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"content": "\u003cp>Science high school teacher Furahi Achebe remembers getting a phone call from a former student whom she hadn’t heard from in six months. He told her that doctors found a heart defect; he’d just woken up after life-saving surgery, and he wanted to let her know that he’s doing ok.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This call left her wondering why that student reached out to her. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Why would a student think that I am important enough to be on his list to be one of the people that he contacts after a life-saving operation?” Achebe said, recalling how shocked she was.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For Achebe, a former chemist who has taught science and digital production to high school students for 12 years in New Haven, Connecticut, moments like the phone call are a reminder of how she’s been able to build lasting connections with students. Achebe recounted the story during the 2026 \u003ca href=\"https://conference.iste.org/2026/program/search/detail_session.php?id=118452181\">International Society for Technology in Education conference\u003c/a>, held at the end of June, during a workshop titled, “Why asking students ‘How Are You?’ wastes a reachable moment.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the workshop, she argues that the question “How are you?” is no longer sufficient for interactions between students and teachers. Some experts say the phrase has become a “\u003ca href=\"https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/how-are-you-question-meaning-listening/\">reflexive greeting\u003c/a>” during a casual interaction, but one that doesn’t really make way for deeper conversation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that when you ask a person ‘How are you?’ they feel a little bit rushed to say fine or okay and move on,” says Achebe. “They don’t actually believe – unless you append something to the beginning or the end – that you’re asking how they really are.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Instead, Achebe says teachers must strive for reachable moments with students, which can then turn into powerful teachable moments.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“A reachable moment is when a student and an educator of any sort are looking at each other eye to eye and having a casual conversation,” says Achebe. “Those moments empower our teachable moments because they \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66425/the-lasting-legacy-of-rita-piersons-every-kid-needs-a-champion\">create the relationship that drives education\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Creating true connections is more critical than ever as more studies have found a decrease in youth well-being in recent years. The\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/teens-are-the-loneliest-people-in-the-world-a-new-report-finds-why/2025/08\"> World Health Organization Commission on Social Connection\u003c/a> released a report in 2025 saying one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness, with the highest percentage (20%) among 13- to 17-year-olds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Additionally, with some schools implementing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66363/inside-the-latest-global-research-on-school-cellphone-bans\">cell phone bans\u003c/a>, school hours may be the longest stretch of time when some young people are forced to reconnect with their peers and adults without the distraction of personal devices. Achebe encourages teachers to take that opportunity to reteach students how to communicate with others.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2409\" height=\"2560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-66570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-scaled.jpg 2409w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-2000x2125.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-160x170.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-768x816.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-1445x1536.jpg 1445w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-1927x2048.jpg 1927w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2409px) 100vw, 2409px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u003cem>Courtesy of Furahi Achebe\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Connection starts at the beginning of the year.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe suggests creating a Google Form at the start of the school year for students to fill out. She says the form should include the usual questions about nicknames or pronouns, but the form should also try to dig into who the students are and what they value.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Suggested questions include:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>What brings you joy?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>What do you think is unique about you?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Who is it that is always in your corner?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Teachers can quickly put responses into a spreadsheet or chart, which can then be printed out to be carried around the rest of the year or referred to when walking around the classroom throughout the year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Rather than making the first day of school about reciting rules and expectations, Achebe suggests thinking of it more as a time to get to know students.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I think the first day is about getting to know each other, and really deeply expressing who you are,” Achebe says. Achebe refers to these questions as “endorphin-flowing” questions, because it “builds rapport” and allows individuals to feel good about themselves.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Similar questions include:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>What are you most grateful for in life?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Name or describe your top three strengths.\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>What do you wish more people knew about you?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Which accomplishment are you most proud of? \u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to keep reachable moments going with debate questions.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe says at the root of it all, students, just like adults, like to feel seen. So connection needs to happen throughout the year. And the questions that teachers ask don’t always have to be deep.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Teachers can watch for specific moments in the classroom — when energy may be falling off — and take the time to ask students more trivial questions or encourage them to dive into debates with each other. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These questions don’t have a right answer, but while low-stakes, they could give a picture of what a student believes and how they think.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>Which do you prefer, Pepsi or Coke?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Are you Apple or Android?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Would you rather never stop dancing or never be able to stop singing?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“That is rapport building time, that’s connection building time,” Achebe says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Choice, feedback and reminders throughout the year.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Finally, building connection isn’t just about questions; it’s also allowing a flow of opinions between student and teacher.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of the ways Achebe reminds herself of this ongoing process is through digital signage and messaging throughout her classroom. Achebe is the founder of a company that creates free\u003ca href=\"https://thrivescreens.org/\"> screensavers that teachers can re-use\u003c/a> and download.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe also tries to leave as much room as possible in her classroom for genuine feedback and student choice in assignments. This might mean allowing them to pick which assignment or project to tackle first, giving them choice in topics or how a lab gets done.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>She asks students: Was the quiz too hard? Did the reading make sense? Are the instructions clear? These types of choices and questions signal to students that their opinions and perspectives matter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Relationships are] central to what you can get out of a student,” Achebe says. “The most effective way to reach them is to satisfy the human need to be seen, heard and understood.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Rather than making the first day of school about reciting rules and expectations, Achebe suggests thinking of it more as a time to get to know students.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Achebe says at the root of it all, students, just like adults, like to feel seen. So connection needs to happen throughout the year. And the questions that teachers ask don’t always have to be deep.\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Science high school teacher Furahi Achebe remembers getting a phone call from a former student whom she hadn’t heard from in six months. He told her that doctors found a heart defect; he’d just woken up after life-saving surgery, and he wanted to let her know that he’s doing ok.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This call left her wondering why that student reached out to her. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Why would a student think that I am important enough to be on his list to be one of the people that he contacts after a life-saving operation?” Achebe said, recalling how shocked she was.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For Achebe, a former chemist who has taught science and digital production to high school students for 12 years in New Haven, Connecticut, moments like the phone call are a reminder of how she’s been able to build lasting connections with students. Achebe recounted the story during the 2026 \u003ca href=\"https://conference.iste.org/2026/program/search/detail_session.php?id=118452181\">International Society for Technology in Education conference\u003c/a>, held at the end of June, during a workshop titled, “Why asking students ‘How Are You?’ wastes a reachable moment.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the workshop, she argues that the question “How are you?” is no longer sufficient for interactions between students and teachers. Some experts say the phrase has become a “\u003ca href=\"https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/how-are-you-question-meaning-listening/\">reflexive greeting\u003c/a>” during a casual interaction, but one that doesn’t really make way for deeper conversation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that when you ask a person ‘How are you?’ they feel a little bit rushed to say fine or okay and move on,” says Achebe. “They don’t actually believe – unless you append something to the beginning or the end – that you’re asking how they really are.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Instead, Achebe says teachers must strive for reachable moments with students, which can then turn into powerful teachable moments.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“A reachable moment is when a student and an educator of any sort are looking at each other eye to eye and having a casual conversation,” says Achebe. “Those moments empower our teachable moments because they \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66425/the-lasting-legacy-of-rita-piersons-every-kid-needs-a-champion\">create the relationship that drives education\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Creating true connections is more critical than ever as more studies have found a decrease in youth well-being in recent years. The\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/teens-are-the-loneliest-people-in-the-world-a-new-report-finds-why/2025/08\"> World Health Organization Commission on Social Connection\u003c/a> released a report in 2025 saying one in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness, with the highest percentage (20%) among 13- to 17-year-olds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Additionally, with some schools implementing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/66363/inside-the-latest-global-research-on-school-cellphone-bans\">cell phone bans\u003c/a>, school hours may be the longest stretch of time when some young people are forced to reconnect with their peers and adults without the distraction of personal devices. Achebe encourages teachers to take that opportunity to reteach students how to communicate with others.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2409\" height=\"2560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-66570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-scaled.jpg 2409w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-2000x2125.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-160x170.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-768x816.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-1445x1536.jpg 1445w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/08/E01C0850-0C7A-4A65-A4A6-224BD7380E55-1927x2048.jpg 1927w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2409px) 100vw, 2409px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u003cem>Courtesy of Furahi Achebe\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Connection starts at the beginning of the year.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe suggests creating a Google Form at the start of the school year for students to fill out. She says the form should include the usual questions about nicknames or pronouns, but the form should also try to dig into who the students are and what they value.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Suggested questions include:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>What brings you joy?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>What do you think is unique about you?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Who is it that is always in your corner?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Teachers can quickly put responses into a spreadsheet or chart, which can then be printed out to be carried around the rest of the year or referred to when walking around the classroom throughout the year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Rather than making the first day of school about reciting rules and expectations, Achebe suggests thinking of it more as a time to get to know students.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I think the first day is about getting to know each other, and really deeply expressing who you are,” Achebe says. Achebe refers to these questions as “endorphin-flowing” questions, because it “builds rapport” and allows individuals to feel good about themselves.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Similar questions include:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>What are you most grateful for in life?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Name or describe your top three strengths.\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>What do you wish more people knew about you?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Which accomplishment are you most proud of? \u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to keep reachable moments going with debate questions.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe says at the root of it all, students, just like adults, like to feel seen. So connection needs to happen throughout the year. And the questions that teachers ask don’t always have to be deep.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Teachers can watch for specific moments in the classroom — when energy may be falling off — and take the time to ask students more trivial questions or encourage them to dive into debates with each other. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These questions don’t have a right answer, but while low-stakes, they could give a picture of what a student believes and how they think.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003col class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>Which do you prefer, Pepsi or Coke?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Are you Apple or Android?\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Would you rather never stop dancing or never be able to stop singing?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“That is rapport building time, that’s connection building time,” Achebe says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Choice, feedback and reminders throughout the year.\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Finally, building connection isn’t just about questions; it’s also allowing a flow of opinions between student and teacher.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of the ways Achebe reminds herself of this ongoing process is through digital signage and messaging throughout her classroom. Achebe is the founder of a company that creates free\u003ca href=\"https://thrivescreens.org/\"> screensavers that teachers can re-use\u003c/a> and download.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Achebe also tries to leave as much room as possible in her classroom for genuine feedback and student choice in assignments. This might mean allowing them to pick which assignment or project to tackle first, giving them choice in topics or how a lab gets done.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>She asks students: Was the quiz too hard? Did the reading make sense? Are the instructions clear? These types of choices and questions signal to students that their opinions and perspectives matter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Relationships are] central to what you can get out of a student,” Achebe says. “The most effective way to reach them is to satisfy the human need to be seen, heard and understood.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Scientists rarely announce that one of their long-held ideas has failed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But that is exactly what Ron Avi Astor, one of the nation’s leading scholars of school violence and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said before fellow researchers at the annual meeting in April of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We were wrong,” Astor told the audience.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For decades, Astor believed that improving school climate and reducing bullying would help prevent school shootings. He advised national policymakers and issued recommendations. Schools responded by investing heavily in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Those initiatives have benefited students in many ways. Fewer students report bringing guns or knives to school, and schools have generally become safer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But school shootings have not declined.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’ve had a complete change” in my thinking, Astor told me in an interview after the conference.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That shift came after he stepped back and looked at the evidence. During his AERA presentation, Astor showed a slide with two stark graphs. One traced a steady decline in students bringing weapons to California schools over the quarter century since the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The other graph showed a sharp rise in school shootings across the nation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Diverging trends\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"922\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2000x922.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-66497\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2000x922.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-160x74.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-768x354.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-1536x708.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2048x944.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Divergent trends in student-reported weapon-related behavior and national school shooting incidents, 2001–2024. Panel A shows the percentage of California secondary school students (grades 7, 9, and 11) reporting four weapon-related behaviors in the California Healthy Kids Survey during academic years 2001–2024. All four indicators declined substantially over the study period. Panel B shows the annual count of school shooting incidents recorded in the K-12 School Shooting Database, which captures any incident in which a gun was brandished, fired, or a bullet struck school property in the United States. Key events and the COVID-19 disruption period (shaded) are annotated.\u003cbr>\u003cem>Source: A slide from Ron Avi Astor’s presentation during an \u003ca href=\"https://www.aera.net/Portals/38/Insider%20-%20April%2011_1.pdf\">AERA session\u003c/a> on April 11, 2026, “School Active Shooter Drills: Mitigating Risks to Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health – A Report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.”\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The graphs capture a painful realization. Astor says he and other researchers had misunderstood what was driving many school shootings.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor noted that many school shooters had been bullied, were bullies themselves or had experienced trauma, and he believed that shootings would decline if educators reduced bullying and strengthened relationships among students locally, one school building at a time. “We were adamant,” Astor said. “Let’s focus on prevention.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“What was missed, I believe, was that each shooter wanted to make sure that this was national,” Astor said. “Their number one audience was the media. That’s really clear to me now.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor now believes many perpetrators are driven by a desire for notoriety. Shooters study previous massacres, learn from online communities and seek the publicity that follows a mass attack.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” Astor said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That new way of thinking has led him to a very different recommendation. Rather than focusing on prevention inside schools, Astor believes journalists and social media companies should adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’m not saying don’t do social-emotional or anti-gun” efforts, Astor said. “Those things are important. But if we want to see a reduction in school shootings, we need to work with the media.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor compares school shootings to suicide contagions or spates of terrorism, where extensive publicity can inspire copycats. He acknowledges that it’s a long shot to persuade social media companies or the dark web to change, and he cannot prove that changing will work to reduce school shootings. “But it’s worth a try,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What makes Astor’s argument noteworthy isn’t simply his new hypothesis. It’s his willingness to publicly abandon an old one after concluding that the evidence no longer supported it. It’s never easy to change course but Astor’s openness could save lives.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-school-shootings/\">\u003cem>preventing school shootings\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 that covers 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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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That new way of thinking has led him to a very different recommendation. Rather than focusing on prevention inside schools, Astor believes journalists and social media companies should adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That new way of thinking has led him to a very different recommendation. Rather than focusing on prevention inside schools, Astor believes journalists and social media companies should adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“I’m not saying don’t do social-emotional or anti-gun” efforts, Astor said. “Those things are important. But if we want to see a reduction in school shootings, we need to work with the media.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“I’m not saying don’t do social-emotional or anti-gun” efforts, Astor said. “Those things are important. But if we want to see a reduction in school shootings, we need to work with the media.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Astor compares school shootings to suicide contagions or spates of terrorism, where extensive publicity can inspire copycats. He acknowledges that it’s a long shot to persuade social media companies or the dark web to change, and he cannot prove that changing will work to reduce school shootings. “But it’s worth a try,” he said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What makes Astor’s argument noteworthy isn’t simply his new hypothesis. It’s his willingness to publicly abandon an old one after concluding that the evidence no longer supported it. It’s never easy to change course but Astor’s openness could save lives.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-school-shootings/\">\u003cem>preventing school shootings\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 that covers 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",
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"excerpt": "Anti-bullying and social-emotional learning haven’t reduced school shootings. Minimizing public attention on shooters might.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists rarely announce that one of their long-held ideas has failed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But that is exactly what Ron Avi Astor, one of the nation’s leading scholars of school violence and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said before fellow researchers at the annual meeting in April of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We were wrong,” Astor told the audience.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For decades, Astor believed that improving school climate and reducing bullying would help prevent school shootings. He advised national policymakers and issued recommendations. Schools responded by investing heavily in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Those initiatives have benefited students in many ways. Fewer students report bringing guns or knives to school, and schools have generally become safer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But school shootings have not declined.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’ve had a complete change” in my thinking, Astor told me in an interview after the conference.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That shift came after he stepped back and looked at the evidence. During his AERA presentation, Astor showed a slide with two stark graphs. One traced a steady decline in students bringing weapons to California schools over the quarter century since the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The other graph showed a sharp rise in school shootings across the nation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Diverging trends\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"922\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2000x922.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-66497\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2000x922.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-160x74.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-768x354.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-1536x708.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/07/Weapons-in-schools-2048x944.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Divergent trends in student-reported weapon-related behavior and national school shooting incidents, 2001–2024. Panel A shows the percentage of California secondary school students (grades 7, 9, and 11) reporting four weapon-related behaviors in the California Healthy Kids Survey during academic years 2001–2024. All four indicators declined substantially over the study period. Panel B shows the annual count of school shooting incidents recorded in the K-12 School Shooting Database, which captures any incident in which a gun was brandished, fired, or a bullet struck school property in the United States. Key events and the COVID-19 disruption period (shaded) are annotated.\u003cbr>\u003cem>Source: A slide from Ron Avi Astor’s presentation during an \u003ca href=\"https://www.aera.net/Portals/38/Insider%20-%20April%2011_1.pdf\">AERA session\u003c/a> on April 11, 2026, “School Active Shooter Drills: Mitigating Risks to Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health – A Report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.”\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The graphs capture a painful realization. Astor says he and other researchers had misunderstood what was driving many school shootings.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor noted that many school shooters had been bullied, were bullies themselves or had experienced trauma, and he believed that shootings would decline if educators reduced bullying and strengthened relationships among students locally, one school building at a time. “We were adamant,” Astor said. “Let’s focus on prevention.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“What was missed, I believe, was that each shooter wanted to make sure that this was national,” Astor said. “Their number one audience was the media. That’s really clear to me now.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor now believes many perpetrators are driven by a desire for notoriety. Shooters study previous massacres, learn from online communities and seek the publicity that follows a mass attack.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” Astor said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That new way of thinking has led him to a very different recommendation. Rather than focusing on prevention inside schools, Astor believes journalists and social media companies should adopt guidelines that reduce attention on perpetrators, delay publication of manifestos and videos, and focus more coverage on victims.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’m not saying don’t do social-emotional or anti-gun” efforts, Astor said. “Those things are important. But if we want to see a reduction in school shootings, we need to work with the media.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Astor compares school shootings to suicide contagions or spates of terrorism, where extensive publicity can inspire copycats. He acknowledges that it’s a long shot to persuade social media companies or the dark web to change, and he cannot prove that changing will work to reduce school shootings. “But it’s worth a try,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What makes Astor’s argument noteworthy isn’t simply his new hypothesis. It’s his willingness to publicly abandon an old one after concluding that the evidence no longer supported it. It’s never easy to change course but Astor’s openness could save lives.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-school-shootings/\">\u003cem>preventing school shootings\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 that covers 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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"title": "Key to Helping Boys in School: Make Them Feel Safe to be Themselves ",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about the gender gap 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/k12/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OAKLAND, Calif. — It’s a Friday morning at Oakland Unity Middle School, a public charter school nestled between residential buildings in East Oakland, and Austin Razavi is announcing the morning advisory prompt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ll give you 10, 15 seconds to think about it,” Razavi said to the group of 15 mixed-grade middle school boys who had arranged desks into a messy circle. “Then each of you share something most people don’t know about you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was some shuffling and silence. Several boys asked for more time, then one piped up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to play videos,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then another: “I like to play with my little siblings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then: “A little-known fact about me is that half of my lung is missing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other classrooms on campus, girls-only and all-gender advisories are meeting too; students choose which type they are assigned to. During these trust circles, students can’t opt out of sharing, because this first period sets the tone for the day. Students will rely on each other for support to complete missing assignments by the end of the day, and teachers and administrators like Razavi want students to feel safe being vulnerable with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immediately after sharing time, each boy tells the group about class assignments he needs to finish. Their classmates offer advice, encouragement or just acknowledgement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s where growth happens,” said Razavi, a humanities teacher and assistant principal of the school. “Growth happens through risk. That’s where kids feel like they’re in community and an indicator of kids feeling a sense of belonging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts agree that a sense of belonging — meaning that students feel accepted, respected and supported in school — is \u003ca href=\"https://ced.ncsu.edu/news/2021/10/21/why-is-it-important-for-students-to-feel-a-sense-of-belonging-at-school-students-choose-to-be-in-environments-that-make-them-feel-a-sense-of-fit-says-associate-professor-deleon-gra/\">crucial for academic success\u003c/a>. This is perhaps even more true for boys, who are more likely than girls to \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ780936\">repeat kindergarten\u003c/a> and lag in \u003ca href=\"https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/gender-achievement-gaps-us-school-districts\">reading and writing skills\u003c/a> and less likely to \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/articles/racial-disparities-in-the-high-school-graduation-gender-gap/\">graduate from high school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this safety eludes many boys who \u003ca href=\"https://www.srcd.org/news/negative-stereotypes-about-boys-hinder-their-academic-achievement\">get the message early in life\u003c/a> that they’re not good students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something happens over time so by the time they get to high school, boys don’t feel like they belong in academic settings,” said Ioakim Boutakidis, a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, and a research fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonprofit research and policy group. “And then that hurts academic belonging, the sense that you’re good enough to be successful in these academic spaces.” (Rise Together, a fund established by American Institute for Boys and Men founder Richard Reeves, is one of The Hechinger Report’s many donors.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Oakland Unity Middle School, teachers are trying to break that cycle through the relationship-building program, which is designed to normalize male vulnerability and support boys to be themselves, instead of what they feel is expected of them. Just over 140 sixth, seventh and eighth graders attend the school, nearly all of them from East Oakland — one of the most ethnically diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, Ever Forward, was founded in 2004 by Ashanti Branch, then a first-year teacher in nearby San Lorenzo, to embrace a philosophy of “radical positivity.” Since 2021, according to Branch, it has led more than 300 workshops, mostly in Northern California, reaching upwards of 30,000 teachers and educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like this school is kind of my second home,” said Unity eighth grader Adrian Polanco, who wants to study business in college. “We always have someone we can look up to, who has our back, which I think is really good and really important for school to have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one claims that social-emotional support for boys alone will help them do better academically, but experts say that programming to boost belonging may be key to closing the academic gender gap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmth and connection matter a lot to boys, even if they don’t always demonstrate these needs by being responsive to questions and expectations the way girls often do, Boutakidis said. Boys may appear not to care about what adults think of them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t crave connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This can make it hard for some teachers to connect with boys in the classroom and even read boys’ behavior as so disengaged as to be antagonistic, said Matt Englar-Carlson, a professor of counseling and the co-director of the Center for Boys and Men at Cal State Fullerton. This may be particularly true with adolescent boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you think what’s happening is disrespect in the classroom, the reality is that it typically isn’t, because they’re not performing for you,” Englar-Carlson said. “They’re performing for their peers around them. He can ridicule you and save face in front of his friends and act like he doesn’t care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once teachers begin to realize when this is happening, they can make adaptations to their teaching, he said, like asking boys questions in a different way. Instead of calling out a male student in front of the class, teachers might come up next to him while walking around the classroom and talk to him softly, at his level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So now it’s actually a private conversation between the two of you,” he said, “and you don’t actually have to call out bad behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashanti Branch learned early the challenges faced by male students. A wrestler and football player while attending East Oakland public schools, he now wears his hair in long braids and has an easy, warm smile and laugh. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Branch worked as a civil engineer before going into teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of just a few male teachers at San Lorenzo High School about 20 miles south of Oakland, Branch soon discovered that male students vented their anger and frustration at him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I saw young men who were brilliant, but the way they were acting in front of class was really difficult,” he said. “I would tell them, ‘Young man, you want to fight with me because it looks good with your peers? I’m not here to fight you. I’m not your enemy. You’re a high schooler. I’m an adult with a job. What are we arguing about? I want you to succeed.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He invited some male students to have lunch with him once a week and asked them how he could be a better teacher. What they told him was that their lives were too difficult for school to be a priority. Students described “crashing out” — sudden outbursts of rage and emotion — after dealing with one emotional “land mine” after another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A kid getting pushed down the hall, he ignores it, ignores it, and then all of a sudden he turns around and boom,” Branch said, making an explosion gesture with both hands. “And then he gets in trouble, right?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Branch recalled that as a teacher he was encouraged to leave his own problems “in the glove compartment” before coming to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I tried to do that, but I realized I was so fake,” he said. Instead, he was honest with his students about how he was doing. “I would tell them, ‘I had a rough weekend. A lot of drama happened in my life. Today’s not a good day.” He calls this approach “normalizing vulnerability” — an essential step for young men to be themselves as people and as students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Branch turned the weekly lunches with students into a club, the \u003ca href=\"https://everforwardclub.org/\">Ever Forward Club\u003c/a>, where young men could gather to process emotions. He spent a decade developing the program and expanding to more schools, eventually leaving his job to build the program and provide professional development for educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of the Ever Forward Club is a project-based tool Branch calls Masks, Emotions and Math. During workshops, Branch guides young men to explore the ways they present themselves to the world while hiding their difficult emotions from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the club started in 2004, every participating student has graduated from high school and 93 percent have transitioned to college, the military or a trade school, Branch said. He expanded the work to include \u003ca href=\"https://everforwardclub.org/ever-forward-pd\">professional development\u003c/a> for educators, calling it the \u003ca href=\"https://millionmask.org/\">Million Mask Movement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Farrell, head of \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/5UpYCERPDmIkvY73HNflc7Lbyo?domain=sacredsf.org\">Stuart Hall High School\u003c/a> — the boys’ segment of a school in San Francisco affiliated with Schools of the Sacred Heart* — recalls an event Branch led at his school ten years ago. Two hundred male high school students sat in a big circle in the school’s gymnasium, Farrell said, and Branch handed out pens and paper. He instructed students to write on one side of the paper how they appear to the world. On the other side, he said, write the stuff the world doesn’t know about them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they crumpled the papers up and threw them at each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a snowball fight,” Farrell said. “We had a perfectly, wonderfully randomized pile of crumpled paper.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then each boy picked a paper ball, smoothed it out and, one at a time, read what another boy had written.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farrell recalled boys reading, “You wouldn’t know from looking at me that my parents are getting a divorce’’ and “You wouldn’t know from looking at me that my grandma’s really sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not to get woo-woo, but it was like an electric field,” he said. “It was really powerful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years ago, Branch led a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXtA5Pg6wUc\">Masks, Emotions and Math\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXtA5Pg6wUc\"> event\u003c/a> at Oakland Unity Middle School. Since then, teachers at the school have integrated elements of Branch’s work into routine practices, including how the school manages disciplinary issues. That’s also where Razavi got the idea to offer single-sex advisory periods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some boys need a space where they can open up to other boys, he said, without the social dynamics that can come with all-gender groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you know that belonging matters, and you know that there’s this very evident drop in sense of belonging over time for boys, then we need to work on making boys feel like they belong,” he said. “And we need to work on that earlier.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eighth grader Fierre Hill transferred to Oakland Unity after his old middle school closed. He wants to go to college and study something health-related. He describes the support he gets from his teachers at the school as “warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re able to tell them stuff that you couldn’t tell other people,” he said, “and they just have this different energy that makes you comfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get with that,” seventh grader Jubran Sulaiman agreed. “We can all, what’s the word? Express ourselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Wednesdays, Hill and other students go to the school’s Learning Lab, where they get help completing any work they haven’t turned in. Chris Bibbens Williams is the teacher in charge of the Learning Lab. He said that the Masks, Emotions and Math event that Branch led at the school helped otherwise shy students engage more deeply with their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re gonna have some kids who are more confident in talking in front of everyone, but even the kids who weren’t confident, it just seemed like because the space was positive, it was a chance for them to say how they felt in the moment,” he said. “That’s one thing that I love about this school is that we really allow kids to be themselves, and we build those deep relationships.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he isn’t in the Learning Lab, Williams can be found all over campus — playing basketball with students and hanging out with them in the cafeteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>”When you build those relationships, kids come to you,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, Williams approached an eighth grader who hadn’t been completing his language arts assignments. Was he not doing the work because it was too hard, or because he lacked confidence?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had him come over and read the passage to me,” Williams said, “and I discovered it was truly just him not being confident in his reading.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Williams sitting with him, the student made his way through the passage and read words he wasn’t familiar with. Since then, Williams has noticed a change in the boy’s confidence level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s attempting more,” he said, “and that’s all I could ask for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact editor Christina Samuels at (212) 678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about the gender gap 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/k12/\">\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>\u003cem>This story about the gender gap 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/k12/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OAKLAND, Calif. — It’s a Friday morning at Oakland Unity Middle School, a public charter school nestled between residential buildings in East Oakland, and Austin Razavi is announcing the morning advisory prompt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ll give you 10, 15 seconds to think about it,” Razavi said to the group of 15 mixed-grade middle school boys who had arranged desks into a messy circle. “Then each of you share something most people don’t know about you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was some shuffling and silence. Several boys asked for more time, then one piped up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like to play videos,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then another: “I like to play with my little siblings.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then: “A little-known fact about me is that half of my lung is missing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other classrooms on campus, girls-only and all-gender advisories are meeting too; students choose which type they are assigned to. During these trust circles, students can’t opt out of sharing, because this first period sets the tone for the day. Students will rely on each other for support to complete missing assignments by the end of the day, and teachers and administrators like Razavi want students to feel safe being vulnerable with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immediately after sharing time, each boy tells the group about class assignments he needs to finish. Their classmates offer advice, encouragement or just acknowledgement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s where growth happens,” said Razavi, a humanities teacher and assistant principal of the school. “Growth happens through risk. That’s where kids feel like they’re in community and an indicator of kids feeling a sense of belonging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts agree that a sense of belonging — meaning that students feel accepted, respected and supported in school — is \u003ca href=\"https://ced.ncsu.edu/news/2021/10/21/why-is-it-important-for-students-to-feel-a-sense-of-belonging-at-school-students-choose-to-be-in-environments-that-make-them-feel-a-sense-of-fit-says-associate-professor-deleon-gra/\">crucial for academic success\u003c/a>. This is perhaps even more true for boys, who are more likely than girls to \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ780936\">repeat kindergarten\u003c/a> and lag in \u003ca href=\"https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/gender-achievement-gaps-us-school-districts\">reading and writing skills\u003c/a> and less likely to \u003ca href=\"https://www.brookings.edu/articles/racial-disparities-in-the-high-school-graduation-gender-gap/\">graduate from high school\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this safety eludes many boys who \u003ca href=\"https://www.srcd.org/news/negative-stereotypes-about-boys-hinder-their-academic-achievement\">get the message early in life\u003c/a> that they’re not good students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something happens over time so by the time they get to high school, boys don’t feel like they belong in academic settings,” said Ioakim Boutakidis, a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, and a research fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonprofit research and policy group. “And then that hurts academic belonging, the sense that you’re good enough to be successful in these academic spaces.” (Rise Together, a fund established by American Institute for Boys and Men founder Richard Reeves, is one of The Hechinger Report’s many donors.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Oakland Unity Middle School, teachers are trying to break that cycle through the relationship-building program, which is designed to normalize male vulnerability and support boys to be themselves, instead of what they feel is expected of them. Just over 140 sixth, seventh and eighth graders attend the school, nearly all of them from East Oakland — one of the most ethnically diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, Ever Forward, was founded in 2004 by Ashanti Branch, then a first-year teacher in nearby San Lorenzo, to embrace a philosophy of “radical positivity.” Since 2021, according to Branch, it has led more than 300 workshops, mostly in Northern California, reaching upwards of 30,000 teachers and educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like this school is kind of my second home,” said Unity eighth grader Adrian Polanco, who wants to study business in college. “We always have someone we can look up to, who has our back, which I think is really good and really important for school to have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one claims that social-emotional support for boys alone will help them do better academically, but experts say that programming to boost belonging may be key to closing the academic gender gap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmth and connection matter a lot to boys, even if they don’t always demonstrate these needs by being responsive to questions and expectations the way girls often do, Boutakidis said. Boys may appear not to care about what adults think of them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t crave connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This can make it hard for some teachers to connect with boys in the classroom and even read boys’ behavior as so disengaged as to be antagonistic, said Matt Englar-Carlson, a professor of counseling and the co-director of the Center for Boys and Men at Cal State Fullerton. This may be particularly true with adolescent boys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you think what’s happening is disrespect in the classroom, the reality is that it typically isn’t, because they’re not performing for you,” Englar-Carlson said. “They’re performing for their peers around them. He can ridicule you and save face in front of his friends and act like he doesn’t care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once teachers begin to realize when this is happening, they can make adaptations to their teaching, he said, like asking boys questions in a different way. Instead of calling out a male student in front of the class, teachers might come up next to him while walking around the classroom and talk to him softly, at his level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So now it’s actually a private conversation between the two of you,” he said, “and you don’t actually have to call out bad behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashanti Branch learned early the challenges faced by male students. A wrestler and football player while attending East Oakland public schools, he now wears his hair in long braids and has an easy, warm smile and laugh. After graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Branch worked as a civil engineer before going into teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of just a few male teachers at San Lorenzo High School about 20 miles south of Oakland, Branch soon discovered that male students vented their anger and frustration at him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I saw young men who were brilliant, but the way they were acting in front of class was really difficult,” he said. “I would tell them, ‘Young man, you want to fight with me because it looks good with your peers? I’m not here to fight you. I’m not your enemy. You’re a high schooler. I’m an adult with a job. What are we arguing about? I want you to succeed.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He invited some male students to have lunch with him once a week and asked them how he could be a better teacher. What they told him was that their lives were too difficult for school to be a priority. Students described “crashing out” — sudden outbursts of rage and emotion — after dealing with one emotional “land mine” after another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A kid getting pushed down the hall, he ignores it, ignores it, and then all of a sudden he turns around and boom,” Branch said, making an explosion gesture with both hands. “And then he gets in trouble, right?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Branch recalled that as a teacher he was encouraged to leave his own problems “in the glove compartment” before coming to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I tried to do that, but I realized I was so fake,” he said. Instead, he was honest with his students about how he was doing. “I would tell them, ‘I had a rough weekend. A lot of drama happened in my life. Today’s not a good day.” He calls this approach “normalizing vulnerability” — an essential step for young men to be themselves as people and as students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Branch turned the weekly lunches with students into a club, the \u003ca href=\"https://everforwardclub.org/\">Ever Forward Club\u003c/a>, where young men could gather to process emotions. He spent a decade developing the program and expanding to more schools, eventually leaving his job to build the program and provide professional development for educators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of the Ever Forward Club is a project-based tool Branch calls Masks, Emotions and Math. During workshops, Branch guides young men to explore the ways they present themselves to the world while hiding their difficult emotions from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the club started in 2004, every participating student has graduated from high school and 93 percent have transitioned to college, the military or a trade school, Branch said. He expanded the work to include \u003ca href=\"https://everforwardclub.org/ever-forward-pd\">professional development\u003c/a> for educators, calling it the \u003ca href=\"https://millionmask.org/\">Million Mask Movement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony Farrell, head of \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/5UpYCERPDmIkvY73HNflc7Lbyo?domain=sacredsf.org\">Stuart Hall High School\u003c/a> — the boys’ segment of a school in San Francisco affiliated with Schools of the Sacred Heart* — recalls an event Branch led at his school ten years ago. Two hundred male high school students sat in a big circle in the school’s gymnasium, Farrell said, and Branch handed out pens and paper. He instructed students to write on one side of the paper how they appear to the world. On the other side, he said, write the stuff the world doesn’t know about them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they crumpled the papers up and threw them at each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a snowball fight,” Farrell said. “We had a perfectly, wonderfully randomized pile of crumpled paper.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then each boy picked a paper ball, smoothed it out and, one at a time, read what another boy had written.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farrell recalled boys reading, “You wouldn’t know from looking at me that my parents are getting a divorce’’ and “You wouldn’t know from looking at me that my grandma’s really sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not to get woo-woo, but it was like an electric field,” he said. “It was really powerful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years ago, Branch led a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXtA5Pg6wUc\">Masks, Emotions and Math\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXtA5Pg6wUc\"> event\u003c/a> at Oakland Unity Middle School. Since then, teachers at the school have integrated elements of Branch’s work into routine practices, including how the school manages disciplinary issues. That’s also where Razavi got the idea to offer single-sex advisory periods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some boys need a space where they can open up to other boys, he said, without the social dynamics that can come with all-gender groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you know that belonging matters, and you know that there’s this very evident drop in sense of belonging over time for boys, then we need to work on making boys feel like they belong,” he said. “And we need to work on that earlier.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eighth grader Fierre Hill transferred to Oakland Unity after his old middle school closed. He wants to go to college and study something health-related. He describes the support he gets from his teachers at the school as “warming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re able to tell them stuff that you couldn’t tell other people,” he said, “and they just have this different energy that makes you comfortable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get with that,” seventh grader Jubran Sulaiman agreed. “We can all, what’s the word? Express ourselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Wednesdays, Hill and other students go to the school’s Learning Lab, where they get help completing any work they haven’t turned in. Chris Bibbens Williams is the teacher in charge of the Learning Lab. He said that the Masks, Emotions and Math event that Branch led at the school helped otherwise shy students engage more deeply with their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re gonna have some kids who are more confident in talking in front of everyone, but even the kids who weren’t confident, it just seemed like because the space was positive, it was a chance for them to say how they felt in the moment,” he said. “That’s one thing that I love about this school is that we really allow kids to be themselves, and we build those deep relationships.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he isn’t in the Learning Lab, Williams can be found all over campus — playing basketball with students and hanging out with them in the cafeteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>”When you build those relationships, kids come to you,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, Williams approached an eighth grader who hadn’t been completing his language arts assignments. Was he not doing the work because it was too hard, or because he lacked confidence?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had him come over and read the passage to me,” Williams said, “and I discovered it was truly just him not being confident in his reading.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Williams sitting with him, the student made his way through the passage and read words he wasn’t familiar with. Since then, Williams has noticed a change in the boy’s confidence level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s attempting more,” he said, “and that’s all I could ask for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact editor Christina Samuels at (212) 678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.\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 gender gap 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/k12/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-risks-of-ai-in-schools-outweigh-the-benefits-report-says",
"title": "The Risks of AI in Schools Outweigh the Benefits, Report Says",
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"content": "\u003cp>The risks of using \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">generative artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”\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>Because generative AI is still young — ChatGPT was released \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just over three years ago\u003c/a> — the report’s authors dubbed their review a “premortem” intended to study AI’s potential in the classroom without a postmortem’s benefits of time, long-term data or hindsight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the pros and cons that the report lays out, along with a sampling of the study’s recommendations for teachers, parents, school leaders and government officials:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can help students learn to read and write\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers surveyed for the report said AI can be useful when it comes to language acquisition, especially for students learning a second language. For example, AI can adjust the complexity of a passage depending on the reader’s skill, and it offers privacy for students who struggle in large-group settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers reported that AI can also help improve students’ writing, so long as it is used to support students’ efforts and not to do the work for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writer’s block. … At the drafting stage, it can help with organization, coherence, syntax, semantics, and grammar. At the revision stage, AI can support the editing and rewriting of ideas as well as help with … punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, if there is a refrain in the report, it is this: AI is most useful when it’s supplementing, not replacing, the efforts of a flesh-and-blood teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses a grave threat to students’ cognitive development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings, warns, “When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cognitive off-loading isn’t new. The report points out that keyboards and computers reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators automated basic math. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of off-loading, especially in schools where learning can feel transactional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one student told the researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report offers a surfeit of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already seeing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. And this could have enormous consequences if these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can make teachers’ jobs a little easier\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The report says another benefit of AI is that it allows teachers to automate some tasks: “generating parent emails … translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans” — and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report cites multiple research studies that found important time-saving benefits for teachers, including one U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week and about six weeks over the course of a full school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro/Con: AI can be an engine of equity — or inequity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the strongest arguments in favor of AI’s educational use, according to the Brookings report, is its ability to reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. The researchers cite Afghanistan, where girls and women have been denied access to formal, postprimary education by the Taliban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sola-afghanistan.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one program for Afghan girls\u003c/a> “has employed AI to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on this curriculum, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto, and English via WhatsApp lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with a wide range of learning disabilities, including dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “AI can massively increase existing divides” too, Winthrop warns. That’s because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools can also be the least reliable and least factually accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that richer communities and schools will be able to afford more advanced AI models,” Winthrop says, “and we know those more advanced AI models are more accurate. Which means that this is the first time in ed-tech history that schools will have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools without a lot of resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses serious threats to social and emotional development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Survey responses revealed deep concern that use of AI, particularly chatbots, “is undermining students’ emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain mental health,” the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many problems with kids’ overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic — it has been designed to reinforce users’ beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop says that if children are building social-emotional skills largely through interactions with chatbots that were designed to agree with them, “it becomes very uncomfortable to then be in an environment when somebody doesn’t agree with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop offers an example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “complaining about your parents and saying, ‘They want me to wash the dishes — this is so annoying. I hate my parents.’ The chatbot will likely say, ‘You’re right. You’re misunderstood. I’m so sorry. I understand you.’ Versus a friend who would say, ‘Dude, I wash the dishes all the time in my house. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. That’s normal.’ That right there is the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561981/ai-students-schools-teachers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers said they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with artificial intelligence. And 42% of students in that survey said they or someone they know has used AI for companionship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report warns that AI’s echo chamber can stunt a child’s emotional growth: “We learn empathy not when we are perfectly understood, but when we misunderstand and recover,” one of the surveyed experts said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What to do about it\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers — not to mention tech companies themselves — harness the good of AI without subjecting children to the risks that the technology currently poses. Among those recommendations:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n\u003cli>Schooling itself could be less focused on what the report calls “transactional task completion” or a grade-based endgame and more focused on fostering curiosity and a desire to learn. Students will be less inclined to ask AI to do the work for them if they feel engaged by that work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>AI designed for use by children and teens should be less sycophantic and more “antagonistic,” pushing back against preconceived notions and challenging users to reflect and evaluate.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tech companies could collaborate with educators in “co-design hubs.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed hub already brings together tech companies and educators to develop, test and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Holistic AI literacy is crucial — both for teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have comprehensive, national AI literacy guidelines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As schools continue to embrace AI, it’s important that underfunded districts in marginalized communities are not left behind, allowing AI to further drive inequity.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools, making sure that the technology being used protects students’ cognitive and emotional health, as well as their privacy. In the U.S., the Trump administration has \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tried to prohibit\u003c/a> states from regulating AI on their own, even as Congress has so far failed to create a federal regulatory framework.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With this “premortem,” the authors argue, the time to act is now. AI’s risks to children and teens are already abundant and obvious. The good news is: so are many of the remedies.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The risks of using \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">generative artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”\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>Because generative AI is still young — ChatGPT was released \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just over three years ago\u003c/a> — the report’s authors dubbed their review a “premortem” intended to study AI’s potential in the classroom without a postmortem’s benefits of time, long-term data or hindsight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the pros and cons that the report lays out, along with a sampling of the study’s recommendations for teachers, parents, school leaders and government officials:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can help students learn to read and write\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers surveyed for the report said AI can be useful when it comes to language acquisition, especially for students learning a second language. For example, AI can adjust the complexity of a passage depending on the reader’s skill, and it offers privacy for students who struggle in large-group settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers reported that AI can also help improve students’ writing, so long as it is used to support students’ efforts and not to do the work for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writer’s block. … At the drafting stage, it can help with organization, coherence, syntax, semantics, and grammar. At the revision stage, AI can support the editing and rewriting of ideas as well as help with … punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, if there is a refrain in the report, it is this: AI is most useful when it’s supplementing, not replacing, the efforts of a flesh-and-blood teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses a grave threat to students’ cognitive development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings, warns, “When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cognitive off-loading isn’t new. The report points out that keyboards and computers reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators automated basic math. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of off-loading, especially in schools where learning can feel transactional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one student told the researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report offers a surfeit of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already seeing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. And this could have enormous consequences if these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can make teachers’ jobs a little easier\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The report says another benefit of AI is that it allows teachers to automate some tasks: “generating parent emails … translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans” — and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report cites multiple research studies that found important time-saving benefits for teachers, including one U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week and about six weeks over the course of a full school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro/Con: AI can be an engine of equity — or inequity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the strongest arguments in favor of AI’s educational use, according to the Brookings report, is its ability to reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. The researchers cite Afghanistan, where girls and women have been denied access to formal, postprimary education by the Taliban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sola-afghanistan.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one program for Afghan girls\u003c/a> “has employed AI to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on this curriculum, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto, and English via WhatsApp lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with a wide range of learning disabilities, including dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “AI can massively increase existing divides” too, Winthrop warns. That’s because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools can also be the least reliable and least factually accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that richer communities and schools will be able to afford more advanced AI models,” Winthrop says, “and we know those more advanced AI models are more accurate. Which means that this is the first time in ed-tech history that schools will have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools without a lot of resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses serious threats to social and emotional development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Survey responses revealed deep concern that use of AI, particularly chatbots, “is undermining students’ emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain mental health,” the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many problems with kids’ overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic — it has been designed to reinforce users’ beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop says that if children are building social-emotional skills largely through interactions with chatbots that were designed to agree with them, “it becomes very uncomfortable to then be in an environment when somebody doesn’t agree with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop offers an example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “complaining about your parents and saying, ‘They want me to wash the dishes — this is so annoying. I hate my parents.’ The chatbot will likely say, ‘You’re right. You’re misunderstood. I’m so sorry. I understand you.’ Versus a friend who would say, ‘Dude, I wash the dishes all the time in my house. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. That’s normal.’ That right there is the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561981/ai-students-schools-teachers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers said they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with artificial intelligence. And 42% of students in that survey said they or someone they know has used AI for companionship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report warns that AI’s echo chamber can stunt a child’s emotional growth: “We learn empathy not when we are perfectly understood, but when we misunderstand and recover,” one of the surveyed experts said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What to do about it\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers — not to mention tech companies themselves — harness the good of AI without subjecting children to the risks that the technology currently poses. Among those recommendations:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n\u003cli>Schooling itself could be less focused on what the report calls “transactional task completion” or a grade-based endgame and more focused on fostering curiosity and a desire to learn. Students will be less inclined to ask AI to do the work for them if they feel engaged by that work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>AI designed for use by children and teens should be less sycophantic and more “antagonistic,” pushing back against preconceived notions and challenging users to reflect and evaluate.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tech companies could collaborate with educators in “co-design hubs.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed hub already brings together tech companies and educators to develop, test and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Holistic AI literacy is crucial — both for teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have comprehensive, national AI literacy guidelines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As schools continue to embrace AI, it’s important that underfunded districts in marginalized communities are not left behind, allowing AI to further drive inequity.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools, making sure that the technology being used protects students’ cognitive and emotional health, as well as their privacy. In the U.S., the Trump administration has \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tried to prohibit\u003c/a> states from regulating AI on their own, even as Congress has so far failed to create a federal regulatory framework.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>J’Nyah is like most high school juniors – she scrolls through TikTok, posts on Instagram for her friends and keeps up with social media pop culture via YouTube videos about influencer updates. But she doesn’t take anything online too seriously. “I kind of just like stuff when it’s funny and keep scrolling,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, she saw a video about an influencer apologizing for racially insensitive language, but to her it felt scripted and disingenuous. J’Nyah finds that influencer apologies enter her feed even though she isn’t following that person; that’s most likely happening because of an algorithmic boost or viral controversy that warranted the apology. And when one of her favorite K-Pop groups posted a culturally insensitive livestream, “\u003ca href=\"https://people.com/kiss-of-life-apologizes-after-hip-hop-themed-live-stream-11711423\">their apology\u003c/a> was not the greatest,” she said. “I just kind of stopped interacting with their content…It’s really tragic, their music is really good,” J’Nyah continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid a sea of endless content, it’s easy to forget that much of social media is curated, which can make it hard to know if an influencer’s apology video is authentic or not. And that can have consequences in other parts of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social scientists say being vulnerable with other people is how genuine relationships are developed. When you’re young, practicing vulnerability through close friendships or with other peers helps develop good social skills for adult relationships. Think of what it takes to say what you really want to say or cracking your professional veneer — that requires a degree of safety. And for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62189/school-shapes-teens-identities-and-relationships-what-role-do-teachers-play\">teens\u003c/a> who experience high levels of self-consciousness, feeling safe is a big deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where real apologies can create an opportunity for vulnerability. In order \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62290/teaching-kids-the-right-way-to-say-im-sorry\">to truly be sorry\u003c/a>, social psychologists say offenders must follow several actions like acknowledging the infraction, delivering an apology, saying what will be done differently and, ideally, committing to that change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That seems easy enough, but given the abundance of crisis managers and image consultants, and the financial gains from having clout and virality, how do you know if someone is being genuine? And given how well emotional content performs online, what does that do to our ability to engage with one another in person?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The age of ‘McVulnerability’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, authentic vulnerability is hard to come by, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.maytaleyal.com/\">Maytal Eyal\u003c/a>, a psychologist and writer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People’s experiences with vulnerability, or lack-thereof, are also making for quick growing parasocial relationships. Anyone with a phone can turn to social media to get their quick fix of synthetic and performative vulnerability, a phenomenon Eyal calls “\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/mcvulnerability-crying-tiktok-youtube-instagram-influencers/681475/\">McVulnerability\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s “comfortable and easy and cheap, but ultimately like fast food, [McVulnerability is] not necessarily good for your health,” Eyal continued, especially during these times of \u003ca href=\"https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it\">increasing loneliness\u003c/a>. “Social media platforms have presented something to us that’s both really insidious and really brilliant where people no longer need to access real vulnerability in person,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Add to that, adolescents are \u003ca href=\"https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-health\">spending more and more time online\u003c/a>. And although it’s difficult to pin down the exact \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61026/10-things-to-know-about-how-social-media-affects-teens-brains\">effects of social media\u003c/a> on teens, studies show that teens’ \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64715/youth-mental-health-is-declining-school-based-supports-can-help\">mental health is declining\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf\">in-person socialization\u003c/a> has dropped dramatically in the last few decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what happens to teens when they are viewing McVulnerability?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the more hours spent online — and therefore, more potential time viewing McVulnerability — the more teens are disengaged from social activities that build their relational intimacy skills, said Eyal. “The consequences are dire because vulnerability and the discomfort within it are inherent to forming intimate relationships with others…without vulnerability, we have no intimacy,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of going to parties and \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/03/teen-dating-milestone-decline/681971/\">chasing romance\u003c/a>, teens are spending more of their free time on their phones, said Eyal, who works with teens and their families through her private practice. This behavior is not unique to teens – \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/\">adults are doing this too\u003c/a> – but the adolescent period is critical to the development of social skills, vulnerability and empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teens are undergoing enormous neurological changes during adolescence and are extremely sensitive to how they fit into their social settings, compared to younger kids and older adults, said \u003ca href=\"https://rossier.usc.edu/faculty-research/directory/maryhelen-immordinoyang\">Mary Helen Immordino-Yang\u003c/a>, a neuroscientist at USC’s Rossier School of Education and author of “\u003ca href=\"https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393709810\">Emotions, Learning, and the Brain.\u003c/a>” Adolescents also tend to be reactive, and when they don’t feel safe, it’s really hard for them to be vulnerable, Immordino-Yang continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When schools aren’t safe places and don’t focus on giving students ample time to draw on all of their developing empathy and social skills, teens can respond to serious prompts in unserious ways, said Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, a classroom lesson on a civil rights march, in which the participants fight for a change that’s meaningful to them, she continued. A teen who isn’t familiar yet with the Civil Rights Movement might not be too impressed by what meets the eye, such as registering people to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immordino-Yang’s research team found that adolescents took longer to think through complex stories and ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given a safe space and enough time, that teen would be more inclined to abandon their adolescent fear of judgement and social status and inquire for more information, revealing their inherent curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When teens inquire to learn more, they are building valuable skills for adulthood, like expanding their contextual knowledge. This deeper, more complex type of thinking is called \u003ca href=\"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/transcendent-thinking-boosts-teen-brains-in-ways-that-enhance-life/\">transcendent thinking\u003c/a>, and according to Immordino-Yang, teens want to get there, but it takes work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immordino-Yang also recommends setting a calm tone in the classroom in order to provide a space where teens can explore big ideas. When adolescents are allowed to think deeply about an issue that matters to them, and then back up and learn more about how to solve that issue, they are more likely to ditch the performative responses and tap into their newly developing vulnerability. According to Immordino-Yang, transcendent thinking – like thinking about the values, intentions and implications of more complex ideas – doesn’t just help young people better understand the world around them, this type of thinking actually grows their brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In other words, they are literally exercising their brain like a muscle when they think about these bigger, more complex, hidden ethical ideas,” Immordino-Yang continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A Retreat From Discomfort\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Eyal, teens aren’t learning how to express their vulnerability with their peers like they used to, and instead they’re “bombarded by vulnerability content” online which doesn’t require a response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teens that Eyal works with are aware that what they view on social media is synthetic to some degree. The bigger issue is that teens get to hide behind their parasocial relationships and skip out on the discomfort of in-person vulnerability and IRL confrontation, she said. “It’s almost like a retreat from discomfort,” Eyal continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, teens don’t just scroll on social media, they post there too. Eyal has found that a lot of her teen clients are deeply fearful of exposing their own vulnerabilities to their peers in person, but find it much easier to do so online. According to Eyal, this is a different form of McVulnerability that also procures a lack of reciprocity, but isn’t as far reaching as a tearful influencer apology might be. She said that vulnerable posts from teens online take away the “tender, awkward waiting experience that happens in person with a real vulnerability exchange.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>J’Nyah is pretty confident in her ability to navigate online spaces, but even so it can be hard for her to decipher her friends’ posts on social media, especially when they don’t reflect their behavior or mood in school. With abbreviations like KMS (kill myself) tossed around nonchalantly, J’Nyah makes sure to check-in with her friends in-person when she sees them posting concerning things on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The line between right and wrong can get easily blurred online, especially for young people who are broadening their social skills and refining their relational identities. When online behavior goes too far, there’s often a waiting period for J’Nyah, and it isn’t until days or weeks later when her suspicions about a questionable piece of content are confirmed that she’s able to be sure about the information that’s been presented to her. Other online content are more obviously nefarious to J’Nyah, like someone recording and posting themselves being rude to patrons and employees at stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>J’Nyah also pointed out that people on social media tend to act in more extreme ways because they feel protected behind a screen. And there are negative consequences, said J’Nyah. Trends like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/viral-devious-licks-tiktok-challenge-encourages-kids-to-steal-from-school\">“devious lick” trend\u003c/a> encouraged middle and high schoolers to steal and vandalize school property, costing some schools across the country \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038681786/schools-close-bathrooms-due-to-vandalization-from-tiktok-devious-licks-trend\">thousands of dollars in damages\u003c/a>. “I think things sometimes just go too far,” and “I feel like I’ve just been desensitized to a lot of things,” J’Nyah added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to combat becoming too comfortable behind a screen, Eyal encourages her teen clients to seek out healthy discomfort away from their devices like being a camp counselor for the summer where they might be responsible for younger kids, spend a lot of time outdoors and be required to do some form of physical labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Put them in situations where they might feel nervous and shy and out of their element socially, or put them in a situation where maybe they have to be among a group of other kids,” and away from their phones, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While teens might think it’s more comfortable to escape behind screens, it’s important that parents show them that they can find meaning and value in the temporary discomfort of unfamiliar social settings and activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Issues with empathy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers might question their students’ capacity for \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1i0ms4p/the_lack_of_empathy_is_crushing/\">empathy\u003c/a> when they laugh during a lesson about the Holocaust, or crack an inappropriate joke while learning about the Jim Crow South. And these concerns from adults can be rooted in worries surrounding increased social media use by teens. But to Eyal, these reactions “sound so developmentally normal” because teens are experimenting with and learning how to express their emotions. Adolescents experience an immense amount of self-consciousness about how they are perceived by their peers and responding to a serious topic in an emotionally incongruent way is a way to avoid discomfort and vulnerability, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these instances, teens’ neurological immaturity is on display. According to Immordino-Yang, teens sometimes express an emotion before processing the appropriateness given the context, but this is also a social response. “I don’t think they’d laugh if they were alone,” said Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teens are also learning how and when to apply transcendent thinking, and get it wrong sometimes, said Immordino-Yang. “They often think of very deep things in superficial ways…or they think of superficial things in quite deep ways.” When patterns of thinking are exercised over and over again, like hours scrolling through social media, those patterns stick, Immordino-Yang continued. So viewing McVulnerability online very often “is likely to change the way you see things in school too; I mean, your mind comes with you wherever you go and it’s built by the way in which you use it,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For parents concerned about their teens viewing McVulnerability online, Immordino-Yang suggested watching those videos with them, and talking to them about it. Asking questions like: Why do you think this person is acting like this? Or, what is their motive for posting this content for millions of people online?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Help them to start to query what you, as an adult, are capable of noticing about the bigger picture,” said Immordino-Yang. Remember that your teen doesn’t have to agree with what you are saying, she continued; learning to unpack the things that you are viewing rather than letting those things drive your attention and future decisions is important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Engaging with [online] media is a great way to learn things. It’s a great way to be exposed to things that are outside your immediate sphere of influence,” added Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While social media can be fun, taking a break is important to J’Nyah. She recognizes that when things get too toxic, it might be time to take a step back. Every couple of months J’Nyah goes without her phone for a weekend, “so I can just rewire my brain a little bit, but I think if I didn’t do that, I would have a much harder time.” She also found that her extracurricular activities force her to stay away from her phone, which makes it easier to have built-in social media breaks during the week.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>J’Nyah is like most high school juniors – she scrolls through TikTok, posts on Instagram for her friends and keeps up with social media pop culture via YouTube videos about influencer updates. But she doesn’t take anything online too seriously. “I kind of just like stuff when it’s funny and keep scrolling,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, she saw a video about an influencer apologizing for racially insensitive language, but to her it felt scripted and disingenuous. J’Nyah finds that influencer apologies enter her feed even though she isn’t following that person; that’s most likely happening because of an algorithmic boost or viral controversy that warranted the apology. And when one of her favorite K-Pop groups posted a culturally insensitive livestream, “\u003ca href=\"https://people.com/kiss-of-life-apologizes-after-hip-hop-themed-live-stream-11711423\">their apology\u003c/a> was not the greatest,” she said. “I just kind of stopped interacting with their content…It’s really tragic, their music is really good,” J’Nyah continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid a sea of endless content, it’s easy to forget that much of social media is curated, which can make it hard to know if an influencer’s apology video is authentic or not. And that can have consequences in other parts of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social scientists say being vulnerable with other people is how genuine relationships are developed. When you’re young, practicing vulnerability through close friendships or with other peers helps develop good social skills for adult relationships. Think of what it takes to say what you really want to say or cracking your professional veneer — that requires a degree of safety. And for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62189/school-shapes-teens-identities-and-relationships-what-role-do-teachers-play\">teens\u003c/a> who experience high levels of self-consciousness, feeling safe is a big deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where real apologies can create an opportunity for vulnerability. In order \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62290/teaching-kids-the-right-way-to-say-im-sorry\">to truly be sorry\u003c/a>, social psychologists say offenders must follow several actions like acknowledging the infraction, delivering an apology, saying what will be done differently and, ideally, committing to that change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That seems easy enough, but given the abundance of crisis managers and image consultants, and the financial gains from having clout and virality, how do you know if someone is being genuine? And given how well emotional content performs online, what does that do to our ability to engage with one another in person?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The age of ‘McVulnerability’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, authentic vulnerability is hard to come by, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.maytaleyal.com/\">Maytal Eyal\u003c/a>, a psychologist and writer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People’s experiences with vulnerability, or lack-thereof, are also making for quick growing parasocial relationships. Anyone with a phone can turn to social media to get their quick fix of synthetic and performative vulnerability, a phenomenon Eyal calls “\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/mcvulnerability-crying-tiktok-youtube-instagram-influencers/681475/\">McVulnerability\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s “comfortable and easy and cheap, but ultimately like fast food, [McVulnerability is] not necessarily good for your health,” Eyal continued, especially during these times of \u003ca href=\"https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it\">increasing loneliness\u003c/a>. “Social media platforms have presented something to us that’s both really insidious and really brilliant where people no longer need to access real vulnerability in person,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Add to that, adolescents are \u003ca href=\"https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-health\">spending more and more time online\u003c/a>. And although it’s difficult to pin down the exact \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61026/10-things-to-know-about-how-social-media-affects-teens-brains\">effects of social media\u003c/a> on teens, studies show that teens’ \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64715/youth-mental-health-is-declining-school-based-supports-can-help\">mental health is declining\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf\">in-person socialization\u003c/a> has dropped dramatically in the last few decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what happens to teens when they are viewing McVulnerability?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the more hours spent online — and therefore, more potential time viewing McVulnerability — the more teens are disengaged from social activities that build their relational intimacy skills, said Eyal. “The consequences are dire because vulnerability and the discomfort within it are inherent to forming intimate relationships with others…without vulnerability, we have no intimacy,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of going to parties and \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/03/teen-dating-milestone-decline/681971/\">chasing romance\u003c/a>, teens are spending more of their free time on their phones, said Eyal, who works with teens and their families through her private practice. This behavior is not unique to teens – \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/\">adults are doing this too\u003c/a> – but the adolescent period is critical to the development of social skills, vulnerability and empathy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teens are undergoing enormous neurological changes during adolescence and are extremely sensitive to how they fit into their social settings, compared to younger kids and older adults, said \u003ca href=\"https://rossier.usc.edu/faculty-research/directory/maryhelen-immordinoyang\">Mary Helen Immordino-Yang\u003c/a>, a neuroscientist at USC’s Rossier School of Education and author of “\u003ca href=\"https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393709810\">Emotions, Learning, and the Brain.\u003c/a>” Adolescents also tend to be reactive, and when they don’t feel safe, it’s really hard for them to be vulnerable, Immordino-Yang continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When schools aren’t safe places and don’t focus on giving students ample time to draw on all of their developing empathy and social skills, teens can respond to serious prompts in unserious ways, said Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, a classroom lesson on a civil rights march, in which the participants fight for a change that’s meaningful to them, she continued. A teen who isn’t familiar yet with the Civil Rights Movement might not be too impressed by what meets the eye, such as registering people to vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immordino-Yang’s research team found that adolescents took longer to think through complex stories and ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given a safe space and enough time, that teen would be more inclined to abandon their adolescent fear of judgement and social status and inquire for more information, revealing their inherent curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When teens inquire to learn more, they are building valuable skills for adulthood, like expanding their contextual knowledge. This deeper, more complex type of thinking is called \u003ca href=\"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/transcendent-thinking-boosts-teen-brains-in-ways-that-enhance-life/\">transcendent thinking\u003c/a>, and according to Immordino-Yang, teens want to get there, but it takes work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immordino-Yang also recommends setting a calm tone in the classroom in order to provide a space where teens can explore big ideas. When adolescents are allowed to think deeply about an issue that matters to them, and then back up and learn more about how to solve that issue, they are more likely to ditch the performative responses and tap into their newly developing vulnerability. According to Immordino-Yang, transcendent thinking – like thinking about the values, intentions and implications of more complex ideas – doesn’t just help young people better understand the world around them, this type of thinking actually grows their brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In other words, they are literally exercising their brain like a muscle when they think about these bigger, more complex, hidden ethical ideas,” Immordino-Yang continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A Retreat From Discomfort\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to Eyal, teens aren’t learning how to express their vulnerability with their peers like they used to, and instead they’re “bombarded by vulnerability content” online which doesn’t require a response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teens that Eyal works with are aware that what they view on social media is synthetic to some degree. The bigger issue is that teens get to hide behind their parasocial relationships and skip out on the discomfort of in-person vulnerability and IRL confrontation, she said. “It’s almost like a retreat from discomfort,” Eyal continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, teens don’t just scroll on social media, they post there too. Eyal has found that a lot of her teen clients are deeply fearful of exposing their own vulnerabilities to their peers in person, but find it much easier to do so online. According to Eyal, this is a different form of McVulnerability that also procures a lack of reciprocity, but isn’t as far reaching as a tearful influencer apology might be. She said that vulnerable posts from teens online take away the “tender, awkward waiting experience that happens in person with a real vulnerability exchange.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>J’Nyah is pretty confident in her ability to navigate online spaces, but even so it can be hard for her to decipher her friends’ posts on social media, especially when they don’t reflect their behavior or mood in school. With abbreviations like KMS (kill myself) tossed around nonchalantly, J’Nyah makes sure to check-in with her friends in-person when she sees them posting concerning things on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The line between right and wrong can get easily blurred online, especially for young people who are broadening their social skills and refining their relational identities. When online behavior goes too far, there’s often a waiting period for J’Nyah, and it isn’t until days or weeks later when her suspicions about a questionable piece of content are confirmed that she’s able to be sure about the information that’s been presented to her. Other online content are more obviously nefarious to J’Nyah, like someone recording and posting themselves being rude to patrons and employees at stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>J’Nyah also pointed out that people on social media tend to act in more extreme ways because they feel protected behind a screen. And there are negative consequences, said J’Nyah. Trends like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/viral-devious-licks-tiktok-challenge-encourages-kids-to-steal-from-school\">“devious lick” trend\u003c/a> encouraged middle and high schoolers to steal and vandalize school property, costing some schools across the country \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038681786/schools-close-bathrooms-due-to-vandalization-from-tiktok-devious-licks-trend\">thousands of dollars in damages\u003c/a>. “I think things sometimes just go too far,” and “I feel like I’ve just been desensitized to a lot of things,” J’Nyah added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to combat becoming too comfortable behind a screen, Eyal encourages her teen clients to seek out healthy discomfort away from their devices like being a camp counselor for the summer where they might be responsible for younger kids, spend a lot of time outdoors and be required to do some form of physical labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Put them in situations where they might feel nervous and shy and out of their element socially, or put them in a situation where maybe they have to be among a group of other kids,” and away from their phones, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While teens might think it’s more comfortable to escape behind screens, it’s important that parents show them that they can find meaning and value in the temporary discomfort of unfamiliar social settings and activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Issues with empathy\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers might question their students’ capacity for \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1i0ms4p/the_lack_of_empathy_is_crushing/\">empathy\u003c/a> when they laugh during a lesson about the Holocaust, or crack an inappropriate joke while learning about the Jim Crow South. And these concerns from adults can be rooted in worries surrounding increased social media use by teens. But to Eyal, these reactions “sound so developmentally normal” because teens are experimenting with and learning how to express their emotions. Adolescents experience an immense amount of self-consciousness about how they are perceived by their peers and responding to a serious topic in an emotionally incongruent way is a way to avoid discomfort and vulnerability, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these instances, teens’ neurological immaturity is on display. According to Immordino-Yang, teens sometimes express an emotion before processing the appropriateness given the context, but this is also a social response. “I don’t think they’d laugh if they were alone,” said Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teens are also learning how and when to apply transcendent thinking, and get it wrong sometimes, said Immordino-Yang. “They often think of very deep things in superficial ways…or they think of superficial things in quite deep ways.” When patterns of thinking are exercised over and over again, like hours scrolling through social media, those patterns stick, Immordino-Yang continued. So viewing McVulnerability online very often “is likely to change the way you see things in school too; I mean, your mind comes with you wherever you go and it’s built by the way in which you use it,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For parents concerned about their teens viewing McVulnerability online, Immordino-Yang suggested watching those videos with them, and talking to them about it. Asking questions like: Why do you think this person is acting like this? Or, what is their motive for posting this content for millions of people online?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Help them to start to query what you, as an adult, are capable of noticing about the bigger picture,” said Immordino-Yang. Remember that your teen doesn’t have to agree with what you are saying, she continued; learning to unpack the things that you are viewing rather than letting those things drive your attention and future decisions is important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Engaging with [online] media is a great way to learn things. It’s a great way to be exposed to things that are outside your immediate sphere of influence,” added Immordino-Yang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While social media can be fun, taking a break is important to J’Nyah. She recognizes that when things get too toxic, it might be time to take a step back. Every couple of months J’Nyah goes without her phone for a weekend, “so I can just rewire my brain a little bit, but I think if I didn’t do that, I would have a much harder time.” She also found that her extracurricular activities force her to stay away from her phone, which makes it easier to have built-in social media breaks during the week.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Some Social Emotional Lessons Improve How Kids do at School, Yale Study Finds",
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"content": "\u003cp>Social emotional learning — lessons in soft skills like listening to people you disagree with or calming yourself down before a test — has become a flashpoint in the culture wars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservative political group Moms for Liberty opposes SEL, as it is often abbreviated, \u003ca href=\"https://portal.momsforliberty.org/media/files/files/b0d67d1f/sel-packet-120622-0845-2-.pdf\">telling parents\u003c/a> that its “goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.” Critics say that parents should discuss social and emotional matters at home and that schools should stick to academics. Meanwhile, some advocates on the left say standard SEL classes don’t go far enough and should include such topics as social justice and anti-racism training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the political battle rages on, academic researchers are marshalling evidence for what high-quality SEL programs actually deliver for students. The latest study, by researchers at Yale University, summarizes 12 years of evidence, from 2008 to 2020, and it finds that 30 different SEL programs, which put themselves through \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Table-of-SEL-interventions.pdf\">40 rigorous evaluations\u003c/a> involving almost 34,000 students, tended to produce “moderate” academic benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/00346543251367769\">meta-analysis\u003c/a>, published online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research, calculated that the grades and test scores of students in SEL classes improved by about 4 percentile points, on average, compared with students who didn’t receive soft-skill instruction. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile (in the middle) to the 54th percentile (slightly above average). Reading gains were larger (more than 6 percentile points) than math gains (fewer than 4 percentile points). Longer-duration SEL programs, extending more than four months, produced double the academic gains — more than 8 percentile points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Social emotional learning interventions are not designed, most of the time, to explicitly improve academic achievement,” said Christina Cipriano, one of the study’s four authors and an associate professor at Yale Medical School’s Child Study Center. “And yet we demonstrated, through our meta-analytic report, that explicit social emotional learning improved academic achievement and it improved both GPA and test scores.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano also directs the \u003ca href=\"https://medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/research/collaborative-labs/education-collaboratory/\">Education Collaboratory\u003c/a> at Yale, whose mission is to “advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The academic boost from SEL in this 2025 paper is much smaller than the 11 percentile points documented in an earlier \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21291449/\">2011 meta-analysis\u003c/a> that summarized research through 2007, when SEL had not yet gained widespread popularity in schools. That has since changed. More than \u003ca href=\"https://casel.org/links/social-and-emotional-learning-in-u-s-schools/\">80 percent\u003c/a> of principals of K-12 schools said their schools used an SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the RAND Corporation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Yale researchers only studied a small subset of the SEL market, programs that subjected themselves to a rigorous evaluation and included academic outcomes. Three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized-controlled trials, similar to pharmaceutical trials, where schools or teachers were randomly assigned to teach an SEL curriculum. The remaining studies, in which schools or teachers volunteered to participate, still had control groups of students so that researchers could compare the academic gains of students who did not receive SEL instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SEL programs in the Yale study taught a wide range of soft skills, from \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/helping-kids-learn-how-their-brains-work/\">mindfulness\u003c/a> and anger management to resolving conflicts and setting goals. It is unclear which soft skills are driving the academic gains. That’s an area for future research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Developmentally, when we think about what we know about how kids learn, emotional regulation is really the driver,” said Cipriano. “No matter how good that curriculum or that math program or reading curriculum is, if a child is feeling unsafe or anxious or stressed out or frustrated or embarrassed, they’re not available to receive the instruction, however great that teacher might be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano said that effective programs give students tools to cope with stressful situations. She offered the example of a pop quiz, from the perspective of a student. “You can recognize, I’m feeling nervous, my blood is rushing to my hands or my face, and I can use my strategies of counting to 10, thinking about what I know, and use positive self talk to be able to regulate, to be able to take my test,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strongest evidence for SEL is in elementary school, where the majority of evaluations have been conducted (two-thirds of the 40 studies). For young students, SEL lessons tend to be short but frequent, for example, 10 minutes a day. There’s less evidence for middle and high school SEL programs because they haven’t been studied as much. Typically, preteens and teens have less frequent but longer sessions, a half hour or even 90 minutes, weekly or monthly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano said that schools don’t need to spend “hours and hours” on social and emotional instruction in order to see academic benefits. A current trend is to incorporate or embed social and emotional learning within academic instruction, as part of math class, for example. But none of the underlying studies in this paper evaluated whether this was a more effective way to deliver SEL. All of the programs in this study were separate stand-alone SEL lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Advice to schools\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Schools are inundated by sales pitches from SEL vendors. Estimates of the market size range wildly, but a half dozen market research firms put it above $2 billion annually. Not all SEL programs are necessarily effective or can be expected to produce the academic gains that the Yale team calculated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano advises schools not to be taken in by slick marketing. Many of the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Table-of-SEL-interventions.pdf\">effective programs\u003c/a> have no marketing at all and some are free. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been discontinued or have transformed through ownership changes. But she says school leaders can ask questions about which specific skills the SEL program claims to foster, whether those skills will help the district achieve its goals, such as improving school climate, and whether the program has been externally evaluated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Districts invest in things all the time that are flashy and pretty, across content areas, not just SEL,” said Cipriano. “It may never have had an external evaluation, but has a really great social media presence and really great marketing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano has also built a new website, \u003ca href=\"http://improvingstudentoutcomes.org/\">improvingstudentoutcomes.org\u003c/a>, to track the latest research on SEL effectiveness and to help schools identify proven programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano says parents should be asking questions too. “Parents should be partners in learning,” said Cipriano. “I have four kids, and I want to know what they’re learning about in school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This meta-analysis probably won’t stop the SEL critics who say that these programs force educators to be therapists. Groups like Moms for Liberty, which holds its \u003ca href=\"https://www.momsforliberty.org/summit25/\">national summit\u003c/a> this week, say teachers should stick to academics. This paper rejects that dichotomy because it suggests that emotions, social interaction and academics are all interlinked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before criticizing all SEL programs, educators and parents need to consider the evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-sel-academic-benefits-yale-study/\"> \u003cem>SEL benefits\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>Social emotional learning — lessons in soft skills like listening to people you disagree with or calming yourself down before a test — has become a flashpoint in the culture wars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The conservative political group Moms for Liberty opposes SEL, as it is often abbreviated, \u003ca href=\"https://portal.momsforliberty.org/media/files/files/b0d67d1f/sel-packet-120622-0845-2-.pdf\">telling parents\u003c/a> that its “goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.” Critics say that parents should discuss social and emotional matters at home and that schools should stick to academics. Meanwhile, some advocates on the left say standard SEL classes don’t go far enough and should include such topics as social justice and anti-racism training.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the political battle rages on, academic researchers are marshalling evidence for what high-quality SEL programs actually deliver for students. The latest study, by researchers at Yale University, summarizes 12 years of evidence, from 2008 to 2020, and it finds that 30 different SEL programs, which put themselves through \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Table-of-SEL-interventions.pdf\">40 rigorous evaluations\u003c/a> involving almost 34,000 students, tended to produce “moderate” academic benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/00346543251367769\">meta-analysis\u003c/a>, published online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research, calculated that the grades and test scores of students in SEL classes improved by about 4 percentile points, on average, compared with students who didn’t receive soft-skill instruction. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile (in the middle) to the 54th percentile (slightly above average). Reading gains were larger (more than 6 percentile points) than math gains (fewer than 4 percentile points). Longer-duration SEL programs, extending more than four months, produced double the academic gains — more than 8 percentile points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Social emotional learning interventions are not designed, most of the time, to explicitly improve academic achievement,” said Christina Cipriano, one of the study’s four authors and an associate professor at Yale Medical School’s Child Study Center. “And yet we demonstrated, through our meta-analytic report, that explicit social emotional learning improved academic achievement and it improved both GPA and test scores.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano also directs the \u003ca href=\"https://medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/research/collaborative-labs/education-collaboratory/\">Education Collaboratory\u003c/a> at Yale, whose mission is to “advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The academic boost from SEL in this 2025 paper is much smaller than the 11 percentile points documented in an earlier \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21291449/\">2011 meta-analysis\u003c/a> that summarized research through 2007, when SEL had not yet gained widespread popularity in schools. That has since changed. More than \u003ca href=\"https://casel.org/links/social-and-emotional-learning-in-u-s-schools/\">80 percent\u003c/a> of principals of K-12 schools said their schools used an SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the RAND Corporation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Yale researchers only studied a small subset of the SEL market, programs that subjected themselves to a rigorous evaluation and included academic outcomes. Three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized-controlled trials, similar to pharmaceutical trials, where schools or teachers were randomly assigned to teach an SEL curriculum. The remaining studies, in which schools or teachers volunteered to participate, still had control groups of students so that researchers could compare the academic gains of students who did not receive SEL instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The SEL programs in the Yale study taught a wide range of soft skills, from \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/helping-kids-learn-how-their-brains-work/\">mindfulness\u003c/a> and anger management to resolving conflicts and setting goals. It is unclear which soft skills are driving the academic gains. That’s an area for future research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Developmentally, when we think about what we know about how kids learn, emotional regulation is really the driver,” said Cipriano. “No matter how good that curriculum or that math program or reading curriculum is, if a child is feeling unsafe or anxious or stressed out or frustrated or embarrassed, they’re not available to receive the instruction, however great that teacher might be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano said that effective programs give students tools to cope with stressful situations. She offered the example of a pop quiz, from the perspective of a student. “You can recognize, I’m feeling nervous, my blood is rushing to my hands or my face, and I can use my strategies of counting to 10, thinking about what I know, and use positive self talk to be able to regulate, to be able to take my test,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The strongest evidence for SEL is in elementary school, where the majority of evaluations have been conducted (two-thirds of the 40 studies). For young students, SEL lessons tend to be short but frequent, for example, 10 minutes a day. There’s less evidence for middle and high school SEL programs because they haven’t been studied as much. Typically, preteens and teens have less frequent but longer sessions, a half hour or even 90 minutes, weekly or monthly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano said that schools don’t need to spend “hours and hours” on social and emotional instruction in order to see academic benefits. A current trend is to incorporate or embed social and emotional learning within academic instruction, as part of math class, for example. But none of the underlying studies in this paper evaluated whether this was a more effective way to deliver SEL. All of the programs in this study were separate stand-alone SEL lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Advice to schools\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Schools are inundated by sales pitches from SEL vendors. Estimates of the market size range wildly, but a half dozen market research firms put it above $2 billion annually. Not all SEL programs are necessarily effective or can be expected to produce the academic gains that the Yale team calculated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano advises schools not to be taken in by slick marketing. Many of the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Table-of-SEL-interventions.pdf\">effective programs\u003c/a> have no marketing at all and some are free. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been discontinued or have transformed through ownership changes. But she says school leaders can ask questions about which specific skills the SEL program claims to foster, whether those skills will help the district achieve its goals, such as improving school climate, and whether the program has been externally evaluated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Districts invest in things all the time that are flashy and pretty, across content areas, not just SEL,” said Cipriano. “It may never have had an external evaluation, but has a really great social media presence and really great marketing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano has also built a new website, \u003ca href=\"http://improvingstudentoutcomes.org/\">improvingstudentoutcomes.org\u003c/a>, to track the latest research on SEL effectiveness and to help schools identify proven programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cipriano says parents should be asking questions too. “Parents should be partners in learning,” said Cipriano. “I have four kids, and I want to know what they’re learning about in school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This meta-analysis probably won’t stop the SEL critics who say that these programs force educators to be therapists. Groups like Moms for Liberty, which holds its \u003ca href=\"https://www.momsforliberty.org/summit25/\">national summit\u003c/a> this week, say teachers should stick to academics. This paper rejects that dichotomy because it suggests that emotions, social interaction and academics are all interlinked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before criticizing all SEL programs, educators and parents need to consider the evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>What if improving children’s mental health — and life outcomes — could be done by teaching kids how their brains work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a key idea behind the approach of teachers at Momentous School in Dallas, a private elementary school that serves 225 students, most of whom come from low-income families. Each day, educators present lessons on neuroscience and mindfulness, from the youngest learners all the way up to fifth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preschoolers in the school’s 3-year-old classroom learn about the brain by singing \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psRCo7yu1_I&t=1s\">“The Brain Song”\u003c/a> to the tune of “Bingo” (“I have a brain in my head/And it’s for thinking”). They practice mindfulness by lying down with stuffed animals on their stomachs and watching them move up and down as they breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Older students learn calming strategies like slowly counting each finger on their hands while breathing in and out. Classrooms offer tactile models of the brain to help students learn about different parts such as the prefrontal cortex, which controls such processes as executive function and problem solving, and the brain stem, which regulates breathing and blood pressure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This focus on mindfulness is happening in \u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/article/mindfulness-in-the-classroom/\">schools across the country\u003c/a>, according to the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit focused on children’s mental health. Experts say the goal is teaching self-awareness and regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once the kids feel they can calm themselves, even just through breathing it’s like the ‘wow’ moment,” said Rick Kinder, creator of a mindfulness program called “Wellness Works in Schools,” in an article by the Child Mind Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65793\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1346px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65793\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning.jpeg\" alt=\"Illustration of a brain and its functions\" width=\"1346\" height=\"1346\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning.jpeg 1346w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning-768x768.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1346px) 100vw, 1346px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Research shows teaching children about their brains can help with learning and motivation. \u003ccite>(Momentous School)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At Momentous School, conversations about the brain continue throughout the day, as teachers can be heard encouraging students to identify their emotions or asking, “What’s your amygdala saying to you in this moment?” according to Jessica Gomez, a psychologist and executive director of Momentous Institute, the Dallas-based mental health nonprofit that operates the school. (The amygdala processes emotions in the brain.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through these frequent discussions and additional lessons on mental health and healthy relationships, teachers are “trying to normalize these things as part of the human condition versus something that is stigmatizing,” Gomez said. The school also holds regular parent nights to educate families on how the brain works and teach emotional regulation strategies that families can practice together at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://momentousinstitute.org/momentous-school\">Momentous School\u003c/a>, which launched in 1997 and is funded by philanthropic donations, was developed to put into practice mental health and brain science research from Momentous Institute. A \u003ca href=\"https://centerforbrainhealth.org/article/momentous-case-study\">recent study\u003c/a> by Momentous Institute and the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas found this approach may be contributing to positive outcomes for graduates of the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These findings come at a time when lessons on emotions, relationships and social awareness, often referred to as social and emotional learning, \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/social-and-emotional-learning-is-the-latest-flashpoint-in-the-education-wars/\">have become a flashpoint in education and culture wars\u003c/a>. Studies show such lessons can improve academic performance: Other researchers unaffiliated with Momentous School have also found that teaching about the brain \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9775149/\">can provide motivation\u003c/a> for students and improve academic and social development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As teachers and students head back to school and face new routines and social situations, now is a good time to build relationships and introduce even young students to ideas about how their brain works, Gomez said. Although many students at Momentous deal with challenges such as poverty, she believes that the school’s emphasis on mental health and brain science has helped families to better cope with those pressures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The point isn’t to never have stress in your life, it’s to know what to do with it,” Gomez said. “Children and parents having agency and tools helps them know how to navigate life stressors, which has a buffering effect on their brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Momentous School was developed based on research by Momentous Institute.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jackie-mader/\">\u003cem>Jackie Mader\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/j1U5CM890xs9omELswfOt8jvEJ?domain=hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>neuroscience in education\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by The \u003c/em>\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em>\u003cem> Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/GmbvCNk8Pyf9nyvQs4hrtyzLzj?domain=hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em>\u003cem> newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What if improving children’s mental health — and life outcomes — could be done by teaching kids how their brains work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a key idea behind the approach of teachers at Momentous School in Dallas, a private elementary school that serves 225 students, most of whom come from low-income families. Each day, educators present lessons on neuroscience and mindfulness, from the youngest learners all the way up to fifth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preschoolers in the school’s 3-year-old classroom learn about the brain by singing \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psRCo7yu1_I&t=1s\">“The Brain Song”\u003c/a> to the tune of “Bingo” (“I have a brain in my head/And it’s for thinking”). They practice mindfulness by lying down with stuffed animals on their stomachs and watching them move up and down as they breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Older students learn calming strategies like slowly counting each finger on their hands while breathing in and out. Classrooms offer tactile models of the brain to help students learn about different parts such as the prefrontal cortex, which controls such processes as executive function and problem solving, and the brain stem, which regulates breathing and blood pressure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This focus on mindfulness is happening in \u003ca href=\"https://childmind.org/article/mindfulness-in-the-classroom/\">schools across the country\u003c/a>, according to the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit focused on children’s mental health. Experts say the goal is teaching self-awareness and regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once the kids feel they can calm themselves, even just through breathing it’s like the ‘wow’ moment,” said Rick Kinder, creator of a mindfulness program called “Wellness Works in Schools,” in an article by the Child Mind Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65793\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1346px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65793\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning.jpeg\" alt=\"Illustration of a brain and its functions\" width=\"1346\" height=\"1346\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning.jpeg 1346w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/09/mader-ec-brain-learning-768x768.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1346px) 100vw, 1346px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Research shows teaching children about their brains can help with learning and motivation. \u003ccite>(Momentous School)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At Momentous School, conversations about the brain continue throughout the day, as teachers can be heard encouraging students to identify their emotions or asking, “What’s your amygdala saying to you in this moment?” according to Jessica Gomez, a psychologist and executive director of Momentous Institute, the Dallas-based mental health nonprofit that operates the school. (The amygdala processes emotions in the brain.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through these frequent discussions and additional lessons on mental health and healthy relationships, teachers are “trying to normalize these things as part of the human condition versus something that is stigmatizing,” Gomez said. The school also holds regular parent nights to educate families on how the brain works and teach emotional regulation strategies that families can practice together at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://momentousinstitute.org/momentous-school\">Momentous School\u003c/a>, which launched in 1997 and is funded by philanthropic donations, was developed to put into practice mental health and brain science research from Momentous Institute. A \u003ca href=\"https://centerforbrainhealth.org/article/momentous-case-study\">recent study\u003c/a> by Momentous Institute and the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas found this approach may be contributing to positive outcomes for graduates of the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These findings come at a time when lessons on emotions, relationships and social awareness, often referred to as social and emotional learning, \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/social-and-emotional-learning-is-the-latest-flashpoint-in-the-education-wars/\">have become a flashpoint in education and culture wars\u003c/a>. Studies show such lessons can improve academic performance: Other researchers unaffiliated with Momentous School have also found that teaching about the brain \u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9775149/\">can provide motivation\u003c/a> for students and improve academic and social development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As teachers and students head back to school and face new routines and social situations, now is a good time to build relationships and introduce even young students to ideas about how their brain works, Gomez said. Although many students at Momentous deal with challenges such as poverty, she believes that the school’s emphasis on mental health and brain science has helped families to better cope with those pressures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The point isn’t to never have stress in your life, it’s to know what to do with it,” Gomez said. “Children and parents having agency and tools helps them know how to navigate life stressors, which has a buffering effect on their brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>*Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Momentous School was developed based on research by Momentous Institute.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jackie-mader/\">\u003cem>Jackie Mader\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/j1U5CM890xs9omELswfOt8jvEJ?domain=hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>neuroscience in education\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by The \u003c/em>\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em>\u003cem> Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/GmbvCNk8Pyf9nyvQs4hrtyzLzj?domain=hechingerreport.org\">\u003cem>Hechinger\u003c/em>\u003cem> newsletter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Boys Face Unique Challenges. Here’s How to Help Them Thrive",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On her son’s first day of kindergarten, Ruth Whippman, author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705378/boymom-by-ruth-whippman/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, stood by as a parent volunteer welcomed each child at the gate. Two nervous little girls walked in first, and the volunteer crouched down, his voice warm and tender: “Hi, sweetheart.” Then came Whippman’s son. The volunteer straightened up, his tone dropping an octave as he gave a hearty high five and said, “Hey, buddy!” In that moment, Whippman saw how boys and girls are often treated differently, even when they’re feeling the same emotions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As she explores in her book, these subtle messages teach boys to “man up,” cutting them off from vulnerability, deep connections and intimacy. “By the time kids are five years old, they’ve already accumulated many thousands of buddy/sweetheart moments,” said Whippman. However, small changes in how parents, teachers and community members show up for boys can help rewrite that narrative and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56268/how-learning-emotional-skills-can-help-boys-become-men\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">better support their emotional growth\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Point out the problem\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The culture has grown a lot in the past few years at calling out how sexism affects young girls, but when it comes to boys it’s a different story, said Whippman “We just don’t have the equivalent tools or vocabulary or kind of social permission to call it out when it comes to boys,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One way this shows up is in how boys and men are portrayed in books and movies. Whippman highlighted the popular movie Inside Out as an example. The young girl character’s brain is shown as a rich mix of emotions, but when they show the dad’s brain the emotions are watching sports or confused. “Often girls get given content that’s all about\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56979/what-the-research-says-about-the-academic-power-of-friendship\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> friendships and relationships\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and social-emotional dilemmas. Whereas boys get so much content about battles and fighting,” said Whippman. This normalizes the idea that boys do not have to be engaged in emotions or that they are not expected to have rich emotional lives. This is not only a disservice to boys’ relationships with themselves, but it can negatively affect the way they “track and manage other people’s feelings and other people’s emotions,” Whippman said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Media with boy characters that experience and express emotions can be hard to find, but they do exist, according to Whippman. She recommended \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gordonkorman.com/the-fort\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gordon Korman’s \u003cem>The Fort\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which is all about male friendship, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/208913/wonder-by-r-j-palacio/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">R.J. Palacio’s \u003cem>Wonder\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a favorite of her sons. “It’s written with real complex, genuine interiority, which is usually reserved for female characters,” she said. For a family movie, she suggested \u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12038300/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Speed Cubers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a documentary about Rubik’s cube champions that highlights male friendships and vulnerability.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Prioritize compassion over discipline\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the spotlight on men behaving badly, Whippman felt a heightened sense of concern as she raised her boys. “It was almost like boys were just these predators in waiting,” she said. “The best you could do as a mom was to kind of minimize the harm.” Her first reaction was to be stricter and rely on discipline. However, after reading research by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allanschore.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alan Schore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that showed \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/imhj.21616\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">boys are more emotionally vulnerable\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> because the parts of their brains responsible for emotional regulation mature more slowly, she realized her approach might not be working as intended. “In our home, we’d been using sticker charts, rewards, and consequences. And I just thought, ‘Scrap all of this,’” she said. “They needed my support, not my chastisement.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whippman shifted her focus to connecting with her kids. She started spending more time with them, being more flexible when they misbehaved, and approaching their experiences with curiosity. The results, she said, were transformative and her relationship with her boys changed for the better. “We learn to be empathetic and caring by being empathized with and cared for ourselves. You can’t just shame a person into becoming a moral and caring person,” said Whippman.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t set limits, she cautioned. “It’s just a different orientation and approach. See your child as a human being who needs love, nurture, and support in that moment. Offer them grace, and believe they’re not acting out of ill will.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Use positive touch\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From the earliest days of life, parents tend to handle boys and girls differently, said Whippman. For instance, while \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3283567/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">roughhousing is more common with young boys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, studies show \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4580286/#S9\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mothers provide twice as much caretaking touch\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—like cuddling or soothing gestures—to baby girls. Over time, these differences can add up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Boys in our culture are one of the most touch-starved groups,” Whippman explained. \u003ca href=\"https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/51a030_b8c019f94b8445eb809dba22ab14650a.pdf\">Research supports this.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This lack of positive physical connection can have lasting effects, but small, intentional actions can make a difference. Simple gestures like a hand on the back when they’re upset or a pat on the shoulder to acknowledge a job well done can help offset this pattern of low touch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to nurture girls or we don’t need to nurture trans kids or kids of other genders,” said Whippman. “It’s just that boys have very specific gender socialization which affects them in very specific ways. And I think we need to be aware of that.” \u003c/span>\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=KQINC9477223480\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to MindShift — where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How many of you have seen those “Boy Mom” bumper stickers? Maybe on a car at school drop-off, or maybe the sticker is on your car. [car horn] As a culture, we’ve regarded raising boys as a point of pride for parents who feel like they’ve survived the storm of parenting rambunctious kids.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what about the boys themselves? While parents are often celebrated for embracing the chaos, boys are often sent the message that their unruly behavior is simply “boys being boys.” Beyond the stickers and slogans, what does it really mean to raise boys in today’s world? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, we’re joined by Ruth Whippman, author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Right after this…we’ll talk to Ruth about what’s shaping boys’ lives today—and how we, as parents, teachers, and communities, can do better to support them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to the podcast Ruth. Let’s start with a story you shared in your book about what you call the buddy/sweetheart phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> On my son’s first day of kindergarten, which was last year in a just regular public school, he’s pretty anxious. You know, he’s stressed about all the normal things about going to school for the first time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And right in front of my son were these two little girls who were like equally anxious to be starting kindergarten. They also looked kind of scared and like they were going to miss their mothers and all the rest of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And as they walked through the gate, there’s a parent volunteer who is a dad, this big guy, he sort of said very tenderly down at that level, he was like, Hi, sweetheart. And then the second girl, same thing. Hi, sweetheart. And then my son walks through the gate and this guy, like, puffs up to his giant, like, six feet something size, and his voice drops like, an entire octave. And he says, Hey, buddy. And gives my son a high five. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some people this difference might seem very subtle. Why did it stick with you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Had I not spent like several years researching boys and gender and masculinity and all the rest of it wouldn’t have even registered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s just these tiny moments that really accumulate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s really subtly sending a kind of like man up type message to the boy. I kind of like, you know, your emotions aren’t really appropriate in this moment. You’re not really you shouldn’t really be showing vulnerability or weakness. It’s time to kind of toughen up and be a man. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think this story sets up two things really well. One is that these messages happen unintentionally and two that they start really early.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Right from the very beginning, the earliest days, parents handle baby boys and girls differently. They do more kind of roughhousing and jiggling with baby boys and throw them up in the air and say like, “Hey there little man.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Studies show that they do around twice as much what they call caretaking touch for baby girls. We talk to girls more about their emotions. We’re more comfortable with them expressing emotions. We used subtly different vocabularies when we’re talking to boys and girls. So with boys, we tend to use more words connected to aggression and dominance and winning and power. And with girls, we use more words associated with emotions and feelings. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so just little by little, these moments accumulate. And each one in and of itself is so harmless. But then, you know, over time, it adds up to a really quite different relationship with care and empathy and social emotional learning and also, you know, with power and agency and respect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In your book you mentioned a researcher named Alan Schore — what does his research tell us about what boys actually need? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Alan sure shows in his research, he looks at the sort of neuroscience of infant brains. He shows that, if anything, boys are actually born more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive than girls. A male brain is born about a month to six weeks behind a baby girl’s brain in terms of right brain development, which is the part of the brain that deals with emotions, emotional self-regulation. So like the ability to calm yourself down when you’re upset, forming attachments, etc.. So because male brains are slightly more immature, it means that they’re more vulnerable to disruption. They need more intensive care from caregivers than baby girls who tend to be a little more resilient and independent. Boys cry more. They find it harder to calm down when they’re stressed. You know, of course, these are all averages, group averages. We’re not talking about any individual baby, but as a group, infant boys are more vulnerable than infant girls. But because of our sort of ideas about masculinity and what boys need and who they are, you know, although they actually need more care and more support and more engagement with emotions and that type of learning, we end up giving them slightly less. You know, we toughen them up, we tell them to be tough, we handle them differently. We give them slightly, slightly less nurturing care. And that combination, that kind of need more, get less really accumulates into something that can be quite harmful for boys. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It feels like we’re at a bit of a crisis point with boys today. There are so many conflicting messages about what it means to “be a man” and none of them seem to leave room for emotional expression. Ruth, can you talk about how some of these narratives have evolved?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now we’ve got maybe a new narrative coming from the left, which for boys is more like, you’re so privileged, you have everything, your life is great. It’s time for you to take up less space, to be quiet, to shut up, to let everybody else have a voice and voice their problems, which is great in one sense. You know, we do want to give everybody else a voice, but it can easily just become yet another way of shutting down boys and men from expressing their feelings. And I think it’s causing a lot of resentment, a lot of misplaced anger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By doing that with boys and by sort of making them toughen up and communicating to them, they should man up and not show weakness and not be vulnerable, we are really cutting them off from that kind of deep connection and intimacy and deep relationships with other people. Because in order to form a deep bond with another person, you really need to show them your vulnerable self and you need to be willing and able to be there for their vulnerable self and to show up for their emotions and feelings. And we’re seeing the downstream effects of this in a real loneliness crisis amongst adult men and older adolescent boys at this moment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to jump in with some stats from your book. Boys account for 90 percent of school discipline violations and are suspended 3 times as often as girls. Boys are more likely than girls to engage in anti-social behavior. Boys commit suicide at nearly 4 times the rate as girls. Those are pretty dire. And even with those stats, having a book come out that says boys need more attention can make folks a bit agitated.. From what I understand you’re not saying boys need more attention …so we need to throw our girls out the window. Can you talk about how this isn’t a zero sum situation?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s so True. I think the zero sum thinking about this is just so sad. You know, we’re talking about children here, you know, and absolutely, when I say we need to nurture boys, it, of course, doesn’t mean that we don’t need to nurture girls or we don’t need to nurture trans kids or kids of other genders. It’s just that boys have very specific gendered socialization which affects them in very specific ways. We learn to be empathetic and caring by being empathized with and cared for ourselves. You know, that’s how we then, you know, we know you can’t just shame a person into becoming a moral and caring person. They have to internalize that from being cared for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Let’s talk about solutions. You emphasize naming the problem and teaching boys to see these dynamics, why do you feel that’s important? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I think part of naming the problem is just to see this stuff. You know. once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it. And this also shows up in the kinds of books and stories and tv shows that we show to boys as well. It’s not just in the way that we are with them as parents. Often girls get given content that’s about friendships and relations and social- emotional dilemmas whereas boys get so much content that is about battles and fighting. And we need to name it to our boys and we need to see it as a real loss. You know, we need to tell them and say, you know, well, why do we think that boys are emotionally stupid in this movie? Why is it portraying this? Why is that okay? Why is it allowed to pass? You know, and asking these questions and giving them the skills and the tools to mend that problem as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parenting plays a huge role in breaking these cycles too. In your book you shared how shifting your own approach transformed your relationship with your sons. What did you learn?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was almost like boys were just these kind of like predators and waiting, you know, the best you could do as a as a mom was to kind of minimize the harm. And I think my response was to try to be harsher and stricter with them and enforce more consequences and all the rest of it. In our home, we’ve been using all these sticker charts and rewards and consequences and this and that. And I was just like, scrap all of this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When I realized that that was, you know, vulnerability and they needed my support rather than my sort of chastisement or my behavioral interventions or whatever, and just kind of tried to connect with them my whole relationship with them changed. And once we started seeing them in that way, in a more sort of fully human way, rather than these like people to be controlled, then their behavior absolutely shifted and my relationship with them shifted as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People want a script that like this is how, you know, these are the five things I should say to my son to build a good relationship. And it doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to show up authentically and say and know and love the child that you have.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve talked about pointing out the problem to your kids and leading with compassion instead of discipline. Another solution you offer is what you call positive touch. What do you mean by that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Boys in our culture, some one of the most like touch starved groups. There was one study that said that teenage boys, around 20% of teenage boys report that they are never hugged or cuddled at all. And that’s about twice as many as the number of teenage girls who say the same thing. So positive touch reinforcement, communicating to your son that you are on his side. It’s a strange moment where, like, that feels like a kind of radical thing to do for liberal parents in a way. But actually, you know that boys need more nurture in a way, you know, which is not to say that we should be neglecting girls. Of course not. But just to correct for the imbalance that already exists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We love a recommendation here at MindShift. Do you have any recommendations for media with characters who are modeling what it looks like for boys to feel emotions?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Gordon Kormon is an author that writes books that often have both characters that are involved in friendship situations. And my son really enjoyed the book. Wonder. And the book is called Wonder, which is a story about a boy who has a facial disfigurement. But it’s just written with real complex, genuine interiority, which is usually reserved for female characters. So there are a few. It’s hard to find books like that. The author’s name is R.J. Palacio. A documentary that I watched with my son that may or may not still be on Netflix is called Speed Cubers is my son. My middle son got really into Rubik’s Cube for a while, and it’s this world which is very extremely male dominated and it can often be quite dry. But this documentary, Speed Cubers is gorgeous, and it becomes the story of the world champion and the cubing world champion and his autistic rival, who then becomes the world champion. But it really becomes a story about male friendship and kindness and emotionality, which was really special. And my son loved that as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A big thank you to Ruth Whippman. Her book is Boy Mom: Reimagining Boyhood in an Impossible Age of Masculinity. If you’d like to learn more, check out her book or visit our website for additional resources. We’ll have more episodes coming down the pipeline — hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On her son’s first day of kindergarten, Ruth Whippman, author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705378/boymom-by-ruth-whippman/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, stood by as a parent volunteer welcomed each child at the gate. Two nervous little girls walked in first, and the volunteer crouched down, his voice warm and tender: “Hi, sweetheart.” Then came Whippman’s son. The volunteer straightened up, his tone dropping an octave as he gave a hearty high five and said, “Hey, buddy!” In that moment, Whippman saw how boys and girls are often treated differently, even when they’re feeling the same emotions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As she explores in her book, these subtle messages teach boys to “man up,” cutting them off from vulnerability, deep connections and intimacy. “By the time kids are five years old, they’ve already accumulated many thousands of buddy/sweetheart moments,” said Whippman. However, small changes in how parents, teachers and community members show up for boys can help rewrite that narrative and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56268/how-learning-emotional-skills-can-help-boys-become-men\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">better support their emotional growth\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Point out the problem\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The culture has grown a lot in the past few years at calling out how sexism affects young girls, but when it comes to boys it’s a different story, said Whippman “We just don’t have the equivalent tools or vocabulary or kind of social permission to call it out when it comes to boys,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One way this shows up is in how boys and men are portrayed in books and movies. Whippman highlighted the popular movie Inside Out as an example. The young girl character’s brain is shown as a rich mix of emotions, but when they show the dad’s brain the emotions are watching sports or confused. “Often girls get given content that’s all about\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56979/what-the-research-says-about-the-academic-power-of-friendship\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> friendships and relationships\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and social-emotional dilemmas. Whereas boys get so much content about battles and fighting,” said Whippman. This normalizes the idea that boys do not have to be engaged in emotions or that they are not expected to have rich emotional lives. This is not only a disservice to boys’ relationships with themselves, but it can negatively affect the way they “track and manage other people’s feelings and other people’s emotions,” Whippman said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Media with boy characters that experience and express emotions can be hard to find, but they do exist, according to Whippman. She recommended \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gordonkorman.com/the-fort\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gordon Korman’s \u003cem>The Fort\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which is all about male friendship, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/208913/wonder-by-r-j-palacio/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">R.J. Palacio’s \u003cem>Wonder\u003c/em>\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a favorite of her sons. “It’s written with real complex, genuine interiority, which is usually reserved for female characters,” she said. For a family movie, she suggested \u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12038300/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Speed Cubers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a documentary about Rubik’s cube champions that highlights male friendships and vulnerability.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Prioritize compassion over discipline\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the wake of the #MeToo movement and the spotlight on men behaving badly, Whippman felt a heightened sense of concern as she raised her boys. “It was almost like boys were just these predators in waiting,” she said. “The best you could do as a mom was to kind of minimize the harm.” Her first reaction was to be stricter and rely on discipline. However, after reading research by \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allanschore.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alan Schore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that showed \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/imhj.21616\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">boys are more emotionally vulnerable\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> because the parts of their brains responsible for emotional regulation mature more slowly, she realized her approach might not be working as intended. “In our home, we’d been using sticker charts, rewards, and consequences. And I just thought, ‘Scrap all of this,’” she said. “They needed my support, not my chastisement.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whippman shifted her focus to connecting with her kids. She started spending more time with them, being more flexible when they misbehaved, and approaching their experiences with curiosity. The results, she said, were transformative and her relationship with her boys changed for the better. “We learn to be empathetic and caring by being empathized with and cared for ourselves. You can’t just shame a person into becoming a moral and caring person,” said Whippman.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t set limits, she cautioned. “It’s just a different orientation and approach. See your child as a human being who needs love, nurture, and support in that moment. Offer them grace, and believe they’re not acting out of ill will.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Use positive touch\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">From the earliest days of life, parents tend to handle boys and girls differently, said Whippman. For instance, while \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3283567/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">roughhousing is more common with young boys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, studies show \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4580286/#S9\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mothers provide twice as much caretaking touch\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—like cuddling or soothing gestures—to baby girls. Over time, these differences can add up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Boys in our culture are one of the most touch-starved groups,” Whippman explained. \u003ca href=\"https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/51a030_b8c019f94b8445eb809dba22ab14650a.pdf\">Research supports this.\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This lack of positive physical connection can have lasting effects, but small, intentional actions can make a difference. Simple gestures like a hand on the back when they’re upset or a pat on the shoulder to acknowledge a job well done can help offset this pattern of low touch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to nurture girls or we don’t need to nurture trans kids or kids of other genders,” said Whippman. “It’s just that boys have very specific gender socialization which affects them in very specific ways. And I think we need to be aware of that.” \u003c/span>\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=KQINC9477223480\" 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>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to MindShift — where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Nimah Gobir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How many of you have seen those “Boy Mom” bumper stickers? Maybe on a car at school drop-off, or maybe the sticker is on your car. [car horn] As a culture, we’ve regarded raising boys as a point of pride for parents who feel like they’ve survived the storm of parenting rambunctious kids.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what about the boys themselves? While parents are often celebrated for embracing the chaos, boys are often sent the message that their unruly behavior is simply “boys being boys.” Beyond the stickers and slogans, what does it really mean to raise boys in today’s world? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Today, we’re joined by Ruth Whippman, author of BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. Right after this…we’ll talk to Ruth about what’s shaping boys’ lives today—and how we, as parents, teachers, and communities, can do better to support them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Welcome to the podcast Ruth. Let’s start with a story you shared in your book about what you call the buddy/sweetheart phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> On my son’s first day of kindergarten, which was last year in a just regular public school, he’s pretty anxious. You know, he’s stressed about all the normal things about going to school for the first time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And right in front of my son were these two little girls who were like equally anxious to be starting kindergarten. They also looked kind of scared and like they were going to miss their mothers and all the rest of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And as they walked through the gate, there’s a parent volunteer who is a dad, this big guy, he sort of said very tenderly down at that level, he was like, Hi, sweetheart. And then the second girl, same thing. Hi, sweetheart. And then my son walks through the gate and this guy, like, puffs up to his giant, like, six feet something size, and his voice drops like, an entire octave. And he says, Hey, buddy. And gives my son a high five. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To some people this difference might seem very subtle. Why did it stick with you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Had I not spent like several years researching boys and gender and masculinity and all the rest of it wouldn’t have even registered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s just these tiny moments that really accumulate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s really subtly sending a kind of like man up type message to the boy. I kind of like, you know, your emotions aren’t really appropriate in this moment. You’re not really you shouldn’t really be showing vulnerability or weakness. It’s time to kind of toughen up and be a man. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think this story sets up two things really well. One is that these messages happen unintentionally and two that they start really early.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Right from the very beginning, the earliest days, parents handle baby boys and girls differently. They do more kind of roughhousing and jiggling with baby boys and throw them up in the air and say like, “Hey there little man.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Studies show that they do around twice as much what they call caretaking touch for baby girls. We talk to girls more about their emotions. We’re more comfortable with them expressing emotions. We used subtly different vocabularies when we’re talking to boys and girls. So with boys, we tend to use more words connected to aggression and dominance and winning and power. And with girls, we use more words associated with emotions and feelings. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so just little by little, these moments accumulate. And each one in and of itself is so harmless. But then, you know, over time, it adds up to a really quite different relationship with care and empathy and social emotional learning and also, you know, with power and agency and respect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In your book you mentioned a researcher named Alan Schore — what does his research tell us about what boys actually need? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Alan sure shows in his research, he looks at the sort of neuroscience of infant brains. He shows that, if anything, boys are actually born more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive than girls. A male brain is born about a month to six weeks behind a baby girl’s brain in terms of right brain development, which is the part of the brain that deals with emotions, emotional self-regulation. So like the ability to calm yourself down when you’re upset, forming attachments, etc.. So because male brains are slightly more immature, it means that they’re more vulnerable to disruption. They need more intensive care from caregivers than baby girls who tend to be a little more resilient and independent. Boys cry more. They find it harder to calm down when they’re stressed. You know, of course, these are all averages, group averages. We’re not talking about any individual baby, but as a group, infant boys are more vulnerable than infant girls. But because of our sort of ideas about masculinity and what boys need and who they are, you know, although they actually need more care and more support and more engagement with emotions and that type of learning, we end up giving them slightly less. You know, we toughen them up, we tell them to be tough, we handle them differently. We give them slightly, slightly less nurturing care. And that combination, that kind of need more, get less really accumulates into something that can be quite harmful for boys. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It feels like we’re at a bit of a crisis point with boys today. There are so many conflicting messages about what it means to “be a man” and none of them seem to leave room for emotional expression. Ruth, can you talk about how some of these narratives have evolved?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now we’ve got maybe a new narrative coming from the left, which for boys is more like, you’re so privileged, you have everything, your life is great. It’s time for you to take up less space, to be quiet, to shut up, to let everybody else have a voice and voice their problems, which is great in one sense. You know, we do want to give everybody else a voice, but it can easily just become yet another way of shutting down boys and men from expressing their feelings. And I think it’s causing a lot of resentment, a lot of misplaced anger. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> By doing that with boys and by sort of making them toughen up and communicating to them, they should man up and not show weakness and not be vulnerable, we are really cutting them off from that kind of deep connection and intimacy and deep relationships with other people. Because in order to form a deep bond with another person, you really need to show them your vulnerable self and you need to be willing and able to be there for their vulnerable self and to show up for their emotions and feelings. And we’re seeing the downstream effects of this in a real loneliness crisis amongst adult men and older adolescent boys at this moment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to jump in with some stats from your book. Boys account for 90 percent of school discipline violations and are suspended 3 times as often as girls. Boys are more likely than girls to engage in anti-social behavior. Boys commit suicide at nearly 4 times the rate as girls. Those are pretty dire. And even with those stats, having a book come out that says boys need more attention can make folks a bit agitated.. From what I understand you’re not saying boys need more attention …so we need to throw our girls out the window. Can you talk about how this isn’t a zero sum situation?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It’s so True. I think the zero sum thinking about this is just so sad. You know, we’re talking about children here, you know, and absolutely, when I say we need to nurture boys, it, of course, doesn’t mean that we don’t need to nurture girls or we don’t need to nurture trans kids or kids of other genders. It’s just that boys have very specific gendered socialization which affects them in very specific ways. We learn to be empathetic and caring by being empathized with and cared for ourselves. You know, that’s how we then, you know, we know you can’t just shame a person into becoming a moral and caring person. They have to internalize that from being cared for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Let’s talk about solutions. You emphasize naming the problem and teaching boys to see these dynamics, why do you feel that’s important? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So I think part of naming the problem is just to see this stuff. You know. once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it. And this also shows up in the kinds of books and stories and tv shows that we show to boys as well. It’s not just in the way that we are with them as parents. Often girls get given content that’s about friendships and relations and social- emotional dilemmas whereas boys get so much content that is about battles and fighting. And we need to name it to our boys and we need to see it as a real loss. You know, we need to tell them and say, you know, well, why do we think that boys are emotionally stupid in this movie? Why is it portraying this? Why is that okay? Why is it allowed to pass? You know, and asking these questions and giving them the skills and the tools to mend that problem as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Parenting plays a huge role in breaking these cycles too. In your book you shared how shifting your own approach transformed your relationship with your sons. What did you learn?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was almost like boys were just these kind of like predators and waiting, you know, the best you could do as a as a mom was to kind of minimize the harm. And I think my response was to try to be harsher and stricter with them and enforce more consequences and all the rest of it. In our home, we’ve been using all these sticker charts and rewards and consequences and this and that. And I was just like, scrap all of this.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When I realized that that was, you know, vulnerability and they needed my support rather than my sort of chastisement or my behavioral interventions or whatever, and just kind of tried to connect with them my whole relationship with them changed. And once we started seeing them in that way, in a more sort of fully human way, rather than these like people to be controlled, then their behavior absolutely shifted and my relationship with them shifted as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People want a script that like this is how, you know, these are the five things I should say to my son to build a good relationship. And it doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to show up authentically and say and know and love the child that you have.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve talked about pointing out the problem to your kids and leading with compassion instead of discipline. Another solution you offer is what you call positive touch. What do you mean by that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Boys in our culture, some one of the most like touch starved groups. There was one study that said that teenage boys, around 20% of teenage boys report that they are never hugged or cuddled at all. And that’s about twice as many as the number of teenage girls who say the same thing. So positive touch reinforcement, communicating to your son that you are on his side. It’s a strange moment where, like, that feels like a kind of radical thing to do for liberal parents in a way. But actually, you know that boys need more nurture in a way, you know, which is not to say that we should be neglecting girls. Of course not. But just to correct for the imbalance that already exists. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> We love a recommendation here at MindShift. Do you have any recommendations for media with characters who are modeling what it looks like for boys to feel emotions?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruth Whippman:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Gordon Kormon is an author that writes books that often have both characters that are involved in friendship situations. And my son really enjoyed the book. Wonder. And the book is called Wonder, which is a story about a boy who has a facial disfigurement. But it’s just written with real complex, genuine interiority, which is usually reserved for female characters. So there are a few. It’s hard to find books like that. The author’s name is R.J. Palacio. A documentary that I watched with my son that may or may not still be on Netflix is called Speed Cubers is my son. My middle son got really into Rubik’s Cube for a while, and it’s this world which is very extremely male dominated and it can often be quite dry. But this documentary, Speed Cubers is gorgeous, and it becomes the story of the world champion and the cubing world champion and his autistic rival, who then becomes the world champion. But it really becomes a story about male friendship and kindness and emotionality, which was really special. And my son loved that as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nimah Gobir:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A big thank you to Ruth Whippman. Her book is Boy Mom: Reimagining Boyhood in an Impossible Age of Masculinity. If you’d like to learn more, check out her book or visit our website for additional resources. We’ll have more episodes coming down the pipeline — hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss a thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This post was \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/p/understanding-your-sensitive-child\">originally published\u003c/a> by Parenting Translator. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the newsletter\u003c/a> and follow Parenting Translator \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/parentingtranslator/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on Instagram\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sensitive children often get a bad rap. They can be labeled as “difficult,” “dramatic” or “spoiled,” and often parents are blamed for coddling or over-accommodating them. Yet, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9666332/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> increasingly suggests that children show real differences in sensitivity and respond to parenting differently as a result. In other words, some children really \u003cem>are\u003c/em> more sensitive than other children and it isn’t just an excuse that parents use for “misbehavior.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One way that researchers have conceptualized sensitive children is the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-017-0090-6.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Orchid-Dandelion metaphor\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. According to this metaphor, some children are orchids, meaning they thrive only under ideal conditions and are very sensitive to changes in their environment. Orchid children are contrasted with dandelion children, meaning children that can flourish in any environment and who are not very sensitive to environmental changes. According to this study, about 31% of people are orchids and 29% are dandelions. Researchers also found that about 40% of people are tulips, meaning they show a level of sensitivity somewhere in between dandelions and orchids (that is, they don’t necessarily need ideal conditions like orchids but can’t flourish in any condition like dandelions). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4ADAF88C7F63FF2C2CDE99880943C3B7/S0954579421000821a.pdf/div-class-title-beyond-orchids-and-dandelions-susceptibility-to-environmental-influences-is-not-bimodal-div.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some researchers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> argue that the Orchid-Dandelion metaphor is an oversimplification and that sensitivity occurs on a spectrum. Researchers also argue that most children are not simply sensitive across the board but show a unique profile of sensitivities. For example, your child may be very sensitive to changes in their sleep but not very sensitive to changes in their routine, or they may be the pickiest eater but can jump into any new situation without hesitating. Although the Orchid-Dandelion metaphor may be an oversimplification, it does help us to understand that sensitivity is all about how children respond to their environment. Being sensitive doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with the child themselves. Rather, it means that we might have to alter the environment in order to optimally meet their needs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sensitivity in children is also discussed in the framework of being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP). This term was coined by psychologist Elaine Aron in 1997 in her book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Being a highly sensitive person is not an official diagnosis or mental condition, but \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9248053/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> finds that it is a personality difference characterized by being more hesitant in new situations and showing more sensitivity in sensory input (such as being more reactive to pain, noise or lack of sleep). \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086365/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> also finds real neurobiological differences in how highly sensitive individuals respond to their environment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A recent study provides some new insights into sensitivity in children and what we can do as parents. This \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13531\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> looked at how a child’s sensitivity impacts their development later in life and found some interesting results. This study looked at how sensitive children were to the following influences at age 3: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>1. Parent praise\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. Parent stress\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3. Child mood\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>4. Child sleep\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Any parent of a toddler (especially any parent of a sensitive toddler) will get a kick out of this — the researchers measured sensitivity of children during toothbrushing. Parents submitted videos of their children during toothbrushing for two weeks and kept diaries of their children’s moods and sleep. An interesting aside is that this research group found in a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930564/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">previous study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that children brushed their teeth for longer when their parents used more praise and less direct instruction and on days when they were in a better mood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the children were 5 to 7 years old, researchers asked parents to report on the child’s problems, including both behavioral and mental health problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The researchers found the following: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Some children are more sensitive to praise from their parents and this type of sensitivity is linked with fewer problems later in life:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Children who were more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 showed fewer behavior problems and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Some children are more sensitive to changes in their own mood and this type of sensitivity is linked with more problems later in life\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Children whose behavior was more impacted by their own mood at age 3 showed more symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Praise from parents regardless of child sensitivity is linked with fewer behavior problems:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When parents praised their children more frequently and more consistently at age 3, their children show fewer behavior problems at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Sensitivity to mood and parent stress are related\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Children who were more sensitive to changes in their own mood were also more sensitive to changes in their parent’s stress. However, sensitivity to parent stress was not related to problems later in life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>Overall translation\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have a more sensitive child, you can rest assured that it isn’t all in your head and it isn’t your fault. We need more research on this topic, but the research we have suggests some ways that parents can think about sensitive children and support these children to the best of their ability. So how might this research influence your parenting? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Remember that sensitivity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The children who were more sensitive to praise in the study described above showed fewer problems later in life. We need more research on this topic but it is possible that sensitive children may have the advantage of being more sensitive to some positive influences as well. Make sure you notice some of the positive impacts of your child’s sensitive nature rather than only focusing on the negative impacts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Accept that some children are just more sensitive, but sensitivity may be more complicated than you think\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This study, along with previous research, suggests that children may be differently sensitive to different influences. In other words, you shouldn’t assume that your child (or any child) is generally “sensitive” but rather it might be more helpful to think about the specific situations that trigger sensitivity. For example, your child may be more sensitive to influences at home than at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Teach new skills to children who are sensitive to changes in their own mood. \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The study described above found that the children who were less sensitive to changes in their own mood showed less behavior problems later in childhood. We can support these more sensitive children by teaching them coping skills so behavior doesn’t have to always be dictated by their mood. This does not mean that you are teaching your child not to experience the emotion — only that emotions don’t always have to change their behavior. This is often the goal of therapy for both adults and children. Coping skills could include deep breathing, taking a break and self-talk, such as telling themselves, “Even though I am nervous, I can still do it!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Know your child and provide extra support to them in the areas that they are more sensitive.\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Think about your own child. When do they show orchid, dandelion and tulip behavior? Sensitivity in children is all about how children respond to their environment. So think about how you can change the environment to help them. For example, if you have a child that is very sensitive to changes in plans, you can prepare them for the possibility of any changes or help them to learn coping strategies to handle these changes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Regardless of sensitivity, praise your child frequently and consistently\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Previous \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202203/should-parents-really-stop-praising-their-children\">research\u003c/a> finds many benefits of praise. The study described above adds to this by suggesting that, if your child seems to respond well to praise, it is even more important to praise them frequently and consistently. This study did not look at the type of praise but \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrei-Cimpian/publication/6360300_Subtle_Linguistic_Cues_Affect_Children%27s_Motivation/links/5e9ccd4d299bf13079aa3266/Subtle-Linguistic-Cues-Affect-Childrens-Motivation.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">previous research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> shows that parents should praise based on effort and hard work rather than characteristics of the child, such as, “You did a great job listening to me” vs. “You are a good listener.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cara Goodwin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a mother of four and the founder of \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Parenting Translator\u003c/a>, a nonprofit newsletter that turns scientific research into information that is accurate, relevant and useful for parents.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This post was \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/p/understanding-your-sensitive-child\">originally published\u003c/a> by Parenting Translator. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the newsletter\u003c/a> and follow Parenting Translator \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/parentingtranslator/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on Instagram\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sensitive children often get a bad rap. They can be labeled as “difficult,” “dramatic” or “spoiled,” and often parents are blamed for coddling or over-accommodating them. Yet, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9666332/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> increasingly suggests that children show real differences in sensitivity and respond to parenting differently as a result. In other words, some children really \u003cem>are\u003c/em> more sensitive than other children and it isn’t just an excuse that parents use for “misbehavior.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One way that researchers have conceptualized sensitive children is the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-017-0090-6.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Orchid-Dandelion metaphor\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. According to this metaphor, some children are orchids, meaning they thrive only under ideal conditions and are very sensitive to changes in their environment. Orchid children are contrasted with dandelion children, meaning children that can flourish in any environment and who are not very sensitive to environmental changes. According to this study, about 31% of people are orchids and 29% are dandelions. Researchers also found that about 40% of people are tulips, meaning they show a level of sensitivity somewhere in between dandelions and orchids (that is, they don’t necessarily need ideal conditions like orchids but can’t flourish in any condition like dandelions). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4ADAF88C7F63FF2C2CDE99880943C3B7/S0954579421000821a.pdf/div-class-title-beyond-orchids-and-dandelions-susceptibility-to-environmental-influences-is-not-bimodal-div.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some researchers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> argue that the Orchid-Dandelion metaphor is an oversimplification and that sensitivity occurs on a spectrum. Researchers also argue that most children are not simply sensitive across the board but show a unique profile of sensitivities. For example, your child may be very sensitive to changes in their sleep but not very sensitive to changes in their routine, or they may be the pickiest eater but can jump into any new situation without hesitating. Although the Orchid-Dandelion metaphor may be an oversimplification, it does help us to understand that sensitivity is all about how children respond to their environment. Being sensitive doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with the child themselves. Rather, it means that we might have to alter the environment in order to optimally meet their needs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sensitivity in children is also discussed in the framework of being a “highly sensitive person” (HSP). This term was coined by psychologist Elaine Aron in 1997 in her book, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Being a highly sensitive person is not an official diagnosis or mental condition, but \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9248053/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> finds that it is a personality difference characterized by being more hesitant in new situations and showing more sensitivity in sensory input (such as being more reactive to pain, noise or lack of sleep). \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086365/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> also finds real neurobiological differences in how highly sensitive individuals respond to their environment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A recent study provides some new insights into sensitivity in children and what we can do as parents. This \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13531\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> looked at how a child’s sensitivity impacts their development later in life and found some interesting results. This study looked at how sensitive children were to the following influences at age 3: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>1. Parent praise\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>2. Parent stress\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>3. Child mood\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>4. Child sleep\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Any parent of a toddler (especially any parent of a sensitive toddler) will get a kick out of this — the researchers measured sensitivity of children during toothbrushing. Parents submitted videos of their children during toothbrushing for two weeks and kept diaries of their children’s moods and sleep. An interesting aside is that this research group found in a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930564/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">previous study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that children brushed their teeth for longer when their parents used more praise and less direct instruction and on days when they were in a better mood. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the children were 5 to 7 years old, researchers asked parents to report on the child’s problems, including both behavioral and mental health problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The researchers found the following: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Some children are more sensitive to praise from their parents and this type of sensitivity is linked with fewer problems later in life:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Children who were more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 showed fewer behavior problems and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Some children are more sensitive to changes in their own mood and this type of sensitivity is linked with more problems later in life\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Children whose behavior was more impacted by their own mood at age 3 showed more symptoms of depression and anxiety at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Praise from parents regardless of child sensitivity is linked with fewer behavior problems:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When parents praised their children more frequently and more consistently at age 3, their children show fewer behavior problems at age 5 to 7. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Sensitivity to mood and parent stress are related\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Children who were more sensitive to changes in their own mood were also more sensitive to changes in their parent’s stress. However, sensitivity to parent stress was not related to problems later in life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cb>Overall translation\u003c/b>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you have a more sensitive child, you can rest assured that it isn’t all in your head and it isn’t your fault. We need more research on this topic, but the research we have suggests some ways that parents can think about sensitive children and support these children to the best of their ability. So how might this research influence your parenting? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Remember that sensitivity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The children who were more sensitive to praise in the study described above showed fewer problems later in life. We need more research on this topic but it is possible that sensitive children may have the advantage of being more sensitive to some positive influences as well. Make sure you notice some of the positive impacts of your child’s sensitive nature rather than only focusing on the negative impacts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Accept that some children are just more sensitive, but sensitivity may be more complicated than you think\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This study, along with previous research, suggests that children may be differently sensitive to different influences. In other words, you shouldn’t assume that your child (or any child) is generally “sensitive” but rather it might be more helpful to think about the specific situations that trigger sensitivity. For example, your child may be more sensitive to influences at home than at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Teach new skills to children who are sensitive to changes in their own mood. \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The study described above found that the children who were less sensitive to changes in their own mood showed less behavior problems later in childhood. We can support these more sensitive children by teaching them coping skills so behavior doesn’t have to always be dictated by their mood. This does not mean that you are teaching your child not to experience the emotion — only that emotions don’t always have to change their behavior. This is often the goal of therapy for both adults and children. Coping skills could include deep breathing, taking a break and self-talk, such as telling themselves, “Even though I am nervous, I can still do it!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Know your child and provide extra support to them in the areas that they are more sensitive.\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Think about your own child. When do they show orchid, dandelion and tulip behavior? Sensitivity in children is all about how children respond to their environment. So think about how you can change the environment to help them. For example, if you have a child that is very sensitive to changes in plans, you can prepare them for the possibility of any changes or help them to learn coping strategies to handle these changes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Regardless of sensitivity, praise your child frequently and consistently\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Previous \u003ca href=\"https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202203/should-parents-really-stop-praising-their-children\">research\u003c/a> finds many benefits of praise. The study described above adds to this by suggesting that, if your child seems to respond well to praise, it is even more important to praise them frequently and consistently. This study did not look at the type of praise but \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrei-Cimpian/publication/6360300_Subtle_Linguistic_Cues_Affect_Children%27s_Motivation/links/5e9ccd4d299bf13079aa3266/Subtle-Linguistic-Cues-Affect-Childrens-Motivation.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">previous research\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> shows that parents should praise based on effort and hard work rather than characteristics of the child, such as, “You did a great job listening to me” vs. “You are a good listener.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cara Goodwin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a mother of four and the founder of \u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Parenting Translator\u003c/a>, a nonprofit newsletter that turns scientific research into information that is accurate, relevant and useful for parents.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Too often we refer to play as \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just play\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/MrazKristine\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kristine Mraz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, adding that the “just” implies that it has no purpose or value. As an early childhood educator, instructional coach and coauthor of\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.heinemann.com/products/e07788.aspx\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Purposeful Play\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Mraz advocates for incorporating guided play as a central aspect of the classroom rather than an activity reserved for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recess\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. According to Mraz, guided play broadly refers to educational activities that are gently steered by an adult using open ended questions and prompts, while still giving children the freedom to explore a learning goal in their own way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13730\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">benefits of guided play\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are well-documented. “Teaching children through guided play \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220112094006.htm\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">supports key aspects of their learning and development\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> at least as well, and sometimes better than the traditional direct instruction they usually receive at school,” noted Mraz. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/twenty-six-studies-point-to-more-play-for-young-children/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Studies indicate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that children who engage in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60255/in-elementary-classrooms-demand-grows-for-play-based-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">play-based learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> often outperform their peers academically and socially. Additionally, children who attended play-based early childhood centers were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://deyproject.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">less likely to be referred for services\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for their social-emotional needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the misconception that play detracts from learning can prevent schools and teachers from integrating it more. Schools often limit play to recess or the end of the day, thus missing its potential as a robust instructional method. “Play is the journey that brings us to standards,” Mraz said “It’s not a time of day. It is a method.” During a talk at The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gathering.theeducatorcollaborative.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Educator Collaborative 2023 Gathering\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Mraz outlined an approach known as the play workshop structure that can help teachers incorporate play into subjects like reading, writing and math. This approach includes three main components: choosing, gathering and clean-up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"S2 W4 - Beyond Pen and Paper: Play as a Tool for Standards Based Learning\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/MvYyOdva10E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Choosing: Pick your play\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52421/what-giving-students-choice-looks-like-in-the-classroom\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">choosing step\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the play workshop structure, students are given the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52424/why-choice-matters-to-student-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">autonomy to select the activity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> they’d like to do. “We can invoke a playful spirit any time we bring up choice. The more choice, the more it feels like play,” said Mraz. Many teachers find it effective to use centers or stations to offer activity choices in the classroom.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, if a teacher is focused on guiding students through creating a story using a sequence of events, they may offer students the option to draw their story, use a variety of materials to construct it or engage in dramatic play to act it out. “These all bring us to the standards, but they bring us there in a way that leverages kids’ natural inclinations to play,” said Mraz. She recommended Susan Harris MacKay’s book \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12034.aspx\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Story Workshop\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as a resource for using play to meet learning standards related to storytelling\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mraz also encouraged teachers to be flexible. Initially, she required students to select a path and stick with it. However, she has since realized that being adaptable can improve student engagement and creativity. “Some days [students] just might need to move around, or sometimes doing something in one area actually inspires [them] in another area,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Gathering: Construct ideas \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After students have played, the gathering phase provides time for students to share their thoughts, reflect on their experiences and collaboratively build knowledge. Mraz suggested that students sit in a circle for this phase. Teachers may guide students to explore various content areas, reflect on themes from the play, address problems that came up or discuss the materials being used. “In order to construct knowledge, you have to have opportunities to process it with people,” Mraz said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In one class, Mraz used gathering time to talk about different ways to share materials. Students identified different sharing strategies they used during their play, such as taking turns, splitting items or finding additional materials. Mraz created a chart with these strategies and asked if any students had experiences that could be addressed with those ideas. The activity built on students’ reading and problem-solving skills, Mraz said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help teachers build their facilitation skills, Mraz recommended \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.routledge.com/Hands-Down-Speak-Out-Listening-and-Talking-Across-Literacy-and-Math/Wedekind-HermannThompson/p/book/9781625312693\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson. “[It’s] a brilliant text on how to develop these circle conversations in your classroom with tons of practical strategy,” said Mraz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Clean up: Collaborate toward a shared goal\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The clean-up phase of the play workshop structure is not merely about tidying up but about instilling a sense of responsibility and cooperation. While the usual approach might have each child cleaning up their own play area, Mraz suggested organizing clean-up to reflect how it works in the real world. For example, in a family, clean-up tasks are often shared: One person might clear the table, another might wash the dishes and another might dry them. Students can follow a similar structure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead of “clean up your own mess,” Mraz uses the message, “our community works to make our space clean.” She assigns specific roles to small groups of students, such as table wipers, block cleaners and a timer setter. “Every child is able to contribute to clean up in a way that plays to their strengths,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mraz acknowledged that while play-based learning is familiar to many early childhood educators, incorporating these strategies can be daunting for teachers who rely on traditional methods. Even small shifts can make a significant difference, she said. “Is there one small movement you can make that brings us closer to a world that values children in their natural state, so that children grow to be the people who value one another in their natural state?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Too often we refer to play as \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just play\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/MrazKristine\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kristine Mraz\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, adding that the “just” implies that it has no purpose or value. As an early childhood educator, instructional coach and coauthor of\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.heinemann.com/products/e07788.aspx\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Purposeful Play\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Mraz advocates for incorporating guided play as a central aspect of the classroom rather than an activity reserved for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">recess\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. According to Mraz, guided play broadly refers to educational activities that are gently steered by an adult using open ended questions and prompts, while still giving children the freedom to explore a learning goal in their own way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13730\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">benefits of guided play\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are well-documented. “Teaching children through guided play \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220112094006.htm\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">supports key aspects of their learning and development\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> at least as well, and sometimes better than the traditional direct instruction they usually receive at school,” noted Mraz. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/twenty-six-studies-point-to-more-play-for-young-children/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Studies indicate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that children who engage in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60255/in-elementary-classrooms-demand-grows-for-play-based-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">play-based learning\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> often outperform their peers academically and socially. Additionally, children who attended play-based early childhood centers were \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://deyproject.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">less likely to be referred for services\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for their social-emotional needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the misconception that play detracts from learning can prevent schools and teachers from integrating it more. Schools often limit play to recess or the end of the day, thus missing its potential as a robust instructional method. “Play is the journey that brings us to standards,” Mraz said “It’s not a time of day. It is a method.” During a talk at The \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gathering.theeducatorcollaborative.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Educator Collaborative 2023 Gathering\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Mraz outlined an approach known as the play workshop structure that can help teachers incorporate play into subjects like reading, writing and math. This approach includes three main components: choosing, gathering and clean-up.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"S2 W4 - Beyond Pen and Paper: Play as a Tool for Standards Based Learning\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/MvYyOdva10E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Choosing: Pick your play\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52421/what-giving-students-choice-looks-like-in-the-classroom\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">choosing step\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of the play workshop structure, students are given the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52424/why-choice-matters-to-student-learning\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">autonomy to select the activity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> they’d like to do. “We can invoke a playful spirit any time we bring up choice. The more choice, the more it feels like play,” said Mraz. Many teachers find it effective to use centers or stations to offer activity choices in the classroom.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, if a teacher is focused on guiding students through creating a story using a sequence of events, they may offer students the option to draw their story, use a variety of materials to construct it or engage in dramatic play to act it out. “These all bring us to the standards, but they bring us there in a way that leverages kids’ natural inclinations to play,” said Mraz. She recommended Susan Harris MacKay’s book \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.heinemann.com/products/e12034.aspx\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Story Workshop\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as a resource for using play to meet learning standards related to storytelling\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mraz also encouraged teachers to be flexible. Initially, she required students to select a path and stick with it. However, she has since realized that being adaptable can improve student engagement and creativity. “Some days [students] just might need to move around, or sometimes doing something in one area actually inspires [them] in another area,” she said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Gathering: Construct ideas \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After students have played, the gathering phase provides time for students to share their thoughts, reflect on their experiences and collaboratively build knowledge. Mraz suggested that students sit in a circle for this phase. Teachers may guide students to explore various content areas, reflect on themes from the play, address problems that came up or discuss the materials being used. “In order to construct knowledge, you have to have opportunities to process it with people,” Mraz said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In one class, Mraz used gathering time to talk about different ways to share materials. Students identified different sharing strategies they used during their play, such as taking turns, splitting items or finding additional materials. Mraz created a chart with these strategies and asked if any students had experiences that could be addressed with those ideas. The activity built on students’ reading and problem-solving skills, Mraz said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To help teachers build their facilitation skills, Mraz recommended \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.routledge.com/Hands-Down-Speak-Out-Listening-and-Talking-Across-Literacy-and-Math/Wedekind-HermannThompson/p/book/9781625312693\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson. “[It’s] a brilliant text on how to develop these circle conversations in your classroom with tons of practical strategy,” said Mraz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Clean up: Collaborate toward a shared goal\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The clean-up phase of the play workshop structure is not merely about tidying up but about instilling a sense of responsibility and cooperation. While the usual approach might have each child cleaning up their own play area, Mraz suggested organizing clean-up to reflect how it works in the real world. For example, in a family, clean-up tasks are often shared: One person might clear the table, another might wash the dishes and another might dry them. Students can follow a similar structure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead of “clean up your own mess,” Mraz uses the message, “our community works to make our space clean.” She assigns specific roles to small groups of students, such as table wipers, block cleaners and a timer setter. “Every child is able to contribute to clean up in a way that plays to their strengths,” she explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mraz acknowledged that while play-based learning is familiar to many early childhood educators, incorporating these strategies can be daunting for teachers who rely on traditional methods. Even small shifts can make a significant difference, she said. “Is there one small movement you can make that brings us closer to a world that values children in their natural state, so that children grow to be the people who value one another in their natural state?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Young Children Need Help Identifying Emotions. 'Little Safe Place' Boxes Give Them Tools.",
"headTitle": "Young Children Need Help Identifying Emotions. ‘Little Safe Place’ Boxes Give Them Tools. | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Jenny Kist’s students walk through the classroom door every morning, they take out their “little safe place” boxes. Made to be a portable version of a calming physical space in Kist’s early childhood education classroom, these small plastic pencil boxes hold everything Kist’s students need throughout the day to practice \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62194/is-social-emotional-learning-effective-new-meta-analysis-adds-to-evidence-but-debate-persists\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">self-regulation and emotional identification\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developed when Kist’s classroom went virtual after the onset of covid, “little safe place” boxes are now a mainstay for Kist’s three to five year-old students. Each student is provided with their own box and practices self-regulating breathing techniques, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58790/why-kindness-and-emotional-literacy-matters-in-raising-kids\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">providing compassion and empathy towards others\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and labeling and expressing their emotions throughout the school day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist, an early childhood educator with 27 years of experience, works at a school that follows the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://consciousdiscipline.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conscious Discipline\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> framework, which is rooted in social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practices, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://teachingstrategies.com/product/the-creative-curriculum-for-preschool/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Creative Curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a project-based early learning framework. Her school also encourages building a “school family” in order to foster safety and connection among the students, faculty and staff. For Kist, a big part of providing safety and connection in her classroom comes from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61233/why-cultivating-emotional-intelligence-among-toddlers-has-become-more-urgent\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">helping young learners identify and process their emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and “little safe place” boxes are a tool for that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Being aware of your emotions is the first step in learning how to regulate them,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cara Goodwin\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a child psychologist and author of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/parenting-translator\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parenting Translator newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Identifying and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62501/want-your-kids-to-be-happier-and-healthier-start-talking-with-them-about-uncomfortable-emotions\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expressing emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are “essential for the development of empathy and for maintaining healthy social relationships,” Goodwin continued.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>“Little safe place” boxes\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist starts the school year by introducing her young students to the four basic emotions: happy, sad, angry and scared. She spends a week on each one, starting with happiness, and uses books, songs, and other classroom visuals as learning aids. Kist continues like this until students are well acquainted with the concepts inside of the “little safe place” boxes. Then she distributes a box to each child.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63571\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jenny Kist created a “My Little Safe Place” box for every student in her early childhood classroom. It contains tools for emotional identification and regulation. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenny Kist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After that, each morning Kist guides students through using the different tools in their boxes. They take out a card that has faces for the four basic feelings and mark which feeling they identify with that morning. Then, the children take out their breathing strategy card, which has four different icons that indicate different breathing strategies that they have learned. The boxes also have a card in them that remind the students of what Kist calls “I love you” rituals – nursery rhymes with the lyrics changed and designed to help students with attachment and connection. Students practice an “I love you” ritual one-on-one with a classroom adult each morning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist’s “little safe place” boxes are modeled from the self-regulation and emotional identification tools in the “safe place” corner of her classroom, an area that also contains a rug and pillows to comfort students. In a moment of dysregulation, whether the student is using the box or the safe place corner, a classroom adult can guide them to use these tools to recognize and move through their emotions. Each student also has a family photo in their box. “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63086/when-family-tree-projects-frustrate-students-community-maps-are-an-inclusive-alternative\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connections to home\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are just so helpful if they’re upset about anything,” said Kist.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Learning to identify emotions\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Identifying emotions is a complex process. For young children the first steps in this process are learning to recognize facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, according to Goodwin, the child psychologist. They also need to learn to label those context clues with language.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Goodwin, children should be able to identify emotions by around three or four years old. Although most children will learn how to identify emotions naturally through social interaction, parents and educators can facilitate that learning. “The biggest thing you can do is just talk about emotions,” she said. Taking opportunities to talk about and label your own emotions or the emotions expressed in a children’s TV show or book can be helpful. It is also helpful for parents and educators to label emotions that a child is expressing for them so that “in the future they can then learn to label it themselves,” Goodwin said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To help students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62290/teaching-kids-the-right-way-to-say-im-sorry\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">build empathy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Goodwin recommends parents and educators ask young children what a character in a book or tv show might be feeling, and why they might be feeling that way. One activity that Goodwin has found useful in her personal and professional life is “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://rainbowdays.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rainbow-Days-SEL-Resource-Feelings-Charades-on-website.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">feeling charades\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.” In this game, both children and adults act out a feeling, while the other participants guess what feeling they are expressing. Feeling charades can also be played with puppets or toys.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Learning to regulate emotions\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Kist’s classroom, students practice emotional regulation strategies throughout the day, not just when there’s a peer conflict or an individual child is distressed. “You can’t teach it when they’re in the middle of it,” Kist said. When a child is upset, she takes time to acknowledge the student’s feelings, reflect back to them what their face is expressing and suggest an emotion that they might be feeling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist’s students also practice different breathing techniques throughout the day. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63039/to-help-students-deal-with-trauma-this-school-holds-mindfulness-lessons-over-the-loudspeaker\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Breathing exercises can be helpful for self-regulation\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but young children need concrete explanations, so the techniques Kist uses have a symbol, such as a star or a balloon. The visual reminders are printed on a small laminated page in their “little safe place” box. When a student needs to access deep breathing, they can pull out their breathing card and choose an exercise. Kist and her students also make up their own breathing exercises, always involving a physical aspect like deep breathing while swinging their leg to kick an imaginary ball.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63512\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-63512 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “safe place” corner of Jenny Kist’s classroom contains a rug and pillows to comfort students, as well as tools to help them identify and process their feelings. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenny Kist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodwin suggested encouraging children to breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth by pretending to smell a flower and blow out a candle. This can be given as a verbal explanation, but can also be helped by using fake flowers and candles, or even drawings for children to reference. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodwin also uses \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiMb2Bw4Ae8\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">belly breathing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where young children put their hands on their bellies as they breathe to feel how their abdomen expands and contracts with each breath, as well as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKdApTxsDP0\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">five-finger breathing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where children trace their fingers on one hand with the index finger on their other hand as they take slow breaths, one per finger. Teaching these techniques can be frustrating because kids at this age are easily distracted and learning these skills for the first time. It “just takes like a lot of modeling,” and “a lot of reminding,” said Goodwin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>COVID-19 origins and ongoing impact\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist originally created the “my little safe place” boxes when the early learning center went virtual in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the unfamiliar experience of virtual learning, she wanted to find a way to provide a portable and accessible version of the safe space corner for each student.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Initially, not every student was given a “little safe place” box. But as she saw how helpful they were to the students that she had given them to during at home learning, Kist decided that every student in her classroom should have one. Since incorporating the boxes in her in-person classroom, she has seen students bring other students their boxes in moments of dysregulation. She has also seen some of her young learners singing their “I love you” nursery rhymes with each other unprompted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Goodwin, we don’t yet have enough data to determine if distance learning had \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61310/are-the-pandemic-babies-and-kids-ok\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">any long-term effects\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on young children’s ability to identify and process emotions, but she is encouraged by the knowledge that children’s brains are very plastic. There is a sensitive period for developing the skills to process emotions, but that “doesn’t mean that’s the only time you can learn those skills,” Goodwin said. At the same time, she added, it doesn’t hurt for parents and educators to focus on educating young children on emotional and social emotional skills that they may have missed out on during the early years of the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Young Children Need Help Identifying Emotions. 'Little Safe Place' Boxes Give Them Tools. | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Jenny Kist’s students walk through the classroom door every morning, they take out their “little safe place” boxes. Made to be a portable version of a calming physical space in Kist’s early childhood education classroom, these small plastic pencil boxes hold everything Kist’s students need throughout the day to practice \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62194/is-social-emotional-learning-effective-new-meta-analysis-adds-to-evidence-but-debate-persists\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">self-regulation and emotional identification\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developed when Kist’s classroom went virtual after the onset of covid, “little safe place” boxes are now a mainstay for Kist’s three to five year-old students. Each student is provided with their own box and practices self-regulating breathing techniques, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58790/why-kindness-and-emotional-literacy-matters-in-raising-kids\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">providing compassion and empathy towards others\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and labeling and expressing their emotions throughout the school day.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist, an early childhood educator with 27 years of experience, works at a school that follows the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://consciousdiscipline.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conscious Discipline\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> framework, which is rooted in social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practices, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://teachingstrategies.com/product/the-creative-curriculum-for-preschool/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Creative Curriculum\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a project-based early learning framework. Her school also encourages building a “school family” in order to foster safety and connection among the students, faculty and staff. For Kist, a big part of providing safety and connection in her classroom comes from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61233/why-cultivating-emotional-intelligence-among-toddlers-has-become-more-urgent\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">helping young learners identify and process their emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and “little safe place” boxes are a tool for that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Being aware of your emotions is the first step in learning how to regulate them,” said \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://parentingtranslator.substack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cara Goodwin\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a child psychologist and author of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/parenting-translator\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parenting Translator newsletter\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Identifying and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62501/want-your-kids-to-be-happier-and-healthier-start-talking-with-them-about-uncomfortable-emotions\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">expressing emotions\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are “essential for the development of empathy and for maintaining healthy social relationships,” Goodwin continued.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>“Little safe place” boxes\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist starts the school year by introducing her young students to the four basic emotions: happy, sad, angry and scared. She spends a week on each one, starting with happiness, and uses books, songs, and other classroom visuals as learning aids. Kist continues like this until students are well acquainted with the concepts inside of the “little safe place” boxes. Then she distributes a box to each child.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63571\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace5-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jenny Kist created a “My Little Safe Place” box for every student in her early childhood classroom. It contains tools for emotional identification and regulation. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenny Kist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After that, each morning Kist guides students through using the different tools in their boxes. They take out a card that has faces for the four basic feelings and mark which feeling they identify with that morning. Then, the children take out their breathing strategy card, which has four different icons that indicate different breathing strategies that they have learned. The boxes also have a card in them that remind the students of what Kist calls “I love you” rituals – nursery rhymes with the lyrics changed and designed to help students with attachment and connection. Students practice an “I love you” ritual one-on-one with a classroom adult each morning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist’s “little safe place” boxes are modeled from the self-regulation and emotional identification tools in the “safe place” corner of her classroom, an area that also contains a rug and pillows to comfort students. In a moment of dysregulation, whether the student is using the box or the safe place corner, a classroom adult can guide them to use these tools to recognize and move through their emotions. Each student also has a family photo in their box. “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63086/when-family-tree-projects-frustrate-students-community-maps-are-an-inclusive-alternative\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connections to home\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are just so helpful if they’re upset about anything,” said Kist.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Learning to identify emotions\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Identifying emotions is a complex process. For young children the first steps in this process are learning to recognize facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, according to Goodwin, the child psychologist. They also need to learn to label those context clues with language.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Goodwin, children should be able to identify emotions by around three or four years old. Although most children will learn how to identify emotions naturally through social interaction, parents and educators can facilitate that learning. “The biggest thing you can do is just talk about emotions,” she said. Taking opportunities to talk about and label your own emotions or the emotions expressed in a children’s TV show or book can be helpful. It is also helpful for parents and educators to label emotions that a child is expressing for them so that “in the future they can then learn to label it themselves,” Goodwin said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To help students \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/62290/teaching-kids-the-right-way-to-say-im-sorry\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">build empathy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Goodwin recommends parents and educators ask young children what a character in a book or tv show might be feeling, and why they might be feeling that way. One activity that Goodwin has found useful in her personal and professional life is “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://rainbowdays.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rainbow-Days-SEL-Resource-Feelings-Charades-on-website.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">feeling charades\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.” In this game, both children and adults act out a feeling, while the other participants guess what feeling they are expressing. Feeling charades can also be played with puppets or toys.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Learning to regulate emotions\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Kist’s classroom, students practice emotional regulation strategies throughout the day, not just when there’s a peer conflict or an individual child is distressed. “You can’t teach it when they’re in the middle of it,” Kist said. When a child is upset, she takes time to acknowledge the student’s feelings, reflect back to them what their face is expressing and suggest an emotion that they might be feeling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist’s students also practice different breathing techniques throughout the day. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63039/to-help-students-deal-with-trauma-this-school-holds-mindfulness-lessons-over-the-loudspeaker\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Breathing exercises can be helpful for self-regulation\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but young children need concrete explanations, so the techniques Kist uses have a symbol, such as a star or a balloon. The visual reminders are printed on a small laminated page in their “little safe place” box. When a student needs to access deep breathing, they can pull out their breathing card and choose an exercise. Kist and her students also make up their own breathing exercises, always involving a physical aspect like deep breathing while swinging their leg to kick an imaginary ball.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_63512\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-63512 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/04/safeplace3-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “safe place” corner of Jenny Kist’s classroom contains a rug and pillows to comfort students, as well as tools to help them identify and process their feelings. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jenny Kist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodwin suggested encouraging children to breathe in through their nose and out through their mouth by pretending to smell a flower and blow out a candle. This can be given as a verbal explanation, but can also be helped by using fake flowers and candles, or even drawings for children to reference. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Goodwin also uses \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiMb2Bw4Ae8\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">belly breathing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where young children put their hands on their bellies as they breathe to feel how their abdomen expands and contracts with each breath, as well as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKdApTxsDP0\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">five-finger breathing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where children trace their fingers on one hand with the index finger on their other hand as they take slow breaths, one per finger. Teaching these techniques can be frustrating because kids at this age are easily distracted and learning these skills for the first time. It “just takes like a lot of modeling,” and “a lot of reminding,” said Goodwin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>COVID-19 origins and ongoing impact\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kist originally created the “my little safe place” boxes when the early learning center went virtual in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the unfamiliar experience of virtual learning, she wanted to find a way to provide a portable and accessible version of the safe space corner for each student.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Initially, not every student was given a “little safe place” box. But as she saw how helpful they were to the students that she had given them to during at home learning, Kist decided that every student in her classroom should have one. Since incorporating the boxes in her in-person classroom, she has seen students bring other students their boxes in moments of dysregulation. She has also seen some of her young learners singing their “I love you” nursery rhymes with each other unprompted.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Goodwin, we don’t yet have enough data to determine if distance learning had \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61310/are-the-pandemic-babies-and-kids-ok\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">any long-term effects\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on young children’s ability to identify and process emotions, but she is encouraged by the knowledge that children’s brains are very plastic. There is a sensitive period for developing the skills to process emotions, but that “doesn’t mean that’s the only time you can learn those skills,” Goodwin said. At the same time, she added, it doesn’t hurt for parents and educators to focus on educating young children on emotional and social emotional skills that they may have missed out on during the early years of the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "6 Ways Educators Can Bolster Boys’ Social Skills",
"headTitle": "6 Ways Educators Can Bolster Boys’ Social Skills | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On a Thursday evening in January, parents sat at cafeteria tables with sixth-graders, eating pasta and discussing scripted questions, including “How does someone earn your trust?” and “What makes a good friend?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“So many boys describe feelings of loneliness, of having friends but longing for someone they can confide in about hard feelings,” said Adam Diaz, a school counselor and my colleague at Landon School, an independent boys school in Bethesda, Maryland. We designed this activity at the school’s annual spaghetti dinner to encourage conversation among caregivers and students about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63184/when-parents-know-these-4-phases-of-friendship-they-can-help-their-child-make-friends-more-easily\">healthy friendships\u003c/a>. “This was an opportunity for the boys to practice social skills and for parents to model being honest and vulnerable,” Diaz continued.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a time when \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34898234/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rates of loneliness\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are rising among young adults and researchers report that 15- to 24-year-olds spend nearly \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">70% less time\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> socializing in-person with friends than they did two decades ago, boys face some distinct challenges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For instance, in their 2021 report, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.boyhoodinitiative.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/State-of-American-Boys-Report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The State of America’s Boys: An Urgent Case for a More Connected Boyhood\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” researchers Michael Reichert and Joseph Derrick Nelson note that boys feel \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57024/for-adolescent-boys-maintaining-masculinity-can-stymie-genuine-connections\">pressure to conform to societal expectations about masculinity\u003c/a>, such as being stoic, dominant and competitive. That may help explain why boys are more likely to experience physical and verbal bullying and why they’re less academically engaged than girls.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here are six ways \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54878/how-strengthening-relationships-with-boys-can-help-them-learn\">educators can help boys\u003c/a> acquire the skills and traits they need to strengthen their relationships and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56979/what-the-research-says-about-the-academic-power-of-friendship\">thrive at school\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>1. Connect the dots between self-regulation and reputation \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys can turn off peers by calling out in class or elbowing a classmate. To \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53132/concrete-ways-to-help-students-self-regulate-and-prioritize-work\">help them self-regulate\u003c/a>, Diaz prompts boys to consider questions such as, “Can I sit next to someone whose presence calms me down?” and “Can I write down any questions I have before raising my hand?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://news.fullerton.edu/press-release/child-development-expert-why-boys-are-falling-behind-in-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ioakim Boutakidis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, notes that t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">he self-regulatory components of the brain aren’t integrated as quickly in boys as in girls\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and “boys \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that have a harder time picking up on social cues are often the most aggressive because they misinterpret accidental gestures as malicious intent.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Scripts are created,” Boutakidis said, and students pick up on teachers’ attitudes toward students, too. To help repair a struggling student’s reputation, try to set them up for success and praise them publicly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>2. Distinguish between “funny, mean and in-between” comments\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys are more likely to make a comment like, “‘You’re such an idiot; I can’t believe I hang out with you’ – said while smiling and patting them on the back,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/mitchprinstein\">Mitch Prinstein\u003c/a>, chief s\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">cience officer for the American Psychological Association\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “It’s a way to express vulnerability but also be dominant.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Joking can be misinterpreted and lead to fights,” added \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mrhealthteacher.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Pepper\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a teacher who coordinates boys’ groups in San Francisco Public Schools. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He encourages boys to “lean into sincerity rather than hide behind ‘can’t you take a joke?’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ryanwexelblatt\">Ryan Wexelblatt\u003c/a>, the director of ADHD Dude, which offers in-person \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.adhddude.com/social-programs\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">social skills programs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for boys in Tucson, Arizona, teaches boys that there are some things you shouldn’t joke about, such as\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> physical appearance and race.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I teach health and wellness in schools, I have students act out comments like “Oh, you got a haircut” or “We already have enough players on our team,” then determine whether it’s “nice, mean or in-between.” They quickly realize that the same comment can be perceived as mean or inoffensive depending on someone’s word choice, tone and past interactions with you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb style=\"font-size: 24px\">3. Provide structured social opportunities \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Adults have to take responsibility for creating structured engagement with young folks,” said \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/darylhowardphd\">Daryl Howard\u003c/a>, director of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://bondeducators.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Building Our Network of Diversity (BOND) Project\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and chair of the Maryland department of education’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://marylandpublicschools.org/programs/Pages/AAEEBB/index.aspx\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advisory Council on Achieving Academic Equity and Excellence for Black Boys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Howard facilitates BOND boys groups, he starts each session with a community circle “so no one can sit by themselves or play on devices.” The boys introduce themselves and share a personal update, with the goal of helping them find connection points so they can interact more comfortably on their own, he explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Sterling Hall, a boys school in Toronto, Ontario, students can join a group tailored to their needs or sign up to eat lunch with a “mystery teacher,” said Catriona Gallienne, the school’s director of student success. All students start the day with a 30-minute period designated for social-emotional learning, such as an assembly, health class or community circles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During circle time, boys might talk about a challenge at home or express frustration over how teams are picked at recess, said Rick Parsons, principal of Sterling Hall. “Inevitably, someone will validate their experience or share, ‘This is what happened to me.’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The circles normalize boys’ experiences and combat harmful stereotypes about needing to “go it alone,” said Andrew Reiner, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/better-boys-better-men-andrew-reiner\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “They see that they not only have permission to open up, but it’s going to be met with support.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>4. Help boys socialize informally\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys who feel awkward might opt out of recess, lunch and other unstructured social time. To ease their discomfort, schools can add Spikeball games or extra balls to outdoor areas, designate a board game table in the cafeteria, or hold chess club meetings during lunch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I tell elementary schools, ‘have a Lego cart outside,’ but some \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">teenagers like that too\u003c/a>,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/katiefhurley\">Katie Hurley\u003c/a>, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a child and adolescent psychotherapist and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://jedfoundation.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Jed Foundation’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> senior clinical adviser for external affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">View spaces with an eye to optimizing interaction. For instance, Hurley visited a school where students gather on couches in the hallway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>5. Recognize that some boys need more help\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some students may need more help understanding the unwritten rules of socializing, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61966/how-parents-can-help-children-with-adhd-thrive-in-friendships\">including boys with ADHD\u003c/a>. “Some kids with an inattentive profile are what I call the stick collectors,” Wexelblatt said. “They get caught up in their own world and walk around the perimeter collecting sticks.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys with an impulsive profile can be more emotionally reactive, he said. “They might think they’re being bullied, but other kids find them controlling or just don’t want to do what they’re doing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Praise boys for being flexible or showing interest in peers’ ideas. Diaz prompts students to ponder questions such as\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, “How close do you stand to someone? How do you ask a question? What’s okay to ask?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>6. Make caring for others a shared responsibility\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Sterling Hall, Parsons said, educators have a saying: “Big boys look out for themselves; bigger boys look out for others.” To that end, older students mentor younger students, and eighth-grade boys partner with younger students to paint a buddy bench on the playground. If a student has no one to play with, they sit on the buddy bench.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Every boy is responsible for making sure no one is sitting on the buddy bench,” Parsons explained, adding that no one sits there for more than 60 seconds. As he noted, “boys want to be leaders, to be good, to look out for others and to get affirmation for that. Belonging is everything.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://phyllisfagell.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Phyllis L. Fagell\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a licensed clinical professional counselor and professional school counselor, is the author of \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phyllis-l-fagell/middle-school-matters/9780738235080/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Middle School Matters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phyllis-l-fagell/middle-school-superpowers/9780306829758/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On a Thursday evening in January, parents sat at cafeteria tables with sixth-graders, eating pasta and discussing scripted questions, including “How does someone earn your trust?” and “What makes a good friend?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“So many boys describe feelings of loneliness, of having friends but longing for someone they can confide in about hard feelings,” said Adam Diaz, a school counselor and my colleague at Landon School, an independent boys school in Bethesda, Maryland. We designed this activity at the school’s annual spaghetti dinner to encourage conversation among caregivers and students about \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63184/when-parents-know-these-4-phases-of-friendship-they-can-help-their-child-make-friends-more-easily\">healthy friendships\u003c/a>. “This was an opportunity for the boys to practice social skills and for parents to model being honest and vulnerable,” Diaz continued.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At a time when \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34898234/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">rates of loneliness\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are rising among young adults and researchers report that 15- to 24-year-olds spend nearly \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">70% less time\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> socializing in-person with friends than they did two decades ago, boys face some distinct challenges.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For instance, in their 2021 report, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.boyhoodinitiative.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/State-of-American-Boys-Report.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The State of America’s Boys: An Urgent Case for a More Connected Boyhood\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">,” researchers Michael Reichert and Joseph Derrick Nelson note that boys feel \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57024/for-adolescent-boys-maintaining-masculinity-can-stymie-genuine-connections\">pressure to conform to societal expectations about masculinity\u003c/a>, such as being stoic, dominant and competitive. That may help explain why boys are more likely to experience physical and verbal bullying and why they’re less academically engaged than girls.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here are six ways \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54878/how-strengthening-relationships-with-boys-can-help-them-learn\">educators can help boys\u003c/a> acquire the skills and traits they need to strengthen their relationships and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/56979/what-the-research-says-about-the-academic-power-of-friendship\">thrive at school\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>1. Connect the dots between self-regulation and reputation \u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys can turn off peers by calling out in class or elbowing a classmate. To \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53132/concrete-ways-to-help-students-self-regulate-and-prioritize-work\">help them self-regulate\u003c/a>, Diaz prompts boys to consider questions such as, “Can I sit next to someone whose presence calms me down?” and “Can I write down any questions I have before raising my hand?”\u003c/span>\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://news.fullerton.edu/press-release/child-development-expert-why-boys-are-falling-behind-in-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ioakim Boutakidis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton, notes that t\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">he self-regulatory components of the brain aren’t integrated as quickly in boys as in girls\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and “boys \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">that have a harder time picking up on social cues are often the most aggressive because they misinterpret accidental gestures as malicious intent.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Scripts are created,” Boutakidis said, and students pick up on teachers’ attitudes toward students, too. To help repair a struggling student’s reputation, try to set them up for success and praise them publicly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>2. Distinguish between “funny, mean and in-between” comments\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys are more likely to make a comment like, “‘You’re such an idiot; I can’t believe I hang out with you’ – said while smiling and patting them on the back,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/mitchprinstein\">Mitch Prinstein\u003c/a>, chief s\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">cience officer for the American Psychological Association\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “It’s a way to express vulnerability but also be dominant.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Joking can be misinterpreted and lead to fights,” added \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mrhealthteacher.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Pepper\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a teacher who coordinates boys’ groups in San Francisco Public Schools. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He encourages boys to “lean into sincerity rather than hide behind ‘can’t you take a joke?’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/ryanwexelblatt\">Ryan Wexelblatt\u003c/a>, the director of ADHD Dude, which offers in-person \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.adhddude.com/social-programs\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">social skills programs\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for boys in Tucson, Arizona, teaches boys that there are some things you shouldn’t joke about, such as\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> physical appearance and race.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I teach health and wellness in schools, I have students act out comments like “Oh, you got a haircut” or “We already have enough players on our team,” then determine whether it’s “nice, mean or in-between.” They quickly realize that the same comment can be perceived as mean or inoffensive depending on someone’s word choice, tone and past interactions with you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb style=\"font-size: 24px\">3. Provide structured social opportunities \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Adults have to take responsibility for creating structured engagement with young folks,” said \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/darylhowardphd\">Daryl Howard\u003c/a>, director of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://bondeducators.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Building Our Network of Diversity (BOND) Project\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and chair of the Maryland department of education’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://marylandpublicschools.org/programs/Pages/AAEEBB/index.aspx\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Advisory Council on Achieving Academic Equity and Excellence for Black Boys\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Howard facilitates BOND boys groups, he starts each session with a community circle “so no one can sit by themselves or play on devices.” The boys introduce themselves and share a personal update, with the goal of helping them find connection points so they can interact more comfortably on their own, he explained.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Sterling Hall, a boys school in Toronto, Ontario, students can join a group tailored to their needs or sign up to eat lunch with a “mystery teacher,” said Catriona Gallienne, the school’s director of student success. All students start the day with a 30-minute period designated for social-emotional learning, such as an assembly, health class or community circles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During circle time, boys might talk about a challenge at home or express frustration over how teams are picked at recess, said Rick Parsons, principal of Sterling Hall. “Inevitably, someone will validate their experience or share, ‘This is what happened to me.’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The circles normalize boys’ experiences and combat harmful stereotypes about needing to “go it alone,” said Andrew Reiner, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">author of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/better-boys-better-men-andrew-reiner\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “They see that they not only have permission to open up, but it’s going to be met with support.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>4. Help boys socialize informally\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys who feel awkward might opt out of recess, lunch and other unstructured social time. To ease their discomfort, schools can add Spikeball games or extra balls to outdoor areas, designate a board game table in the cafeteria, or hold chess club meetings during lunch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I tell elementary schools, ‘have a Lego cart outside,’ but some \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60253/play-is-crucial-for-middle-schoolers-too\">teenagers like that too\u003c/a>,” said \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/katiefhurley\">Katie Hurley\u003c/a>, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a child and adolescent psychotherapist and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://jedfoundation.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Jed Foundation’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> senior clinical adviser for external affairs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">View spaces with an eye to optimizing interaction. For instance, Hurley visited a school where students gather on couches in the hallway.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>5. Recognize that some boys need more help\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some students may need more help understanding the unwritten rules of socializing, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/61966/how-parents-can-help-children-with-adhd-thrive-in-friendships\">including boys with ADHD\u003c/a>. “Some kids with an inattentive profile are what I call the stick collectors,” Wexelblatt said. “They get caught up in their own world and walk around the perimeter collecting sticks.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boys with an impulsive profile can be more emotionally reactive, he said. “They might think they’re being bullied, but other kids find them controlling or just don’t want to do what they’re doing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Praise boys for being flexible or showing interest in peers’ ideas. Diaz prompts students to ponder questions such as\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, “How close do you stand to someone? How do you ask a question? What’s okay to ask?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>6. Make caring for others a shared responsibility\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Sterling Hall, Parsons said, educators have a saying: “Big boys look out for themselves; bigger boys look out for others.” To that end, older students mentor younger students, and eighth-grade boys partner with younger students to paint a buddy bench on the playground. If a student has no one to play with, they sit on the buddy bench.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Every boy is responsible for making sure no one is sitting on the buddy bench,” Parsons explained, adding that no one sits there for more than 60 seconds. As he noted, “boys want to be leaders, to be good, to look out for others and to get affirmation for that. Belonging is everything.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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"info": "Tech Nation is a weekly public radio program, hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn. Founded in 1993, it has grown from a simple interview show to a multi-faceted production, featuring conversations with noted technology and science leaders, and a weekly science and technology-related commentary.",
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"info": "The TED Radio Hour is a journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, fresh approaches to old problems, and new ways to think and create.",
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"tagline": "Local news to keep you rooted",
"info": "Host Devin Katayama walks you through the biggest story of the day with reporters and newsmakers.",
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