donderdag 22 september 2011

Building character at school

In an article "What if the secret of success is failure" the NY Times discusses how a school could build character.

The article starts discussing some research on what best predicts the success of children in their later life. It appears that even more important than IQ is grit or perseverance. The started with 24 character traits but in the end trimmed them down to 7: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity. These they try to teach in the KIPP schools in the article. On page 7 and 8 of the article there is some discussion how this is teached:

One day last winter, I was speaking with Sayuri Stabrowski, a 30-year-old seventh-and-eighth-grade reading teacher at KIPP Infinity, and she mentioned that she caught a girl chewing gum in her class earlier that day. “She denied it,” Stabrowski told me. “She said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m chewing my tongue.’ ” Stabrowski rolled her eyes as she told me the story. “I said, ‘O.K. fine.’ Then later in the class, I saw her chewing again, and I said: ‘You’re chewing gum! I see you.’ She said, ‘No, I’m not, see?’ and she moved the gum over in her mouth in this really obvious way, and we all saw what she was doing. Now, a couple of years ago, I probably would have blown my top and screamed. But this time, I was able to say: ‘Gosh, not only were you chewing gum, which is kind of minor, but you lied to me twice. That’s a real disappointment. What does that say about your character?’ And she was just devastated.”

Stabrowski was worried that the girl, who often struggled with her behavior, might have a mini-meltdown — a “baby attack,” in KIPP jargon — in the middle of the class, but in fact, the girl spit out her gum and sat through the rest of the class and then afterward came up to her teacher with tears in her eyes. “We had a long conversation,” Stabrowski told me. “She said: ‘I’m trying so hard to just grow up. But nothing ever changes!’ And I said: ‘Do you know what does change? You didn’t have a baby attack in front of the other kids, and two weeks ago, you would have.’ ”

To Tom Brunzell, who as the dean of students at KIPP Infinity oversaw the implementation of the character report card, what is going on in character conversations like that one isn’t academic instruction at all, or even discipline; it’s therapy. Specifically, it’s a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy, the very practical, nuts-and-bolts psychological technique that provides the theoretical underpinning for the whole positive psychology field. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or C.B.T., involves using the conscious mind to understand and overcome unconscious fears and self-destructive habits, using techniques like “self-talk” — putting an immediate crisis in perspective by reminding yourself of the larger context. “The kids who succeed at KIPP are the ones who can C.B.T. themselves in the moment,” Brunzell told me. Part of the point of the character initiative, as he saw it, was to give their students the tools to do that. “All kids this age are having mini-implosions every day,” he said. “I mean, it’s middle school, the worst years of their lives. But the kids who make it are the ones who can tell themselves: ‘I can rise above this little situation. I’m O.K. Tomorrow is a new day.’ ”


The KIPP schools are in tough neighborhoods. But the article discusses also the Riverdale School that attract rich kids. One problem they face there is that the kids are sheltered by the parents from problems. This deprives them of the moments of adversity that might build their character. The Riverdale School pays also attention to values. But where the KIPP Schools teach values of performance Riverdale stresses social values like inclusion. Another problem they face is best summarized in the film "Race to nowhere". It is about parents who are increasingly emotionally distant from their children while at the same time they put a lot of prssure on them to perform well in school.

dinsdag 20 september 2011

More efficient homework

The NY Times had an article ("The Trouble With Homework"). Some ways to improve the efficiency of your homework that they mention are:
- “Spaced repetition”: do every day a bit for each subject instead of trying to learn a subject at once. It provides the brain with the opportunity to build some strucure around the new knowledge.
- “retrieval practice”: test yourself and do tests at school. Tests force you to apply knowledge actively and as such they work better than passive consumption of knowledge.
- "cognitive disfluency": hardly readable texts, typing errors, weird fonts, etc. force you to more exertion. The effect is that the studied material is better remembered.
- "interleaving": mix different types of tasks.