Producer: Alright, welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. I am here again with our host Sucheta Kamath.
Good morning, Sucheta. So, today is your second conversation with MaryAnn Brittingham. I’m looking forward to that, but I’ll lead off the conversation by asking a question: do all nightmares about substitute teachers come true?
Sucheta Kamath: Funny you asked, Todd, and I do have one more story to share, and I hate to kind of lead our podcast with this, but it was kind of interesting to me. This is just literally a few weeks old, so on July 28, when the Southside Elementary School in Buffalo, New York opened its stores, no one expected it to be anything but a run-of-the-mill day. The student enrolled in the summer programs strolled into the classrooms to resume their summer activities until the 911 call was made. It turns out that the substitute teacher Mr. Mark Magavern threw a table at an eighth-grade boy and charged towards him and went to repeatedly punched him in the face, and finally attempted to choke him. Of course, all this went down in front of 20 other students who became accidental bystanders. Investigations suggested that it started with the eighth grader boy who threw the chair at the teacher. So, apparently, the student felt unsafe and took the measure of throwing the chair as a self-protection step. So, the authorities arrested Mr. Magavern and he was immediately fired.
So, we all agree that this is not a safe learning environment for anyone. Epictetus from first century AD said that people are disturbed not by things but by the view which they take of them. The incident may spark a debate whether it is okay for a teacher to throw a table because the student threw the chair at him, and since the student was the first to instigate that disencounter, can the teacher say, “He started it”? But I do, I mean, I feel, my heart goes out for substitute teacher as much as for the eighth grader, but my previous guest Nancy Rappaport talked about that bad behaviors are symptoms of something deeper, and I’m curious why the student felt the need to throw the chair and was it possible to calm the student down and give him a sense of safety and put the adult in the room, provide the eighth grader another way to handle his own emotionally charged feelings in that situation? So, I feel the teacher failed the student and the student, I don’t think failed to the teacher. The student just didn’t know his own self, and I see this as a lack of skill rather than malice.
Well, that’s what you’re going to find out today from MaryAnn Brittingham who is my guest who comes back for the second time, and she’s going to talk to us about teacher’s role in dealing with challenging and disruptive students. Let me review a little bit about MaryAnn’s background:
MaryAnn has a master’s degree in Family Counseling and bachelor’s degree with dual certification in both special and general education. She’s the author of Respectful Discipline, Motivating the Unmotivated, Dealing with Difficult Parents, and also, she had co-authored a very informative and amazing book that’s called Transformative Teaching: Changing Today’s Classrooms Culturally, Academically, & Emotionally. Throughout her 35 years in education, she has worked as a special ed teacher, adjunct instructor at the graduate level, teacher consultant, and has provided counseling to children and families. MaryAnn, a behavior consultant and well-known international Speaker focuses on social and emotional skill development, effective classroom management, and discipline and self-regulation, and mindful practices. MaryAnn is wholeheartedly committed to helping teachers reflect on and transform their own behavior in order to better serve their students. This passion was the springboard that has led her to create her own international business, Brittingham Professional Development Seminars and we will have a link to her website, and she offers amazing workshops, so people should just check it out.
So, I’m ready to talk to MaryAnn Brittingham today.
Producer: Well, I learned an awful lot from MaryAnn last week, so I have no doubt that we will have another great conversation today, and frankly, I have to be honest, any episode that kicks off with one of the great stoics [0:04:52] Epictetus, I have to imagine it’s going to be a great episode.
So, let’s get to it. Here is Sucheta’s second conversation with MaryAnn Brittingham.
Sucheta: MaryAnn, welcome to the podcast Full PreFrontal. I’m so delighted to have you again this time and we are going to talk about some strategies. Everybody’s looking for strategies. So, disengaged, unmotivated, and disconnected kids don’t learn even if we push them, punish them, or even ignore them. Sometimes, rewarding that may be an option that is pursued by other people, but actually, not even going to work. So, my question to you is, you have written several books and one of them is Transformative Teaching, I would love to hear what your take is on effective strategies for educators. Can you start us off with what were your ideas behind these global strategies that you called transformative strategies?
MaryAnn Brittingham: Sure. Well, I do want just quickly address the words. They’re not necessarily effective and yet that’s what we always go to, that’s our fall back, so that’s what has always been, and what we find is words and consequences don’t really work for most kids. It’s not that they don’t work at all, they have their place for certain types of kids, like kids with autism, they’re very effective, but Daniel Pink does a lot of research on this and he takes it a step further – I mean, so does Alfie Kohn and Edward Deci, they talk about how the more we reward kids, the more we kill motivation, and yet that’s what we have been using and we are seeing more unmotivated students. Daniel Pink says you can use your words, but you use them for things like rote learning: memorizing multiplication tables, the periodical charts, staying on an assembly line, but if you want a student to do creative writing, creative problem-solving, and you reward them, you’ll actually hurt the motivation. So, incentive programs can work but they have side effects like we are raising more externally motivated kids that internally, like how many times have you heard, Sucheta, that, “Oh, I guess I do it,” right? So, they’re working for the outside reward rather for the internal reward, and the other thing that we forget when working with students who are unmotivated is that fear is greater than any consequence or reward that you have. So, if I pretend that you have a fear of snakes, right? And a really big fear, so if I tell you stay in the room and I’m going to take my snake out. It’s a really friendly snake, it’s a pet snake, it’s never bitten anyone, would you stay in the room? Probably not, right? You’re going to leave and even if I said to you, “Oh, no! I’m going to give you a bonus points if you stay in the room,” and you really want bonus points, but your fear is greater than that. If I say, “You leave the room, I’m going to send you to the office,” well, your fear is greater than the consequence I have, and so what rewards and consequences are in dealing with is really what’s underneath the behavior – the fear of doing that. So, some of the suggestions that I have, one is, in our buildings, to start creating a community of educators. If I’m telling you that it takes a long time to change behavior, we have to start working together rather than in isolation. So, if I get a student and it takes me a year to get them out from underneath the table to show up prepared, then I need you to pick up where I left off instead of just doing your own things. Very often, and we work in isolation rather than building upon the skills that we see with kids’ behavior. The other suggestion I would have is remember what most teachers know but we forget when we get caught up in the demands put on us is that relationship is the key to changing behavior. When I have a relationship for you, when I feel connected to you, I work harder for you, and when you have expectations of me, I want to work to fulfill those. Dr. Comer says that no significant learning occurs without a significant relationship, so that’s where we want to start. When students have a sense of safety and security, they inhabit close relationship, it provides them with that steady footing to support them through all their developmental stages.
There was one study done, I think it was in the University of Virginia where they showed that students who have relationships with their teacher, they don’t produce gains and achievements, but they are more apt to achieve gains because of the relationships they have. So, I like to – are you familiar with Stephen Covey’s work with emotional bank account?
Sucheta: Yes, yes, but sure that with our listeners. It’s a great, great reference here.
MaryAnn: Yeah, so he says that we all have emotional bank accounts and we need to have deposits made in order to make a withdrawal, and every time we are asking a child to do an activity, we are making a withdrawal. Well, many of them are coming to school without any deposits made, so when you ask them to do something, you’re not getting anything, and in my book, there’s lots of ideas for different deposits but just simple things like celebrating or acknowledging their birthdays, stopping by for a few minutes to watch them at a sporting event, writing encouraging comments on paper, so if a student failed, we put like a big F and say, “Carol is [0:09:58] couldn’t have studied.” Well, doesn’t the F already say that? So, why put more salt in the wound? Why not say, “Love the new haircut, how’s the new dog?” What about the F? Well, it’s not going anywhere, so in a few days, you could say to the student, “I noticed you are struggling with this. Here’s what we do when we’re struggling. We could ask for extra help, stay after, get a tutor,” and then offer them suggestions in that way. So, simple things that you can do to – having lunch with a student, calling after a bad day just to encourage them that tomorrow is going to be better, so everyone knows different ways and I’m sure many people do this automatically and naturally, but I think sometimes, we have to make a more conscious effort, like when you see them in the hallway, instead of stopping, “Where were you in class?” just smiling saying, “I’m so glad you’re here. I was worried when I didn’t see you in class,” more of a caring action.
Another suggestion that I have in helping students with apathy is building on small steps. I think because we have an expectation and most students in our building will reach that expectation, we are not willing to break down the steps even smaller for the students who need to that. So, maybe I’m going to say to a student, do any five problems on a page, and then take a five-minute break. Do that even, not the odds right now. Work for 10 minutes, and then take a break, and then often, as a special educator, when I offer that to a teacher in the gen ed population, they will say, “What about everybody else? They had to finish the whole page. How come this kid doesn’t do it?” Because the kid is doing nothing. Five problems is going in the right direction, right? So, five is better than zero, and the whole idea is to build that momentum of success. My husband and I used to have this rule: no matter how tired you are, when you come home, when you have to go on the treadmill for five minutes because you will be tired and you’re like, “Oh, I’m too tired to work out,” so no matter what, you have to do five minutes. Well, when you get onto the treadmill for five minutes, what happens?
Sucheta: You’re going to do more.
MaryAnn: Yeah, you’re going to do a little more. Now, you might hackle with that as you normally did, you might not do as along, but are the few minutes you do better than nothing? Yes, and so it builds that momentum of success and keeps you going. So, that’s the idea of chunking, breaking it down to smaller chunks to build that momentum of success.
Another suggestion is giving them a place to shine, like where they feel that they are needed, and they have something to offer, because very often, what happens is, during my class, let’s say it’s my science class, if you don’t shine, so you start believing that you are not good. I start believing that you don’t have much to offer. So, find a place where I do shine and let me help other people. When there is a fire or a tornado, we feel so good about ourselves would we go and volunteer and help. We need to give kids who are unmotivated and with apathy that place to go help other people. So, I have a student in one of my elementary classes who wasn’t doing any work at all, refusing very aggressive behavior. I was lucky that I had a preschool class next door that year and I would let him go every day before lunch to help those preschool kids put on their snow pants and snow boots, and it wasn’t conditional on whether or not he did work, and I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes we make with kids who are unmotivated, is everything is conditional. “If you do this, I’ll give you that,” or if somebody’s in a depression, when somebody doesn’t have trust, it’s I have to give and give, and then I get, but that’s not what’s being taught in college. What is being taught is, you give me this, then I’ll give you that. So, I’m letting – let’s just call this boy Calvin, letting him go over every day, and I’m getting lots of pushback from other educators: “All the other kids are doing their work, how come they don’t get to help the preschool kids? Why does he get this privilege?” Because he needs it and the rule in my class is, you get what you need, not always what you want. The other kids want it, Calvin needs it. So, Calvin comes that and we’re walking down the hallway, this is a few weeks after doing it, and we see the preschool kids in the hallway and they see Calvin, they are like, “There’s our teacher, Mr. Calvin! Hi, Mr. Calvin!” It’s like the first time all year I saw him smile. He had an importance. He had something to offer. So then, he asked if he could go back after recess to help the kids take off their snow pants and snow boots, and I allowed him without any condition. Again, I’m not asking anything from him yet, and that he comes back one day with a book and he said, “Could you teach me to read this? Because the teacher said if I could read this book, then I could stay after recess and help them,” and that’s when Calvin started to care about academics. That’s when he started doing reading. So, one suggestion is, be willing to give and give without always expecting back right away. Give them a place to shine. Does that make sense?
Sucheta: Oh, yes. Oh, so, sounds like such a spiritual approach. To me, this is nothing than bringing out better self to the table and offering more than getting something in return, and just believing in true potential in children, and not writing people off or not particularly walking away after putting some effort, if not all effort, and doing it again the next day.
So, I have a question. Let me give you an example of the kid that I worked with. One of his challenges is, he’s got significant executive dysfunction and his difficulty is writing, and you give him an assignment to write and he freezes up. He will sit and stare at that paper or stare at that computer screen, and he wouldn’t budge, and no amount of motivation or encouragement you give him or applaud for all the good things he’s capable of doing outside writing or how much he knows about writing, none of that happens to have any impact and when he’s with his teacher who kind of is tired of this zero production, and then of course, you can imagine what happens next: this becomes a homework assignment, and so now, this becomes something, a disaster at home because he’s doing the same staring, kicking, pushing, but he genuinely has difficulty organizing his thoughts. How would you recommend or what will your suggestions beat to the teacher who is handling this get in the classroom?
MaryAnn: Oh, that’s a challenge and here’s why. You know the child has the skills – you’ve been teaching him. You know he’s probably capable, so it goes back to what I said earlier with what’s really behind the behavior? And it’s fear. It’s fear that I’m not going to do it right, not going to do it well, I’m going to make a mistake, I’m going to get yelled that, and that goes to the best way that I could help that student or that teacher is to teach them about fixed and growth mindset which I know that you are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work on that, right? So, for those of you – and I’m sure most people are but just briefly, a fixed mindset is when you believe that your intelligence is carved in stone and I’m not good at this and I’ll never be good at this, and a growth mindset means that I can always grow and change my behavior. So, that poor little boy has this belief for whatever reason that he’s not capable – and was it originally because he had a disability with it or it was just a struggle for him at one point?
Sucheta: No, he does have dysgraphia. He has some language-based learning delay, and then he has ADHD. So, he has had lots of difficulties which culminated in his difficulty in organizing thoughts, organizing the narrative, creating some sequence, and then expanding on language to create this writing, and particularly, if it’s free response, it’s even much harder, like “Tell me what you did this weekend,” or “Tell what you have planned for the summer.” Disaster, that’s just very difficult.
MaryAnn: And so, now, being that I don’t have a disability, it’s hard for me to understand why he can’t just learn it and get over it, so that’s one thing. So, where’s the empathy part? The patience which is the practice that he’s going to need over and over, the safety in the environment that if he does try and makes a mistake, that I’m not going to be humiliated or embarrassed, so we have to make sure those foundations are in place, and the next is, the mindset about it. What is stopping him even though he might now have skills to overcome the disability if he doesn’t have the mindset? And when I say mindset, I want to be careful in here because Carol Dweck has been worried that people are thinking if I just think I could do it, then I’m not going to have any problem, and it’s not just positive thinking. It’s about believing that I have talent and abilities that can be developed if I’m willing to put in the effort, and that’s what’s missing. And you know what I feel close mindsets are so important is because every human being, teacher and students experience challenges, setbacks, and criticism, and Sucheta, where in our life have we been thought to deal with those three things? One of the few places is sports, that’s one of the few places I can think of.
Sucheta: Right.
MaryAnn: Right? Unless you have parents who modeled for you how to deal with challenges, setbacks, and criticism, you don’t know what to do, so then you go internal and you put yourself down, and then you become fearful of trying something. So, no one is teaching us how to deal with these challenges, setbacks, and criticisms, and the other thing that’s not being taught is that effort and failure are part of the equation until mastery occurs. Teachers need to remember that when they are working with students, you’re going to have to put in a lot of effort, a lot of failure is going to occur until you eventually reach that kid, and students need to be taught that but because our society, always see and celebrate is the outcome, right? The movie star, but how many movies did they or how many interviews did they go on before they got a part? How many songs did they send out and rejection letters before they see it? But all we see is a success, and so kids aren’t willing to put in the effort and failure. So, one of the things I would love for us to embrace is the idea of struggle time, that no matter what degree are going to do, we are going to struggle it at first, but for some reason, no one wants to be in the struggle, and I also have educators say to me, “Well, MaryAnn, can’t you come up with a better word? Struggle time is so negative.” It is what it is. Everything is hard before it’s easy, right? Everyone would agree with me on that, but why do we think that if I had this negative mindset for so many years about my ability, that you just telling me that I could do it, giving me stickers is going to change that? I have to feel safe, I have to trust you, I have to be able to try a number of times before I’m going to trust you. So, one of the things I like to ask teachers to do is have students write down everything that they could do from the time they were born that they could do now. You didn’t know how to walk, you didn’t know how to feed yourself, you didn’t know how to tie your shoes, how come you’re able to do that now? Well, you put in effort and you failed many times, but you kept on trying until you got it.
Sucheta: I love it.
MaryAnn: Right? And that’s what we have to get. Thank goodness we are born, really, with a growth mindset. When you look at babies, they have a growth mindset. They fall down how many times? Hundreds of times. If they had a fixed mindset, they’d be like, “Oh, whoa, this walking thing is not for me,” right? And everyone would be crawling, but we don’t have that. They keep trying, so we got to get them to see that they have to be willing to do it. My colleague Kathleen Kryza created this formula and it’s mindset + skill set = results, and I think that summarized exactly what we need to do. So, she says, mindset – you have to have the right mindset, but mindsets are not enough. You have to have skills to back up that mindset and that’s how you get the results, and I think what’s happening with Carol Dweck’s stuff and we’ve seen some articles about it, is people are thinking it’s just above the mindset. You need to have both, and by the way, having a skill set is not enough. We have lots of kids who have skills, but they don’t believe in themselves, until people like [0:21:47] say, “oh, you have so much more potential,” and they don’t do anything with it, right?
Sucheta: And so, if I may ask one ingredient to that formula which is mindset plus skill set, plus insight, that self-awareness has to be there that will kind of polish the results, I feel, because I think the skills, as you mentioned, there’s something inevitable about moving from calling to standing, then standing to walking, and of course, not a lot of awareness went into it but it was something as a reaction to falling, you stood up, in reaction to falling, you stood up and did it again. I think once the child becomes more cognizant and there’s more self-awareness, there is lots of fears and self-inhibition about taking risk and risk aversion kicks in, and then you create this image of being perfect student which you are not, because when I start by training, I always say, the first rule here is, you are a student. You know what that means? By definition, you don’t know enough.
MaryAnn: I love that.
Sucheta: So, if you don’t know enough, how can you be a master of something?
MaryAnn: I love that.
Sucheta: But your say some amazing, amazing thoughts.
MaryAnn: So, Sucheta, I love the idea that you want to add insights into that formula. So, where would you put it in? Would you put insight before, insight plus mindset plus skill set, or after?
Sucheta: So, it’s a compound equation, so mindset plus skill set multiplied by inside. So, you need the insight even to regulate the mindset and you need insight to regulate your skill set that you are developing because you need to know where you would actually apply the skills that you are learning and you need to know when you are coming from a negative mindset or a closed mindset and not a growth mindset, so there has to be some supervisory behaviors that go into insight, and so it is kind of looking over all the skills and mindset that you bring to the table.
MaryAnn: Okay, great. I love the idea of adding that in. So, thank you for sharing that, and can I add in two last thoughts whether you want to do before and after?
Sucheta: Yes, please.
MaryAnn: Okay. So, one, I’d like to leave everybody, parents and teachers, with this idea: the greatest gift you can give to anyone is to believe in that when they are at their worst, when they are struggling, and that’s a great gift because that’s what helps them get through the struggle, and the last thing is, the only way that you can get another human being to adjust their behavior is first to adjust your own behavior, to first self-reflect and see what you can do to better help them.
Sucheta: Well, thank you for being here and your zeal for teaching the teachers and compassion that you have for the learners were going through difficulties is mesmerizing, and I really appreciate all the wealth of knowledge you shared with us, and I will plug in some of the incredible writing that you have and some books that you have co-authored, so thank you, MaryAnn, for being on the podcast today.
MaryAnn: Thank you so much for having me today. It was such a pleasure talking with you.
Producer: So, that was MaryAnn Brittingham, our second conversation with MaryAnn. Wow, yet another very impactful conversation, Sucheta, no doubt about it. Gosh, so where to begin? So, I guess we will leadoff this: so, any initial thoughts about how I guess teaching methods could be teacher centric?
Sucheta: Oh, yeah, nice question, Todd. Thank you for asking that. MaryAnn gave me a lot of wonderful insights into shifting the focus from student to teacher. Students with learning challenges present themselves in many forms and no to struggling students are alike. They may manifest themselves either with emotional paralysis or learn helplessness, general apathy towards new learning, or the messenger itself, the teacher, and it may present disruptive behaviors that come with high cost. So, indicators need practical solutions that are realistic and easy to implement, so they can reduce the classroom chaos and prevent the power struggle they sometimes encounter when dealing with challenging students, but we may have misled ourselves that all these strategies are student directed. We do want students to heighten their motivation and take personal responsibility and engage in cooperative behaviors, but maybe the teachers can model it and maybe for some students, the teacher may be the only role model that they ever have in their lives. So, MaryAnn has created this extensive resource, handbooks that are filled with practical ideas in every day classroom needs that I think can be very helpful in understanding the way the teacher can change herself, and I do think another comment I want to quickly make, that if the teacher changes herself, the world around her is going to get better, and just like the golden truth about self-improvement, when you change, the world appears better, and because you have changed, the world find the motivation to find make changes to themselves, so her family life will improve, her friendship circle will improve. I’m pretty certain of that.
Producer: Well, I think you are right. We’ve talked a lot on this show, Sucheta, about how just teaching can be very stressful, but let’s just be honest here: living, existing on this planet can also be stressful, and so I suppose a teacher has that added burden to minding their inner emotional state, right?
Sucheta: Absolutely. It’s such a beautiful question. I think that’s why I wanted to bring it back to that executive function, that’s what we’re trying to do mystify here, and educational and learning context, we are trying to elevate students capacity to self-direct and self-guide, and that of the very important part of that is emotionally manage themselves, so in order to facilitate that, the teacher has to do the same. We have heard that as an adult, responding to a situation is far better than reacting, then why do we react? In my opinion, we react because we are distracted. We are stressed, and we are overcommitted, and it’s just not limited to a teacher, but every adult that I know or everyone as you mentioned, living life is stressful. So, one of the reasons we will not be responding and simply reacting is because we are distracted, stressed, and overcommitted. So, what are we distracted by? We are distracted by technology, we are distracted by the thoughts of that consume us about unattained goals, and our own mind wandering can be distracting which is unmonitored. When your mind wandering is left unchecked, that can be distracting, right? So, at the heart of – then, when talking about stress, so at the heart of stress, we are fighting the truth in the present reality. So, what I mean by that, that we are wishing for a different outcome or better results, or magical disappearance of unpleasantness caused by people or circumstances. That probably is the primary root cause of stress. So, the chaos inside can easily translate into the chaos outside or the chaos outside can add to the chaos inside. As Wayne Dyer, a motivational speaker has said that the state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind. So, to respond and to not react, we need to get off the autopilot, rain in your emotion particularly the stress, and take the perspective of the needs of others. So, in order to do that, I feel we need some strategies and MaryAnn, she didn’t talk about this in this podcast, but I thought it was very appropriate to mention this here, and it’s a great resource that people can look up in her book. She talks about E + P + ST = F. So, what does that mean? E means Event + P means Perception which come from your past experience, + ST which is Self-talk or a lack thereof, = to Feelings with the F. So, the idea here is to change your feelings. In order to change your feelings, you need to have something done differently about your perceptions and self-talk, because we can’t change, really, events. So, once you take your feelings, you certainly can change your outcomes. So, the idea here is to gain control over your perceptions and the conversation you have with yourself, and that’s the secret of a very sound in her life.
Producer: Great stuff. I mean, taking everything you said so far, simple question: do you think it takes an awful lot to get through to a child?
Sucheta: Yes, I do think that. I think life is so complicated. If it so complicated for adults, it certainly is very complicated for children, and reaching children is more of an art than science. A student may be discouraged because he has a hard life or maybe he comes from a broken family, or a life of chaos, I work in my private practice, I see families who are very wealthy but the children have same amount of stress because of many reasons including disorganized life because that parents whose children are disorganized have given that genetic gift to them, and they are not running smooth households with great consistency. There is also unreasonable expectations which heightens the strain that the child feels and that can create a hard life for the child, and so a child who for example, has not gotten breakfast or he got punished for bad behavior, that same bad behavior for which he gets in trouble at school, also, he gets in trouble at home, and so not receiving compassionate treatment by his own parents were not receiving tender loving care. So, such child enters the classroom and the teacher then is trying to reach that child. So, teacher may be the person elevates the child as she tells the emotional soil of this child with great attention and careful redirection. There are some nuggets of gold for all of us to follow in dealing with children. So, what of the things that I think the message that we heard MaryAnn talk about is that as a teacher, she must send feelers out to see how is the child feeling and can her own reaction and responses be tailored to a child’s emotional undertones in that conversation? So, may be in order to do that, the teacher needs to exercise some fundamental human tricks. What are they? Be patient and be demonstrative of that patients. Be considerate and be demonstrative of that consideration. Offer helpful suggestions, treat the child with great respect, and make an encouraging comment as MaryAnn talked about. So, caring by keeping engaging the student at the center of every activity, there are wonderful suggestions that she was talking about that I mean, I cannot imagine this happening. I think teachers forget that a high schooler is a child. We forget, a 6-foot tall boy with peach fuzz at his face doesn’t feel like he’s a child but yes, he is. So, celebrating their birthdays, having lunch with the kid, or having afternoon tea, kind of pretending, you can imagine you’re the Queen of England or something, but calling the kid in the evening at home just to check on the kid, particularly the kid if he has had a hard time in the class, sending a note to the parents praising the child. These are kind of simple gestures that can do wonders for the child’s psychology. I feel these are simple tricks, tricks about how to treat others with utmost humanity. What we want for ourselves is exactly what students want for them, and so it’s the teacher’s job to offer that to the students.
So, one last thing that comes to my mind about this is, the teacher needs to do everything possible to fill her own bucket from somewhere else before standing in front of the students. We as adults over to our children.
Producer: No. Yeah, great stuff. I mean, I think about a lot here, but it’s not just about feelings, right? It’s not just emotions. We are dealing with all of this. I mean, I suspect there are some actual tactical methods that can also help a teacher set the stage for success with the student and the child, yes?
Sucheta: Oh, absolutely, and again, I’m going to refer to some of the writings that MaryAnn has done, and I highly suggest for our educators are parents who are listening to this podcast to explore them, but yes, it’s tactical methods that need to be also instilled in the classroom teaching. Consistency and predictability are two anchors that stabilize child’s emotional well-being and organize classroom, or the processes are self-evident and well-rehearsed can really help the student get grounded. Collective, expectations and well stated kind of expectations can really help the child to know how to comply and meet those intangible invisible expectations once they become transparent. Sometimes, in organized class, maybe the only repertoire a kid who comes from chaotic homes, as I mentioned earlier, so in their book, MaryAnn and her colleague Alicia Duncan discussed five-step process to teach procedures. They say step one is to explain the procedure. Step two is to model it which is to visually demonstrate the procedure itself. Step three is to role-play. So, engaging with the student and kind having a couple of students come in and give instructions. One becomes the teacher, the second acts out as a student. Another thing they described which is kind of find the flaw method which is actually, the teacher instructs the student to run into a glitch while implementing the solution or the procedure. Number four is to practice, so giving all students an opportunity to exercise that procedure a number of times before kind of expecting that to be upheld, and finally, she mentions that review should be an integral part of that. So, review is what? When a student actually fails to comply with the procedure or forgets, or may be after the weekend is over, the teacher should review the procedures. When the students come back from Christmas break, teachers should review the procedures. So, classroom management skills are of great importance and they contribute to the teaching success. If the teacher allocates adequate time necessary for the student to inculcate these new procedures, it can pay off in the long run.
Producer: Great stuff. All right, we are nearing the end, Sucheta. Any closing thoughts you’d like to share please?
Sucheta: Yeah, all these conversations that I’m having as I sit here and think about how to make children self-sufficient and how to promote their executive function which is nothing but self-regulation, self-observation, a cooperative social engagement, what comes to my mind is a teacher’s role is that of a gardener. The teacher needs to take her job seriously, they need to be kind to the kids and constantly be reminded that they are only kids even if you have an 18-year-old in your class, he is still a kid, and that kind of level of deep, deep empathy we must feel for our children, executive function skills blossom when there is just enough change that forces adaptive processes to be engaged, but that change is only evident if there is something stable and there is something that anchors, such as organized systems that have been consistently implemented. So, it’s teacher’s kind of role and responsibility to anchor the student with something that is stable and consistent.
Finally, the weight the teacher treats the student sets the tone for the students as to how much he matters in the world. So, we have the ability to help alter child’s perception and inner self talk. So, he can, if he thinks we think he can. So, I think that’s what I kind of want everybody to take away from my conversation with MaryAnn today.
Todd: All right, great stuff. That’s all the time we have for today. On behalf of our host Sucheta Kamath and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thank you for listening today. We look forward to seeing you again right here next week on Full PreFrontal.