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>New York City: Catching the butterflies\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A cluster of New York City high schools are taking a more data-driven approach, guided by New Visions, a consulting organization that supports 71 city high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After some experimentation, New Visions staff saw strong improvement in attendance in one subgroup of students who were on the cusp of missing 10 percent of school days, but had not yet crossed the chronic absenteeism threshold. These are students who might miss a day or two every week or every other week but were relatively engaged at school. Jonathan Green, a New Visions school improvement coach who is spearheading this effort, calls them “butterflies.” “They would flutter in and out every week,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green suggested that someone at school meet weekly with these butterflies and show them their attendance data, set goals for the coming week and explain how their attendance was leading to better grades. The intervention took two to five minutes. “There were marked changes in attendance,” said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Visions built a website where school administrators could print out two-page documents for each student so the data, including monthly attendance and tardiness, appeared in an easy-to-digest format. The quick meetings took place for eight to 10 weeks during the final grading period for the semester. “That’s when there’s the most opportunity to turn those potentially failing grades into passing grades,” said Green. “We were finding these sweet spots within the school calendar to do this very high resource, high-energy intensive weekly check-in. It’s not something that anyone can easily scale across a school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff had to figure out the bell schedule for each child and intercept them between classes. One succeeded in holding their entire caseload of students below the chronic absenteeism threshold. Not everyone thought it was a good idea: Some school administrators questioned why so much effort should go into students who weren’t yet chronically absent rather than students in greater trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dramatic results help answer that question. Among schools in the Bronx that volunteered to participate in the butterfly intervention, chronic absenteeism rates dropped 15 percentage points from 47 percent in 2021 to 32 percent in 2025, still high. But other Bronx high schools in the New Visions network that didn’t try this butterfly intervention still had a chronic absenteeism rate of 46 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green said this solution wouldn’t work for other high schoolers. Some have trouble organizing their study time, he said, and need more intensive help from teachers. “Two- to five-minute check-ins aren’t going to help them,” said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Indianapolis: Biscuits and gravy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The leader of an Indiana charter school told me he used a system of rewards and punishments that reduced the chronic absenteeism rate among his kindergarten through eighth graders from 64 percent in 2021-22 to 10 percent in 2024-25.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jordan Habayeb, the chief operating officer of Adelante Schools, said he used federal funds for the school breakfast and lunch program to create a \u003ca href=\"https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2023/12/29/patachou-for-school-lunch-heres-what-these-students-get-to-eat/71758197007/\">made-from-scratch restaurant-style cafeteria\u003c/a>. “Fun fact: On homemade biscuit and gravy days, we saw the lowest rates of tardies,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers recommend avoiding punishment because it doesn’t bring students back to school. But Habayeb said he adheres strictly to state law that requires schools to report 10 absences to the state Department of Child Services and to file a report with the county prosecutor. Habayeb told me his school accounted for a fifth of truancy referrals to the county prosecutor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school created an automated warning system after five absences rather than waiting for the critical 10-day loss. And Habayeb said he dispatched the safety and attendance officer in a van to have “real conversations with families rather than being buried in paperwork.” Meanwhile, students who did show up received a constant stream of rewards, from locker decorations to T-shirts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parent education was also important. During mandatory family orientations, the school illustrated how regular attendance matters for even young children. “We shared what a child might miss during a three-day stretch in a unit on ‘Charlotte’s Web’ — showing how easily a student could leave with a completely different understanding of the book,” said Habayeb. “This helped shift perspectives and brought urgency to the issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Kansas City: Candy and notes\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>School leaders in Kansas City, Kansas, shared some tips that have worked for them during a webinar earlier this month hosted by Attendance Works. One elementary school reduced its chronic absenteeism from 55 percent in 2021 to 38 percent in 2024 by assigning all 300 students to an adult in the building, encouraging them to build an “authentic” relationship. Teachers were given a list of ideas but were free to do what seemed natural. One teacher left candy and notes on their assigned students’ desks. A preschooler proudly pasted his note, which said he was a “genius,” on the front door of his house. “The smiles kids have on their faces are amazing,” said Zaneta Boles, the principal of Silver City Elementary School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students do miss school, Boles said educators try to take a “non-blaming approach” so that families are more likely to divulge what is going on. That helps the school refer them to other community agencies for assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Albuquerque: A shining example regroups \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Alamosa Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was once a shining example of a school that persuaded more families to send their kids to class. Chronic absenteeism fell as low as 1 in 4 students in 2018, when \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/students-cant-learn-dont-show-school/\">The Hechinger Report wrote about the school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Alamosa has not been immune from the surge of absenteeism that has plagued schools around the nation. Chronic absenteeism spiked to 64 percent of students during the 2021-22 school year, when Covid variants were still circulating. And it remained shockingly high with 38 percent of students missing more than 10 percent of the 2024-25 school year — exactly matching the 50 percent increase in chronic absenteeism across the country since 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were on a roll. Then life happened,” said Daphne Strader, Albuquerque Public Schools’ director of coordinated school health, who works to reduce absenteeism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strader said Alamosa and other Albuquerque schools have made some successful changes to how they’re tackling the problem. But the volume of absenteeism remains overwhelming. “There’s so many kids who have needs,” Starder said. “We need more staff on board.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strader said attendance interventions had been “too siloed” and they’re focusing more on the “whole child.” She’s encouraging schools to integrate attendance efforts with other initiatives to boost academic achievement and improve student behavior. “Students are hungry, they’re dysregulated, they don’t have grit,” said Strader, and all of these issues are contributing to absenteeism. But she also concedes that some students have more severe needs, and it’s unclear who in the system can address them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her biggest advice for schools is to focus on relationships. “Relationships drive everything,” said Strader. “One of the major consequences of the pandemic was the isolation. If I feel a sense of belonging, I’m more likely to come to school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-schools-tackle-absenteeism/\"> \u003cem>how schools are tackling absenteeism\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cem>The Hechinger Report\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\"> \u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>(Note: This is the second piece in a two-part series on absenteeism in schools. Read the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-7-insights-chronic-absenteeism/\">\u003cem>first part\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, on seven insights from researchers.)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chronic absenteeism, when students miss 10 percent or more of the school year, is 50 percent higher across the nation than before the pandemic. Researchers say it’s difficult for schools to address the problem because it is both so intense, with students missing huge chunks of the school year, and so extensive, affecting both rich and poor students and even high achievers. And the reasons vary widely, from asthma and bullying to transportation problems and the feeling that school is boring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s hard to know where and when to target resources,” said Sam Hollon, a data analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, which hosted a symposium on the problem in May. “Who do you help when every student potentially can be a candidate for help?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration’s \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/they-crossed-the-border-for-better-schools-now-some-families-are-leaving-the-us/\">immigration enforcement\u003c/a> is exacerbating the problem. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ai25-1202.pdf\">June draft paper\u003c/a> by Stanford University professor Thomas Dee calculated that recent raids coincided with a 22 percent increase in daily student absences with particularly large increases in absenteeism among the youngest students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking about the problem isn’t enough. Researchers say they want to study more schools that are making headway. It remains unclear if there are broadly applicable fixes or if each school or even each student needs individual solutions. Some underlying root causes for skipping school are more complex than others, requiring psychotherapy or housing assistance, which schools can’t provide. Here are a few examples of how very different communities are tackling the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Providence: Bus stops and weekend food bags\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Principal W. Jackson Reilly of Nathanael Greene Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island, said that when he arrived in April 2023, half of his 900 students in grades six to eight were chronically absent, up from 30 percent of students before the pandemic. Thirty percent of his teachers were also chronically absent. Achievement scores were in the state’s bottom 1 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reilly managed to slash his chronic absenteeism rate in half to 25 percent this past 2024-25 year. That’s still high. One in four students missed more than 18 days of school a year. But, it’s better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He began by identifying 150 kids who were just over the threshold for chronic absenteeism, those who missed between 18 and 35 days, hoping that these kids would be easier to lure back to school than those who were more disengaged. Reilly and a group of administrators and guidance counselors each took 10 to 15 students and showed their families how much school they had missed and how low their grades were. His team asked, “What do you need in order for your kid to be coming to school?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two most common replies: transportation and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many students lived only a mile away, too close to school to qualify for bus service. Yet the walk deterred many, especially if it was raining or snowing. Yellow buses often passed these children’s homes as they were transporting children who lived farther out, and Reilly convinced the district to add stops for these chronically absent children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ninety percent of his students come from families who are poor enough to qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program and 80 percent are Hispanic. Although many children were fed breakfast and lunch at school, their families admitted that their kids would get so hungry over the weekend that they didn’t want to wake up and come to school on Mondays. Reilly partnered with a food pantry and sent bags of meat and pasta home with students on Fridays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Individual attention also helped. At the start of each school day, Reilly and his team check in with their assigned students. Kids who show up get five “green bucks” to spend on snacks and prizes. Administrators call the homes of those who didn’t come to school. “If they did not answer the phone, we’d make a home visit,” said Reilly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most dramatic overhaul was scheduling. Reilly scrapped individual schedules for students and assigned four teachers to every 104 students. The kids now move in pods of 26 that take all their classes together, rotating through the same four teachers throughout the day. The classrooms are right near each other, creating a smaller community within the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about relationship building,” said Reilly. When students look forward to seeing their classmates and teachers, he said, they’re more motivated to come to school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers say fostering relationships is effective. Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization that advises schools on how to boost attendance rates, said it’s still a battle to persuade school leaders (and school board members) that making school a more welcoming place is more productive than punishing kids and families for skipping school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reilly said his school now posts the lowest student and teacher chronic absenteeism rates in Providence. And he said his school is the highest performing middle school in the city and among the highest statewide in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>New York City: Catching the butterflies\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A cluster of New York City high schools are taking a more data-driven approach, guided by New Visions, a consulting organization that supports 71 city high schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After some experimentation, New Visions staff saw strong improvement in attendance in one subgroup of students who were on the cusp of missing 10 percent of school days, but had not yet crossed the chronic absenteeism threshold. These are students who might miss a day or two every week or every other week but were relatively engaged at school. Jonathan Green, a New Visions school improvement coach who is spearheading this effort, calls them “butterflies.” “They would flutter in and out every week,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green suggested that someone at school meet weekly with these butterflies and show them their attendance data, set goals for the coming week and explain how their attendance was leading to better grades. The intervention took two to five minutes. “There were marked changes in attendance,” said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Visions built a website where school administrators could print out two-page documents for each student so the data, including monthly attendance and tardiness, appeared in an easy-to-digest format. The quick meetings took place for eight to 10 weeks during the final grading period for the semester. “That’s when there’s the most opportunity to turn those potentially failing grades into passing grades,” said Green. “We were finding these sweet spots within the school calendar to do this very high resource, high-energy intensive weekly check-in. It’s not something that anyone can easily scale across a school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staff had to figure out the bell schedule for each child and intercept them between classes. One succeeded in holding their entire caseload of students below the chronic absenteeism threshold. Not everyone thought it was a good idea: Some school administrators questioned why so much effort should go into students who weren’t yet chronically absent rather than students in greater trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dramatic results help answer that question. Among schools in the Bronx that volunteered to participate in the butterfly intervention, chronic absenteeism rates dropped 15 percentage points from 47 percent in 2021 to 32 percent in 2025, still high. But other Bronx high schools in the New Visions network that didn’t try this butterfly intervention still had a chronic absenteeism rate of 46 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Green said this solution wouldn’t work for other high schoolers. Some have trouble organizing their study time, he said, and need more intensive help from teachers. “Two- to five-minute check-ins aren’t going to help them,” said Green.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Indianapolis: Biscuits and gravy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The leader of an Indiana charter school told me he used a system of rewards and punishments that reduced the chronic absenteeism rate among his kindergarten through eighth graders from 64 percent in 2021-22 to 10 percent in 2024-25.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jordan Habayeb, the chief operating officer of Adelante Schools, said he used federal funds for the school breakfast and lunch program to create a \u003ca href=\"https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2023/12/29/patachou-for-school-lunch-heres-what-these-students-get-to-eat/71758197007/\">made-from-scratch restaurant-style cafeteria\u003c/a>. “Fun fact: On homemade biscuit and gravy days, we saw the lowest rates of tardies,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers recommend avoiding punishment because it doesn’t bring students back to school. But Habayeb said he adheres strictly to state law that requires schools to report 10 absences to the state Department of Child Services and to file a report with the county prosecutor. Habayeb told me his school accounted for a fifth of truancy referrals to the county prosecutor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school created an automated warning system after five absences rather than waiting for the critical 10-day loss. And Habayeb said he dispatched the safety and attendance officer in a van to have “real conversations with families rather than being buried in paperwork.” Meanwhile, students who did show up received a constant stream of rewards, from locker decorations to T-shirts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parent education was also important. During mandatory family orientations, the school illustrated how regular attendance matters for even young children. “We shared what a child might miss during a three-day stretch in a unit on ‘Charlotte’s Web’ — showing how easily a student could leave with a completely different understanding of the book,” said Habayeb. “This helped shift perspectives and brought urgency to the issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Kansas City: Candy and notes\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>School leaders in Kansas City, Kansas, shared some tips that have worked for them during a webinar earlier this month hosted by Attendance Works. One elementary school reduced its chronic absenteeism from 55 percent in 2021 to 38 percent in 2024 by assigning all 300 students to an adult in the building, encouraging them to build an “authentic” relationship. Teachers were given a list of ideas but were free to do what seemed natural. One teacher left candy and notes on their assigned students’ desks. A preschooler proudly pasted his note, which said he was a “genius,” on the front door of his house. “The smiles kids have on their faces are amazing,” said Zaneta Boles, the principal of Silver City Elementary School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students do miss school, Boles said educators try to take a “non-blaming approach” so that families are more likely to divulge what is going on. That helps the school refer them to other community agencies for assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Albuquerque: A shining example regroups \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Alamosa Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was once a shining example of a school that persuaded more families to send their kids to class. Chronic absenteeism fell as low as 1 in 4 students in 2018, when \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/students-cant-learn-dont-show-school/\">The Hechinger Report wrote about the school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Alamosa has not been immune from the surge of absenteeism that has plagued schools around the nation. Chronic absenteeism spiked to 64 percent of students during the 2021-22 school year, when Covid variants were still circulating. And it remained shockingly high with 38 percent of students missing more than 10 percent of the 2024-25 school year — exactly matching the 50 percent increase in chronic absenteeism across the country since 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were on a roll. Then life happened,” said Daphne Strader, Albuquerque Public Schools’ director of coordinated school health, who works to reduce absenteeism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strader said Alamosa and other Albuquerque schools have made some successful changes to how they’re tackling the problem. But the volume of absenteeism remains overwhelming. “There’s so many kids who have needs,” Starder said. “We need more staff on board.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strader said attendance interventions had been “too siloed” and they’re focusing more on the “whole child.” She’s encouraging schools to integrate attendance efforts with other initiatives to boost academic achievement and improve student behavior. “Students are hungry, they’re dysregulated, they don’t have grit,” said Strader, and all of these issues are contributing to absenteeism. But she also concedes that some students have more severe needs, and it’s unclear who in the system can address them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her biggest advice for schools is to focus on relationships. “Relationships drive everything,” said Strader. “One of the major consequences of the pandemic was the isolation. If I feel a sense of belonging, I’m more likely to come to school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jessica Lifshitz noticed a shift in the writing stamina of her fifth graders in recent years. Students weren’t connecting to text-heavy personal narratives in the way that they used to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She couldn’t pinpoint the reason for this steady decline in writing stamina, but the disconnect was clear. “Our kids are just having a harder time writing longer pieces compared to what they used to be able to do,” said Lifshitz, who has been teaching for 21 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at examples of writing and storytelling is an important element of building students’ literacy and writing skills. Since her students were struggling with the existing material, she decided to do something different: have her students rely on themselves and their voices for that narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, Lifshitz decided to introduce the first writing unit of the year using “\u003ca href=\"https://themoth.org/\">The Moth\u003c/a>,” the popular podcast, public radio program and event.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students spent six weeks listening to, watching, developing, writing and eventually recording their own stories. The unit was a success; it sparked the young readers’ and writers’ storytelling abilities and offered lessons in empathy, courage and multi-modal literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We certainly practice [responding to prompts about short readings] in other ways, but I also wanted to just bring the joy of storytelling back to kids,” said Lifshitz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an age where writing in school is often focused on fulfilling standardized test requirements, personal narrative writing units can offer a more personalized approach to literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Personal Narrative Unit\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lifshitz starts the unit by introducing her students to examples of personal narratives from The Moth’s archives. The fifth graders then sample more of the pre-approved stories on their own. As the students listened to the stories, watched the videos and read the transcripts, they worked on annotating the text and answered questions like: What is this story about? How can this story help others?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then students brainstormed stories from their own lives and shared these stories with their peers. Lifshitz said the energy from her students during the brainstorming was palpable and resulted in stories with titles like, “When Petsitting Goes Wrong,” “The Hardest Math Problem” and “Grandpa and Grandma Day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once each student landed on a story they wanted to develop further, they mapped them out using a graphic organizer and studied four storytelling strategies. “Snapshots” describe in detail things that could be seen; “Thought-shots” describe the thoughts and emotions that the writer was experiencing; “Exploding important moments” magnified significant parts of the story; And “Adding in reflection” encouraged students to share a lesson that their story could teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, Lifshitz reflected on her own journey using The Moth in our latest episode of the MindShift Podcast. She describes the community of teachers she developed as she started sharing her own teaching stories with the world, and the difference it made in reigniting her excitement with teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As my voice found an audience, as our stories formed the basis for a strong community, my teaching began to change and I began to grow, and writing was such a huge part of that for me,” Lifshitz said in the podcast. “Maybe that is why storytelling is so important to me, because it was this storytelling that allowed me to connect with audiences, to develop community, to be challenged, to be exposed to others in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8799077194\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Moth Model\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Lifshitz developed her own unit, \u003ca href=\"https://themoth.org/the-moths-education-program\">The Moth has a curriculum for K-12 teachers\u003c/a> who are a part of their Teacher’s Lounge program. The Moth also hosts in-person afterschool and summer programs for teens, as well as virtual workshops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s rare for teens to find a space where they are free to tell their own stories, uninterrupted, for five minutes “unless you’re talking to the internet in a void,” said Ana Stern, The Moth’s senior manager of education. At the end of the eight-week sessions, the teens share their stories for the whole group. The “slam,” as they call it, is also recorded. The recordings are given to each student and they get to decide what they want to do with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some teens perform their story at the slam and never look at the recording again, said Stern, and that’s okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Stern, building a community comes first because storytelling can be a vulnerable experience. “We really spend a lot of time concentrating on building as brave and as safe a space as possible,” she said. And the program encourages students to lead with curiosity and withhold judgement when giving peer-to-peer feedback, she continued. Often, by the end of the eight-week program Stern hears feedback from students like, “I never thought my story would matter” and “I never thought I had anything to say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Through the workshop, they’re realizing not only do they have something to say, but they have folks who want to hear them as well,” said Stern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8799077194\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Welcome to MindShift, the podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung, and with me today is MindShift reporter Marlena Jackson-Retondo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>Hi, Ki.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Marlena. So you have a story today that’s about writing, but it’s really about something else. Tell us more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I’m here to tell you about a teacher named Jessica Lifshitz. Jessica has been teaching for two decades, but over time, she began to notice a shift in the writing stamina of her fifth graders. They were petering out and not really interested in writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Struggling with student engagement, that sounds like a really familiar problem teachers have, especially post pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Yeah, students weren’t connecting to traditional writing prompts for personal narratives in the way that they used to. Like how did the student spend their summer? What was their favorite memory? Something was missing, both from the text prompts and the student assignments, so she out an idea from the moth. In the moth, adults perform their stories in front of a live audience, usually about three stories per episode, and these stories are grouped by themes like timeless love, football, and grocery trips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jess’s students read their moth-style stories about fifth grade stuff, with titles like When Pet Sitting Goes Wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker: \u003c/strong>When I got into the backyard, I couldn’t find the pit bull. I was just like, oh my god, oh god, oh my God, oh God, Oh my God.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/strong>: Grandpa and grandma day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker: \u003c/strong>Grandma always makes the best lunches. Cucumbers, mango, watermelon, tuna, croissants, grapes. I would put it all on my plate and start making food monsters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/strong>: And the hardest math problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker:\u003c/strong> Once, when I was doing math, my teacher introduced me to an indescribably hard math problem. If my head had a fuse, like where a bomb would be, it would blow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>We’ll tell you why Jessica wanted to do this after the break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Announcer: \u003c/strong>Support for MindShift comes from Landmark College. Landmark college’s fully online certificate in learning differences and neurodiversity provides educators with research-based skills and strategies that improve learning outcomes for neurodivergent students. Earn up to 15 graduate level credits and specialize in one of the following areas, post-secondary disability services, executive function, or autism on campus or online. Learn more at landmark.edu slash certificate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Teacher Jessica Lifshitz does something special in her classroom. Instead of having her students respond to boring writing prompts on paper, she has them tell stories about their lives to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Okay Marlena, that sounds great. So what’s the real reason Jess has her students do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Well, I thought we’d get a little meta, so I asked Jess Lifshitz to do something a little different for you, our listeners. I asked just to tell the story of why she came to teach her students about narrative storytelling all of the month. She performed her piece in front of a tiny audience live near Chicago. Please welcome Jess Lifshitz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Lifshitz:\u003c/strong> My students are storytellers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their stories fill the spaces in which we learn. And when I think of my storytellers, I think of one student in particular. She is a master storyteller and her name is Lucy. Every morning we begin our days with a check-in question, a quick way to ease into our morning, a way for everyone to have their voice heard before we dig into the harder work of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The questions are simple. What is the thing you are most proud of or what is your biggest fear?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Lucy, she turns every answer into an adventure. Like the time when the question asked about your scariest moment. And Lucy launched into the ordeal that ensued when her dog ran away and she searched her entire neighborhood to find her only to return home and find her dog waiting for her in the backyard. Or the time she was answering a question about the worst injury you’ve ever had and it turned into a five minute retelling. Or the time she was wrapped in a mermaid blanket and turned over in her bed and fell directly onto her humidifier, smacking her face and leaving her with a permanent scar on her cheek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is rarely a day that goes by where she doesn’t give us all a good story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now I’ve been a teacher for more than 20 years. In those 20 years, I have heard my share of childhood adventures told through the dramatic voices of my students. But in those 20 years, I have also had to read the often dry words of those same students as they write in response to the boring prompts that we are required to assign from time to time. You know the kind. Prompts like, ‘What is something you did this summer?’ Or ‘What is an important moment you spent with someone you love?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know what it is, but something about those prompts just sucks the soul out of a story. All that heart, all that voice that students like Lucy naturally pour into their stories seems to disappear when they are asked to write those same stories out for an assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after 20 years of watching the joy slip out of a story, I decided that I needed to do something to try to recapture the energy that filled my students’ stories when they were not writing for an an assignment, I wanted their classroom writing to be filled with the same kind of energy that filled every one of Lucy’s stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I began to wrestle with how to bring this joy back to my students and to their stories, I started to think about my own history with writing. When I was a kid, I never saw myself as a writer. I saw writing as something I had to do, a task that I had complete. But at a certain point in my life, that changed. At some point, writing became a way for me to process the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writing brought me peace. Writing became so much more than a task. It became a way to connect with myself and with others. Writing become a way for me to form community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did that happen? For me, that transformation occurred when I started to write about my life as a fifth grade literacy teacher. This was in the days when the internet was a kinder place, when blogging wasn’t a career, when we weren’t worried about being influencers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this amazing thing happened through my writing. In a time when I felt isolated as a teacher, stagnant and bored with the teaching I was doing, I found others who opened up a whole new world for me through the sharing of their stories. I read the stories of others and they inspired me to think about teaching in a whole way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As my voice found an audience, as our stories formed the basis for a strong community, my teaching began to change and I began to grow. And writing was such a huge part of that for me. Maybe that is why storytelling is so important to me, because it was this storytelling that allowed me to connect with audiences, to develop community, to be challenged, to be exposed to others in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was fine until I learned what else was out there. And then I became better because of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is what I wanted for my students. I wanted my students to see storytelling as a way to connect with others. As a way to feel less alone in this world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I started to think about how to cultivate the same kind of experience for my students. And I kept thinking about the role that an audience plays in our storytelling. When our stories have a place to land, a place where they matter and can cause others to see the world in a new or different way, that is when our stories feel the most worthwhile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in all those boring writing prompts, the only audience my students saw for their stories was me, their teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I needed to find a way to give them an audience beyond just me and to make their stories matter. And as I started to think about telling stories for an audience, my mind began to wander to one of my favorite public radio podcasts, the Moth Radio Hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many times did I sat in my car at the end of a long day needing to hear the end of a Moth radio hour story? Sometimes those driveway moments were filled with laughter and sometimes with tears, but every one of those moments had one thing in common, a compelling story told in front of an audience that caused me to feel something in connection with the person telling the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was those thoughts of the purpose of storytelling and of the Moth radio hour that led me to the realization that this year, my fifth graders and I would start our writing year with our very own Moth story hour. We would find a way to tell our stories, to use our stories to connect us, to learn from one another’s stories and to build our classroom community on the foundation of the stories that we would share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have a lot of hopes for my students and I had a lot hopes of what a Moth Story Hour might be able to do for my student and for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let me share a few of those hopes with you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hope number one. In a world where far too much of the writing we ask our students to do in school is connected to the tests that they will take, it is my hope that my students can find a way to use writing to connect us to each other instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hope number two, it is hope that if my students are able to feel the ways in which writing can serve a genuine purpose, that it can make them better, they will see the other benefits of writing on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And finally, hope number three is really a hope for myself and my fellow educators. In order for our students to be able to feel the ways in which writing can serve these genuine purposes, we as educators must have the freedom to craft for our student the kinds of writing experiences that cultivate those possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for me and for my fifth grade students, the Moth story hour was just that kind of experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> That was Jess Lifshitz, a fifth grade teacher near Chicago. When I talked with her earlier this year, she said that this revamped writing unit not only allowed her students to connect with their own stories, but also help them develop empathy for one another. And who doesn’t love that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>Sounds like a happy ending. Thanks Marlena for sharing that story with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> You’re welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>That was MindShift reporter Marlena Jackson-Retondo. We’ll bring you more ideas and innovations from experts in education and beyond. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing. The MindShift team includes me, Ki Sung, Nima Gobier, Marlena Jackson- Retondo, and Marnette Federis. Our editor is Chris Hambrick. Seth Samuel is our sound designer. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, and Maha Sanad. MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students spent six weeks listening to, watching, developing, writing and eventually recording their own stories. The unit was a success; it sparked the young readers’ and writers’ storytelling abilities and offered lessons in empathy, courage and multi-modal literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We certainly practice [responding to prompts about short readings] in other ways, but I also wanted to just bring the joy of storytelling back to kids,” said Lifshitz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an age where writing in school is often focused on fulfilling standardized test requirements, personal narrative writing units can offer a more personalized approach to literacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Personal Narrative Unit\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lifshitz starts the unit by introducing her students to examples of personal narratives from The Moth’s archives. The fifth graders then sample more of the pre-approved stories on their own. As the students listened to the stories, watched the videos and read the transcripts, they worked on annotating the text and answered questions like: What is this story about? How can this story help others?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then students brainstormed stories from their own lives and shared these stories with their peers. Lifshitz said the energy from her students during the brainstorming was palpable and resulted in stories with titles like, “When Petsitting Goes Wrong,” “The Hardest Math Problem” and “Grandpa and Grandma Day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once each student landed on a story they wanted to develop further, they mapped them out using a graphic organizer and studied four storytelling strategies. “Snapshots” describe in detail things that could be seen; “Thought-shots” describe the thoughts and emotions that the writer was experiencing; “Exploding important moments” magnified significant parts of the story; And “Adding in reflection” encouraged students to share a lesson that their story could teach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, Lifshitz reflected on her own journey using The Moth in our latest episode of the MindShift Podcast. She describes the community of teachers she developed as she started sharing her own teaching stories with the world, and the difference it made in reigniting her excitement with teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As my voice found an audience, as our stories formed the basis for a strong community, my teaching began to change and I began to grow, and writing was such a huge part of that for me,” Lifshitz said in the podcast. “Maybe that is why storytelling is so important to me, because it was this storytelling that allowed me to connect with audiences, to develop community, to be challenged, to be exposed to others in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8799077194\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Moth Model\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Lifshitz developed her own unit, \u003ca href=\"https://themoth.org/the-moths-education-program\">The Moth has a curriculum for K-12 teachers\u003c/a> who are a part of their Teacher’s Lounge program. The Moth also hosts in-person afterschool and summer programs for teens, as well as virtual workshops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s rare for teens to find a space where they are free to tell their own stories, uninterrupted, for five minutes “unless you’re talking to the internet in a void,” said Ana Stern, The Moth’s senior manager of education. At the end of the eight-week sessions, the teens share their stories for the whole group. The “slam,” as they call it, is also recorded. The recordings are given to each student and they get to decide what they want to do with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some teens perform their story at the slam and never look at the recording again, said Stern, and that’s okay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Stern, building a community comes first because storytelling can be a vulnerable experience. “We really spend a lot of time concentrating on building as brave and as safe a space as possible,” she said. And the program encourages students to lead with curiosity and withhold judgement when giving peer-to-peer feedback, she continued. Often, by the end of the eight-week program Stern hears feedback from students like, “I never thought my story would matter” and “I never thought I had anything to say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Through the workshop, they’re realizing not only do they have something to say, but they have folks who want to hear them as well,” said Stern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8799077194\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Welcome to MindShift, the podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung, and with me today is MindShift reporter Marlena Jackson-Retondo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>Hi, Ki.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Marlena. So you have a story today that’s about writing, but it’s really about something else. Tell us more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I’m here to tell you about a teacher named Jessica Lifshitz. Jessica has been teaching for two decades, but over time, she began to notice a shift in the writing stamina of her fifth graders. They were petering out and not really interested in writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Struggling with student engagement, that sounds like a really familiar problem teachers have, especially post pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Yeah, students weren’t connecting to traditional writing prompts for personal narratives in the way that they used to. Like how did the student spend their summer? What was their favorite memory? Something was missing, both from the text prompts and the student assignments, so she out an idea from the moth. In the moth, adults perform their stories in front of a live audience, usually about three stories per episode, and these stories are grouped by themes like timeless love, football, and grocery trips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jess’s students read their moth-style stories about fifth grade stuff, with titles like When Pet Sitting Goes Wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker: \u003c/strong>When I got into the backyard, I couldn’t find the pit bull. I was just like, oh my god, oh god, oh my God, oh God, Oh my God.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/strong>: Grandpa and grandma day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker: \u003c/strong>Grandma always makes the best lunches. Cucumbers, mango, watermelon, tuna, croissants, grapes. I would put it all on my plate and start making food monsters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/strong>: And the hardest math problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Speaker:\u003c/strong> Once, when I was doing math, my teacher introduced me to an indescribably hard math problem. If my head had a fuse, like where a bomb would be, it would blow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo: \u003c/strong>We’ll tell you why Jessica wanted to do this after the break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Announcer: \u003c/strong>Support for MindShift comes from Landmark College. Landmark college’s fully online certificate in learning differences and neurodiversity provides educators with research-based skills and strategies that improve learning outcomes for neurodivergent students. Earn up to 15 graduate level credits and specialize in one of the following areas, post-secondary disability services, executive function, or autism on campus or online. Learn more at landmark.edu slash certificate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Teacher Jessica Lifshitz does something special in her classroom. Instead of having her students respond to boring writing prompts on paper, she has them tell stories about their lives to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung:\u003c/strong> Okay Marlena, that sounds great. So what’s the real reason Jess has her students do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> Well, I thought we’d get a little meta, so I asked Jess Lifshitz to do something a little different for you, our listeners. I asked just to tell the story of why she came to teach her students about narrative storytelling all of the month. She performed her piece in front of a tiny audience live near Chicago. Please welcome Jess Lifshitz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Lifshitz:\u003c/strong> My students are storytellers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their stories fill the spaces in which we learn. And when I think of my storytellers, I think of one student in particular. She is a master storyteller and her name is Lucy. Every morning we begin our days with a check-in question, a quick way to ease into our morning, a way for everyone to have their voice heard before we dig into the harder work of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The questions are simple. What is the thing you are most proud of or what is your biggest fear?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Lucy, she turns every answer into an adventure. Like the time when the question asked about your scariest moment. And Lucy launched into the ordeal that ensued when her dog ran away and she searched her entire neighborhood to find her only to return home and find her dog waiting for her in the backyard. Or the time she was answering a question about the worst injury you’ve ever had and it turned into a five minute retelling. Or the time she was wrapped in a mermaid blanket and turned over in her bed and fell directly onto her humidifier, smacking her face and leaving her with a permanent scar on her cheek.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is rarely a day that goes by where she doesn’t give us all a good story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now I’ve been a teacher for more than 20 years. In those 20 years, I have heard my share of childhood adventures told through the dramatic voices of my students. But in those 20 years, I have also had to read the often dry words of those same students as they write in response to the boring prompts that we are required to assign from time to time. You know the kind. Prompts like, ‘What is something you did this summer?’ Or ‘What is an important moment you spent with someone you love?’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know what it is, but something about those prompts just sucks the soul out of a story. All that heart, all that voice that students like Lucy naturally pour into their stories seems to disappear when they are asked to write those same stories out for an assignment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after 20 years of watching the joy slip out of a story, I decided that I needed to do something to try to recapture the energy that filled my students’ stories when they were not writing for an an assignment, I wanted their classroom writing to be filled with the same kind of energy that filled every one of Lucy’s stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I began to wrestle with how to bring this joy back to my students and to their stories, I started to think about my own history with writing. When I was a kid, I never saw myself as a writer. I saw writing as something I had to do, a task that I had complete. But at a certain point in my life, that changed. At some point, writing became a way for me to process the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writing brought me peace. Writing became so much more than a task. It became a way to connect with myself and with others. Writing become a way for me to form community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did that happen? For me, that transformation occurred when I started to write about my life as a fifth grade literacy teacher. This was in the days when the internet was a kinder place, when blogging wasn’t a career, when we weren’t worried about being influencers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this amazing thing happened through my writing. In a time when I felt isolated as a teacher, stagnant and bored with the teaching I was doing, I found others who opened up a whole new world for me through the sharing of their stories. I read the stories of others and they inspired me to think about teaching in a whole way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As my voice found an audience, as our stories formed the basis for a strong community, my teaching began to change and I began to grow. And writing was such a huge part of that for me. Maybe that is why storytelling is so important to me, because it was this storytelling that allowed me to connect with audiences, to develop community, to be challenged, to be exposed to others in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was fine until I learned what else was out there. And then I became better because of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is what I wanted for my students. I wanted my students to see storytelling as a way to connect with others. As a way to feel less alone in this world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I started to think about how to cultivate the same kind of experience for my students. And I kept thinking about the role that an audience plays in our storytelling. When our stories have a place to land, a place where they matter and can cause others to see the world in a new or different way, that is when our stories feel the most worthwhile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in all those boring writing prompts, the only audience my students saw for their stories was me, their teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I needed to find a way to give them an audience beyond just me and to make their stories matter. And as I started to think about telling stories for an audience, my mind began to wander to one of my favorite public radio podcasts, the Moth Radio Hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many times did I sat in my car at the end of a long day needing to hear the end of a Moth radio hour story? Sometimes those driveway moments were filled with laughter and sometimes with tears, but every one of those moments had one thing in common, a compelling story told in front of an audience that caused me to feel something in connection with the person telling the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was those thoughts of the purpose of storytelling and of the Moth radio hour that led me to the realization that this year, my fifth graders and I would start our writing year with our very own Moth story hour. We would find a way to tell our stories, to use our stories to connect us, to learn from one another’s stories and to build our classroom community on the foundation of the stories that we would share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have a lot of hopes for my students and I had a lot hopes of what a Moth Story Hour might be able to do for my student and for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let me share a few of those hopes with you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hope number one. In a world where far too much of the writing we ask our students to do in school is connected to the tests that they will take, it is my hope that my students can find a way to use writing to connect us to each other instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hope number two, it is hope that if my students are able to feel the ways in which writing can serve a genuine purpose, that it can make them better, they will see the other benefits of writing on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And finally, hope number three is really a hope for myself and my fellow educators. In order for our students to be able to feel the ways in which writing can serve these genuine purposes, we as educators must have the freedom to craft for our student the kinds of writing experiences that cultivate those possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for me and for my fifth grade students, the Moth story hour was just that kind of experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> That was Jess Lifshitz, a fifth grade teacher near Chicago. When I talked with her earlier this year, she said that this revamped writing unit not only allowed her students to connect with their own stories, but also help them develop empathy for one another. And who doesn’t love that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>Sounds like a happy ending. Thanks Marlena for sharing that story with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/strong> You’re welcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ki Sung: \u003c/strong>That was MindShift reporter Marlena Jackson-Retondo. We’ll bring you more ideas and innovations from experts in education and beyond. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing. The MindShift team includes me, Ki Sung, Nima Gobier, Marlena Jackson- Retondo, and Marnette Federis. Our editor is Chris Hambrick. Seth Samuel is our sound designer. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, and Maha Sanad. MindShift is supported in part by the generosity of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and members of KQED. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>Scores of speech therapists across the country erupted last month when their leading professional association said it was considering dropping language calling for diversity, equity and inclusion and “cultural competence” in their certification standards. Those values could be replaced in some standards with a much more amorphous emphasis on “person-centered care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The decision to propose these modifications was not made lightly,” wrote officials of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in a \u003ca href=\"https://view.mail.asha.org/?qs=b0e3d526e5292d67d3def9ec5a7e57ad1e82f2ea5df60f70bf28bad547b370aab1ae6a006ae85e517c601f74fa61f581a3e16e9c3b3930e7f03c8371e4b63afd9693dcc138dbfd929c91eb7be243f9e4\">June letter\u003c/a> to members. They noted that due to recent executive orders related to DEI, even terminology that “is lawfully applied and considered essential for clinical practice … could put ASHA’s certification programs at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in the eyes of experts and some speech pathologists, the change would further imperil getting quality help to a group that’s long been grossly underserved: young children with speech delays who live in households where English is not the primary language spoken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is going to have long-term impacts on communities who already struggle to get services for their needs,” said Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, a speech language pathologist and Navajo member who works on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico where the tribal language is dominant in many homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the country, speech therapists have been in short supply for many years. Then, after the pandemic lockdown, the \u003ca href=\"https://knowledge.komodohealth.com/hubfs/2023/Speech_Pathology_Research_Brief.pdf\">number of young children diagnosed annually with a speech delay more than doubled\u003c/a>. Amid that broad crisis in capacity, multilingual learners are among those \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/FDMMAW82RH7RZDFKGHUF/full\">most at risk\u003c/a> of falling through the cracks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/demographic-profile-bilingual-spanish-service-members.pdf\">Less than 10 percent of speech therapists are bilingual\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A shift away from DEI and cultural competence — which involves understanding and trying to respond to differences in children’s language, culture and home environment — could have a devastating effect at a time when more of both are needed to reach and help multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They told me about a few promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual infants, toddlers and preschool-age children with speech delays — each of which involves a heavy reliance on DEI and cultural competence.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Embrace creative staffing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Navajo Nation faces severe shortages of trained personnel to evaluate and work with young children with developmental delays, including speech. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing training in speech evaluation and therapy to Native family coaches who are already working with families through a tribal home visiting program. The family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution can be found, said Allison-Burbank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Home visiting programs are “an untapped resource for people like me who are trying to have a wider reach to identify these kids and get interim services going,” he said. (The existence of both the home visiting program and speech therapy are under serious threat because of federal cuts, including to Medicaid.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Use language tests that have been designed for multilingual populations\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Decades ago, few if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays had been “normed” — or pretested to establish expectations and benchmarks — on non-English-speaking populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, early childhood intervention programs in Texas were required several years ago to use a single tool that relied on English norms to diagnose Spanish-speaking children, said Ellen Kester, the founder and president of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services in Austin, which provides both direct services to families and training to school districts. “We saw a rise in diagnosis of very young (Spanish-speaking) kids,” she said. That isn’t because all of the kids had speech delays, but due to fundamental differences between the two languages that were not reflected in the test’s design and scoring. (In Spanish, for instance, the ‘z’ sound is pronounced like an English ‘s.’)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are now more options than ever before of screeners and tools normed on multilingual, diverse populations; states, agencies and school districts should be selective, and informed, in seeking them out, and pushing for continued refinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Expand training — formal and self-initiated — for speech therapists in the best ways to work with diverse populations\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the long-term, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through robust DEI efforts. But in the short term, speech therapists can’t rely solely on interpreters — if one is even available — to connect with multilingual children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means using resources that break down the major differences in structure, pronunciation and usage between English and the language spoken by the family, said Kester. “As therapists, we need to know the patterns of the languages and what’s to be expected and what’s not to be expected,” Kester said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also crucial that therapists understand how cultural norms may vary, especially as they coach parents and caregivers in how best to support their kids, said Katharine Zuckerman, professor and associate division head of general pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work quite that way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, to help the child, therapists have to embrace an idea that’s suddenly under siege: cultural competence,\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Quick take: Relevant research\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent years, several studies have homed in on how state early intervention systems, which serve children with developmental delays ages birth through 3, shortchange multilingual children with speech challenges. One \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X221120262\">study\u003c/a> based out of Oregon, and co-authored by Zuckerman, found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children were often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of pinpointing a particular challenge, the Spanish speakers tended to get the general “language delay” designation. That made it harder to connect families to the most tailored and beneficial therapies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021992424000662\">study\u003c/a> found that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. That can lead to overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings point to the critical need for increased preparation at preprofessional levels and strong advocacy … to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, culturally responsive intervention for children from all backgrounds,” the authors concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635, via Signal at cas.37 or \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:samuels@hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>samuels@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about the speech therapists association was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/weeklynewsletter/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scores of speech therapists across the country erupted last month when their leading professional association said it was considering dropping language calling for diversity, equity and inclusion and “cultural competence” in their certification standards. Those values could be replaced in some standards with a much more amorphous emphasis on “person-centered care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The decision to propose these modifications was not made lightly,” wrote officials of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in a \u003ca href=\"https://view.mail.asha.org/?qs=b0e3d526e5292d67d3def9ec5a7e57ad1e82f2ea5df60f70bf28bad547b370aab1ae6a006ae85e517c601f74fa61f581a3e16e9c3b3930e7f03c8371e4b63afd9693dcc138dbfd929c91eb7be243f9e4\">June letter\u003c/a> to members. They noted that due to recent executive orders related to DEI, even terminology that “is lawfully applied and considered essential for clinical practice … could put ASHA’s certification programs at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in the eyes of experts and some speech pathologists, the change would further imperil getting quality help to a group that’s long been grossly underserved: young children with speech delays who live in households where English is not the primary language spoken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is going to have long-term impacts on communities who already struggle to get services for their needs,” said Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, a speech language pathologist and Navajo member who works on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico where the tribal language is dominant in many homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the country, speech therapists have been in short supply for many years. Then, after the pandemic lockdown, the \u003ca href=\"https://knowledge.komodohealth.com/hubfs/2023/Speech_Pathology_Research_Brief.pdf\">number of young children diagnosed annually with a speech delay more than doubled\u003c/a>. Amid that broad crisis in capacity, multilingual learners are among those \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/FDMMAW82RH7RZDFKGHUF/full\">most at risk\u003c/a> of falling through the cracks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/demographic-profile-bilingual-spanish-service-members.pdf\">Less than 10 percent of speech therapists are bilingual\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A shift away from DEI and cultural competence — which involves understanding and trying to respond to differences in children’s language, culture and home environment — could have a devastating effect at a time when more of both are needed to reach and help multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They told me about a few promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual infants, toddlers and preschool-age children with speech delays — each of which involves a heavy reliance on DEI and cultural competence.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Embrace creative staffing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Navajo Nation faces severe shortages of trained personnel to evaluate and work with young children with developmental delays, including speech. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing training in speech evaluation and therapy to Native family coaches who are already working with families through a tribal home visiting program. The family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution can be found, said Allison-Burbank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Home visiting programs are “an untapped resource for people like me who are trying to have a wider reach to identify these kids and get interim services going,” he said. (The existence of both the home visiting program and speech therapy are under serious threat because of federal cuts, including to Medicaid.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Use language tests that have been designed for multilingual populations\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Decades ago, few if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays had been “normed” — or pretested to establish expectations and benchmarks — on non-English-speaking populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, early childhood intervention programs in Texas were required several years ago to use a single tool that relied on English norms to diagnose Spanish-speaking children, said Ellen Kester, the founder and president of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services in Austin, which provides both direct services to families and training to school districts. “We saw a rise in diagnosis of very young (Spanish-speaking) kids,” she said. That isn’t because all of the kids had speech delays, but due to fundamental differences between the two languages that were not reflected in the test’s design and scoring. (In Spanish, for instance, the ‘z’ sound is pronounced like an English ‘s.’)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are now more options than ever before of screeners and tools normed on multilingual, diverse populations; states, agencies and school districts should be selective, and informed, in seeking them out, and pushing for continued refinement.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Expand training — formal and self-initiated — for speech therapists in the best ways to work with diverse populations\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the long-term, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through robust DEI efforts. But in the short term, speech therapists can’t rely solely on interpreters — if one is even available — to connect with multilingual children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means using resources that break down the major differences in structure, pronunciation and usage between English and the language spoken by the family, said Kester. “As therapists, we need to know the patterns of the languages and what’s to be expected and what’s not to be expected,” Kester said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also crucial that therapists understand how cultural norms may vary, especially as they coach parents and caregivers in how best to support their kids, said Katharine Zuckerman, professor and associate division head of general pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work quite that way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, to help the child, therapists have to embrace an idea that’s suddenly under siege: cultural competence,\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Quick take: Relevant research\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In recent years, several studies have homed in on how state early intervention systems, which serve children with developmental delays ages birth through 3, shortchange multilingual children with speech challenges. One \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X221120262\">study\u003c/a> based out of Oregon, and co-authored by Zuckerman, found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children were often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of pinpointing a particular challenge, the Spanish speakers tended to get the general “language delay” designation. That made it harder to connect families to the most tailored and beneficial therapies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021992424000662\">study\u003c/a> found that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. That can lead to overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings point to the critical need for increased preparation at preprofessional levels and strong advocacy … to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, culturally responsive intervention for children from all backgrounds,” the authors concluded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635, via Signal at cas.37 or \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"mailto:samuels@hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>samuels@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about the speech therapists association was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/weeklynewsletter/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Like many schools across the country, Burlington High School in Burlington, Massachusetts began using iPads as one-to-one devices in 2011. In the years following, the school’s small IT department needed a boost, according to LeRoy Wong, who has been Burlington High School’s digital learning coach since 2016. The solution? A help-desk elective was created to teach students the basics of tech support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The class is still going strong today, thirteen years later, but it has evolved. “I found that students want to kind of go beyond [troubleshooting] and just learn more about different types of technology,” said Wong, who also teaches computer science at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tech support for digital natives, it turns out, can be a great way to ignite a deeper interest in STEM and self-led learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Student-led Learning \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The students in Wong’s help-desk elective still provide tech support as needed to the school, but they also explore topics like robotics, video game design, music and sound production. There’s no previous knowledge of tech required for the elective. According to Wong, some students come in with little prior knowledge wanting to learn more, while others who have had previous exposure come into the elective with a project in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s video game design program was started after students in the help-desk elective took interest in the subject. Wong was able to create a program that quickly surpassed his own experience and understanding of the subject, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65351\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1940\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-800x808.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-1020x1031.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-160x162.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-768x776.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-1520x1536.jpg 1520w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gati Aher, who graduated from Burlington High School in 2019, was drawn to the help-desk elective in her junior year after she developed an interest in computer science. Aher, who went on to get a degree in engineering and is now a PhD candidate in the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon, credits her early exposure to tech in Mr. Wong’s class for sparking her career in generative AI for use in project-based and hands-on learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Multidisciplinary Approaches and Real-World Dilemmas \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2018 Wong and his students tested and implemented a drone lab – a project that Aher was involved with – for one of Burlington’s ELL physics classes when mini-drones were relatively novel. The help-desk students and Wong helped the physics class download necessary apps and demonstrated drone usage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Multidisciplinary approaches to learning, like the physics drone lab, not only allow for meaningful connections between students, but also provide an opportunity for real world work, said Wong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016 Sean Musselman, a K-5 science and social studies specialist for Burlington School District, was developing a new earth surface and landforms unit. The new unit included a field trip to Massachusetts’ Plum Islands, an ecosystem experiencing \u003ca href=\"https://www.plumislanderosion.com/2013-03-05-13-05-49/the-problem-in-a-nutshell.html\">significant erosion\u003c/a>. However, Musselman needed to find a supplemental at-school interactive activity because the field trip had limited capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired by \u003ca href=\"https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/\">UC Davis’s augmented reality sandbox\u003c/a>, presented at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in 2016, Mussleman proposed that one of Wong’s students build a portable version for use across the district. Edmund Reis, a high school student at the time, was on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAjQ9jTOHEs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guided by instructions published by UC Davis and with support from Wong and Musselman, Reis built a portable AR sandbox from scratch. This included building the computer, installing the operating system and adapting the source code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Reis, who now works in tech, the trial and error of building the AR sandbox as a teen helped him to develop important creative and collaborative skills that he’s used both in higher education and in his professional life.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Climate Literacy for Young Learners \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Designed to educate second graders about watersheds and interconnected geography, the portable AR sandbox provided an engaging alternative to the Plum Islands field trip. The AR sandbox helped the district’s second graders to understand the impacts of water systems in a world that is increasingly affected by climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, because of fallout from the pandemic, the students no longer go on the field trip, but the AR sandbox lessons have remained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In groups of about seven students, Musselman conducts a 15-minute lesson with the AR sandbox. During these lessons, the students develop a foundational awareness of general climate and their surrounding environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AR sandbox provides “a really wonderful visual, interactive, dynamic model for [students] to explore and ask questions,” said Musselman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are given an opportunity to build their own landscape and place monopoly houses in the sandbox. Rain is then simulated, and students watch as erosion manipulates their landscape. “They would see their houses tumble, which is exactly what’s happening in Plum Island,” said Musselman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is not a student that isn’t completely enraptured with what is taking place at that table,” Musselman continued. “It’s 100% engagement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students walk away from these lessons with greater climate literacy and understanding of how climate can impact their own environment. Musselman makes sure to explain to the second graders that scientists use models like the AR sandbox to understand weather impacts and climate change. And that understanding from the AR sandbox was enabled by exposing a high school student to the benefits of providing tech support and having agency over their learning.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Like many schools across the country, Burlington High School in Burlington, Massachusetts began using iPads as one-to-one devices in 2011. In the years following, the school’s small IT department needed a boost, according to LeRoy Wong, who has been Burlington High School’s digital learning coach since 2016. The solution? A help-desk elective was created to teach students the basics of tech support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The class is still going strong today, thirteen years later, but it has evolved. “I found that students want to kind of go beyond [troubleshooting] and just learn more about different types of technology,” said Wong, who also teaches computer science at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tech support for digital natives, it turns out, can be a great way to ignite a deeper interest in STEM and self-led learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Student-led Learning \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The students in Wong’s help-desk elective still provide tech support as needed to the school, but they also explore topics like robotics, video game design, music and sound production. There’s no previous knowledge of tech required for the elective. According to Wong, some students come in with little prior knowledge wanting to learn more, while others who have had previous exposure come into the elective with a project in mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school’s video game design program was started after students in the help-desk elective took interest in the subject. Wong was able to create a program that quickly surpassed his own experience and understanding of the subject, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65351\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1940\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-800x808.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-1020x1031.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-160x162.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-768x776.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Gati_Aher_LearnLab_Poster-1-scaled-e1742836426267-1520x1536.jpg 1520w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gati Aher, who graduated from Burlington High School in 2019, was drawn to the help-desk elective in her junior year after she developed an interest in computer science. Aher, who went on to get a degree in engineering and is now a PhD candidate in the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon, credits her early exposure to tech in Mr. Wong’s class for sparking her career in generative AI for use in project-based and hands-on learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Multidisciplinary Approaches and Real-World Dilemmas \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2018 Wong and his students tested and implemented a drone lab – a project that Aher was involved with – for one of Burlington’s ELL physics classes when mini-drones were relatively novel. The help-desk students and Wong helped the physics class download necessary apps and demonstrated drone usage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Multidisciplinary approaches to learning, like the physics drone lab, not only allow for meaningful connections between students, but also provide an opportunity for real world work, said Wong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016 Sean Musselman, a K-5 science and social studies specialist for Burlington School District, was developing a new earth surface and landforms unit. The new unit included a field trip to Massachusetts’ Plum Islands, an ecosystem experiencing \u003ca href=\"https://www.plumislanderosion.com/2013-03-05-13-05-49/the-problem-in-a-nutshell.html\">significant erosion\u003c/a>. However, Musselman needed to find a supplemental at-school interactive activity because the field trip had limited capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired by \u003ca href=\"https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/\">UC Davis’s augmented reality sandbox\u003c/a>, presented at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in 2016, Mussleman proposed that one of Wong’s students build a portable version for use across the district. Edmund Reis, a high school student at the time, was on board.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/vAjQ9jTOHEs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/vAjQ9jTOHEs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Guided by instructions published by UC Davis and with support from Wong and Musselman, Reis built a portable AR sandbox from scratch. This included building the computer, installing the operating system and adapting the source code.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Reis, who now works in tech, the trial and error of building the AR sandbox as a teen helped him to develop important creative and collaborative skills that he’s used both in higher education and in his professional life.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Climate Literacy for Young Learners \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Designed to educate second graders about watersheds and interconnected geography, the portable AR sandbox provided an engaging alternative to the Plum Islands field trip. The AR sandbox helped the district’s second graders to understand the impacts of water systems in a world that is increasingly affected by climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, because of fallout from the pandemic, the students no longer go on the field trip, but the AR sandbox lessons have remained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In groups of about seven students, Musselman conducts a 15-minute lesson with the AR sandbox. During these lessons, the students develop a foundational awareness of general climate and their surrounding environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AR sandbox provides “a really wonderful visual, interactive, dynamic model for [students] to explore and ask questions,” said Musselman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students are given an opportunity to build their own landscape and place monopoly houses in the sandbox. Rain is then simulated, and students watch as erosion manipulates their landscape. “They would see their houses tumble, which is exactly what’s happening in Plum Island,” said Musselman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is not a student that isn’t completely enraptured with what is taking place at that table,” Musselman continued. “It’s 100% engagement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students walk away from these lessons with greater climate literacy and understanding of how climate can impact their own environment. Musselman makes sure to explain to the second graders that scientists use models like the AR sandbox to understand weather impacts and climate change. And that understanding from the AR sandbox was enabled by exposing a high school student to the benefits of providing tech support and having agency over their learning.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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