education – Bridge in the Middle

Embracing AI in Middle School: A Guide for Educators on Navigating LLM Bias

As generative AI becomes increasingly prevalent in education, middle school educators face the unique challenge of teaching students not just how to use AI tools, but how to understand and critically evaluate their limitations and biases. Central to this challenge are Large Language Models (LLMs). A Large Language Model (LLM) synthesizes excessive amounts of data created by humans to generate realistic outputs for users.

During my deep dive into LLMs, I discovered early on these generative AI tools are based on potentially biased human training data. This bias can be displayed in both subtle and non-subtle ways. As educators, it is imperative that we understand the implications of using these tools in our various contexts.

One day while I was scanning LinkedIn I came across an article titled, “Gen AI is Racist. Period.” The title drew me in as I wanted to learn more about this specific declaration. Generative AI is inherently biased, that I knew, but I was interested in learning more about the assertion in the title.

The author highlighted a quick activity to investigate the biases of generative AI. In short, two almost identical essays were graded differently by a number of the popular LLM’s.

What was the difference?

In one essay the writer stated that their favorite music was classical music and the other essay stated that their favorite music was rap music. Guess which essay was graded lower?

The notion of this blatant bias is not only troubling, it is a call to action for all of us to be discerning when using generative AI. In their book, The Promises and Perils of AI in Education: Ethics and Equity Have Entered The Chat (2024), Shelton and Lanier assert that Artificial Intelligence is not objective and it just mirrors the biases of the creators. Human biases exist in every context and AI amplifies those biases. If we are aware of this, do we stop engaging with the use of generative AI? Do we limit the use? Or do we become more discerning while understanding the implications?

How do we as educators mitigate bias when using generative AI in our classrooms?

Awareness and Education:

Teachers who use generative AI need to be aware of and able to identify embedded biases. When schools are engaged with professional learning about generative AI, it is imperative that these sessions address how these tools amplify bias.

Critical Evaluation of AI output:

Educators should always lead with their HI (Human Intelligence). All AI outputs and results should be critically assessed. Middle school students are developing their critical thinking skills and the onset of generative AI adds additional complexities.
Reflecting on one’s own biases

Educators must identify and examine their own biases when teaching but also when using generative AI to support their practice. Through honest self-assessment and relevant professional development teachers can ensure that their instructional decisions do not perpetuate additional harm.

AI Literacy

In 2024 UNESCO released AI competency frameworks for students and teachers to help schools navigate the complexities of AI use in education. It is imperative that AI literacy is addressed and these frameworks provide a roadmap for schools to develop ethical, human-centered approaches to generative AI.

The integration of AI in middle school education offers exciting possibilities but also requires careful consideration of ethical issues, notably bias. By engaging in conversations addressing bias with faculty and students, schools can create more informed and critical use of generative AI.

Dr. Nneka Johnson is an advocate for international education. She believes in the power of servant leadership, design thinking/innovation, global engagement/collaboration and mentorship. Nneka strives to empower school leaders to use innovative methodologies to make a positive impact within their diverse communities.

In 2023, Nneka became the first Fellow at the Council of International Schools (CIS). Before joining CIS, she spent five years at the International School of Dakar (ISD), where she held the position of Director of Innovation and Strategic Development. In her senior leadership role at ISD she was responsible for a number of school strategic initiatives. She currently serves on the Association of International Schools in Africa (AISA) Board of Trustees and the AISA Professional Learning Design Team. She is also an Edsafe Women in AI Fellow.

Nneka’s educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Queens College in New York City, a Master’s degree in Instructional Technology from Georgia State University, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Mercer University in Atlanta.

You can connect with Nneka on X (Twitter) at @NnekaJ_Edu

Enduring Approaches to Student-Led Learning

In my teaching career, I was fortunate to spend time in lower, middle, and upper school classrooms. I guess I’m drawn to change, young adult novels, and loud bus rides because most of those years were with sixth through eighth graders. I appreciated the opportunity to observe agency across students, often the same students, as they navigated growth from elementary to high school. And I took note: a lot shifted in content and curriculum, but the foundations for student agency stayed constant.

Given all the world has thrown at us in the last four years, and all the ways (much admired) teaching communities have flexed and adapted, I’m reflecting deeply on what endures in our middle school classrooms. I’m observing the systemic approaches–regardless of changing technologies, grade levels, and initiatives–that ensure our students grow as agents of their own learning.

Prioritizing Belonging

The only starting point in students leading learning is establishing the conditions for belonging. “Students’ sense of belonging matters. It matters in promoting deeper learning and equity. It matters every day, in every classroom, in every school.” (Equity and Voice: How a Sense of Belonging Promotes Students’ Agency by Alison Lee and Meg Riordan) Cultivating belonging sets the conditions for students to feel safe enough to make choices, to take risks, and to drive next steps. And when students are taking those actions, belonging becomes self-sustaining; students themselves partner in fueling belonging-rich spaces. As educators, this means invitational spaces and intentional design: From participation, discussion, and collaboration norms to modeling vulnerability, building trust, and deepening self-reflection.

Moving Beyond ChoiceChoice boards and student selected topics are pedagogical moves with merit. And without the scaffolding of enduring systems, they become mere choices and not developed agency. In “Part 1: What Do You Mean When You Say ‘Student Agency?’”,

Jennifer Davis Poon shares three lastling components that shift students into the role of learning co-designers and not just choice-makers: Agency-empowered students set learning goals, initiate action towards those goals, and reflect on progress towards goals. Agency begins with students knowing their learning targets deeply and in having an active role in how they achieve them. As educators, we’re called to articulate meaningful skills with clarity, to plan for personalized learning pathways, and to develop valuable feedback ecosystems that invite students to tell their learning stories.

Embracing the Complexity

When we’re clear on what student-led learning is, we gain clarity on what it’s not. And it’s not tidy. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t follow a linear trajectory. And it’s definitely not a checklist. It’s ongoing opportunities to converse, to seek student perspectives, to design, and to reflect. “[Agency] is a multi-faceted skill and disposition—invoking past, present, and future. It is students’ abilities to set advantageous goals, initiate action toward those goals, and reflect and redirect based on feedback, all the while internalizing the belief they can have agency” (Davis Poon). Designing for agency is perhaps the most important work we do in our middle schools. It is disruption and change resistant. It is a lens to leverage and respond to innovations–like AI–for what really matters. It is complex work, and it is valuable work.

Dr. Anindya Kundu defines agency as “a person’s capacity to leverage resources to create positive change in their lives.” Intentional, foundational moves to design for belonging, cultivate enduring systems, and embrace the complexity of human-centered approaches support our middle school students in growing as changemakers in an ever shifting world. And for middle school educators, wise people already used to being consistent in the midst of change (and keeping our senses of humor in the midst of loud bus rides), there’s no better time to nurture agency rich environments that ensure our students thrive.

Becky Green loves that she gets to learn from students and educators around the world as the Associate Director of Professional Learning with the Global Online Academy (GOA). Since 2016 she has coached, facilitated, designed, and led across their professional learning and student programs. But first and foremost, Becky is a middle school teacher having spent two decades in international and public school classrooms.

She cares deeply about ensuring students thrive beyond school walls, and whether it’s supporting transitions to competency-based learning, partnering purposefully with AI, facilitating portrait of a graduate processes, or reimagining learning design, Becky prioritizes joyful, relational, student-centered experiences.

Introduction: Getting on the MBE Pathway

What makes a teacher adjust or transform their instructional design and work with students when introduced to the most promising research and strategies in the science of how the brain learns?

Since our founding in 2011, The CTTL has been pondering this question with 100% of our Preschool through 12^th-grade colleagues at St. Andrew’s, as well as teachers and school leaders from around the world. From my own experience as a history teacher, I can point to many teaching and learning strategies that I am using today that I was not using in 1991 when I began my career in Spokane, Washington.

Back then, I used to think that I teach… and the students learn. That was my educational philosophy. My job was to teach topics such as the colonization of the already populated New World, the causes of wars and revolutions, and the expansion of Enlightenment ideas across national borders. I certainly did not understand the complexity of the organ of learning – the brain – that each student undoubtedly has with them each day. Nor did I understand the connection between emotion and cognition or how identity – mine and theirs – impacts teaching and learning.

What changed for me was learning about how the brain learns, which began when St. Andrew’s decided to train every one of its teachers in Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) science, starting in 2007. Along our journey we have been helped by many great friends from academia. The late, great Kurt Fischer, and others, including Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, David Daniel, Mariale Hardiman, Rob Coe, Pooja Agarwal, Dan Willingham, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Mark McDaniel, Pedro De Bruyckere, Pamela Cantor, Dylan Wiliam, and Christina Hinton, and many more, have helped us understand this transdisciplinary field that includes neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and education research. Our work to make research principles come to life in classrooms and schools has been supported by giants, and we are forever grateful for their friendship and support.

But let’s go back to 2008 – before The CTTL was even an idea. At a Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston, I sat in the audience, confused and a bit angry: “Why have I never been taught the promising principles, research, and strategies that are being shared here?” To be the most effective teacher for all of my students, I need to know my history content well, but I also need to know how to set the right conditions for learning, use the right memory strategies to make learning stick, and how best to assess, provide high-quality feedback, set purposeful homework, and foster student agency and independence. There seemed to be so many places in my daily work with students that could be made better – if only I could find ways to get this Learning, Brain, Research “stuff” to work for me. The chasm between research and everyday practice seemed wide and difficult to cross.

In the ten-year history of The CTTL, we have had the privilege to work with individual teachers, schools, and districts who also recognized the research in the science of teaching and learning as one of the most important solutions to elevate student achievement, close student learning gaps, and support student well-being. This has become even more true after COVID – and elevating teacher practice through the highest quality professional development is the best solution we have. But we teachers can be stubborn and hold fast to what we think is working or what feels comfortable. Change is hard. Change at scale? Harder still. But surely every child deserves a teacher who has an accurate understanding of how learning happens?

The mission of St. Andrew’s is “To know and inspire each student in an inclusive community dedicated to exceptional teaching, learning, and service.” From our school’s founding in 1978, we have held fast to the research-supported idea that great teachers really matter. In the words of David Steiner, head of the Institute of Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, “The strongest education research finding in the last twenty years is that the quality of a teacher is the single greatest in-school determinate of student outcomes.” The CTTL is a driver for great teaching.

We have invested a lot of time collectively growing our teacher’s knowledge and research-to-classroom translation skills. We have developed many tools to support their MBE journey, like the MBE Placemats and Roadmap, Neuroteach Global, and our Science of Teaching and School Leadership Academy. We help teachers build a broad MBE knowledge and skillset, but also give them autonomy to choose their own adventure – deepening their practice with those MBE principles that may have the greatest impact with the classes they teach, the departments they are in, and the students they work with in classrooms, clubs, studios, and on the stages and sports fields.

But where does the MBE journey start? As the CTTL team presents around the world, we often use this graph from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. It tells a story of what might be the most important concept from neuroscience that we can use to transform teaching and learning: neuroplasticity. Schools and their teachers have the unique privilege to be working with students when their brains are experiencing some of the greatest change. The good news about neuroplasticity is that it also means the teacher-brain can change. The idea that the brain is “set” at roughly eighteen years of age is a neuromyth.

I am 54 years old as I write this, and the vertical line provides some indication of the effort I will need to change my brain. It is more effort than for my students—but I can change my brain. This is one reason why most one-and-done professional learning experiences lead to little change in how teachers teach and how their students learn. What ultimately got teachers like me to change our practice was finding promising insights from research that could: (1) enhance our effectiveness with all the learners we work with; (2) enhance student academic, social, and emotional outcomes; and (3) enhance our efficiency. It also helps that we use research on how to change teachers’ practice, like Thomas Guskey’s model for teacher change, and the work of David Weston’s work at the Teacher Development Trust. The CTTL’s work with educators around the world uses the science of teaching and learning to teach the science of teaching and learning.

Meg Lee, the Director of Organizational Development in Frederick County Public Schools, Maryland (FCPS) and a contributor to this volume of Think Differently and Deeply, proclaimed about MBE, “Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.” The role of The CTTL for 100% of our St. Andrew’s preschool through 12^th-grade teachers and school leaders, our colleagues, is to get them to see MBE. To see how it can touch every aspect of what they do at school, and to help make it so “everyday-useful” that they never think to unsee it. Whether they are early in their career or elevating their already excellent practice, the CTTL provides our colleagues a pathway of sustained professional growth – all focused on making our classrooms, hallways, stages, and sports fields an even better experience for our students. The importance of having the whole community of teachers and leaders in a school understand the science of how the brain (both student and adult) learns, works, changes, and thrives cannot be emphasized enough. The brain is the organ of learning and will remain so, whatever future technologies, including AI and those we have yet to imagine, bring.

My pathway to becoming MBE research-informed will not be yours; my school’s journey will not be yours. But many threads of this journey will be the same. The translation of research into everyday practice, and the extent to which it works or doesn’t, is very context-dependent. This is the joy and the challenge of the work – committed educators playing with the art and science of educating, making it work for them, with their students, in their community. Mind, Brain, and Education science offers many different paths, and we can choose these to align with a teacher, division, department, school, or district’s strategic priorities. What will be your first step, or next step, on your MBE pathway?

Glenn Whitman (gwhitman@saes.org) is the Executive Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew’s where he also teaches history.

Motivation is the Key to Lifelong Learning

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said. How true!

We are quick to identify the teacher as the single most important factor in learning, and this makes sense (and is backed by research), but how good can a teacher be, or be expected to be, if the student is not motivated to learn in the first place? Of course, a truly remarkable teacher will be able to turn a student around completely, taking them from disinterested to engaged, bored to curious, and apathetic to passionate, but these are rare cases and require exceptional circumstances and specific chemistry between the learner and the teacher.

If examination results are bad, or grade averages are low, if attainment falls by the wayside, will administrators get away by telling their boards that the students didn’t do any work, that they didn’t study hard enough? Probably not. And wanting to blame students, or teachers for that matter, for underperformance is not a very productive way of going about the analysis of achievement.

And yet, a truism remains and sometimes we need to be reminded of it. If you are genuinely motivated to learn something, you will learn it. When we want to find out something or appropriate some new skill, learn how to cook a meal or repair a bicycle tyre, we go online and learn about it through a tutorial. That’s how most people learn low-level procedural knowledge today. If there’s a real appetite to know something, all that is necessary is the source material to access the knowledge.

The point is important when we turn inwards and ask what motivates us, what we want to achieve, where we really want to go and why. This is where inner resources, lifelong learning, and motivation become the most important drivers. It is also why education is not just the transmission of knowledge but the activation of the necessary self-awareness and intrinsic motivation to learn, and to carry on learning after school.

Students at University of the People choose to learn online with us because they are lifelong learners—because they want to break out of their present situations to new planes of thought and opportunity through education. This is an extremely powerful vector that propels learning to great heights.

So next time you find yourself bored by someone or not engaged, reflect on the part you must play in that exchange, that it cannot just come from the emission of knowledge or skills but has a lot to do with your own readiness to learn, your own attitude, your own motivation.

Conrad Hughes (PhD, EdD) is the Director General of the International School of Geneva (Ecolint). He is also a Senior Fellow at UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, a member of the advisory board for the University of the People and research assistant at the University of Geneva’s department of psychology and education.

Conrad’s most recent books are Education and Elitism: Challenges and Opportunities (2021, Routledge), Understanding Prejudice and Education: The Challenge for Future Generations (2017, Routledge) and Educating for the 21st Century: Seven Global Challenges (2018, Brill).

You can learn more about Conrad’s work at his website, Conrad-Hughes.com

Just Emotion, or a Mental Health Issue?

We’ve Done Awareness – The Future of the Mental Health Conversation is Greater Specificity

When working with pupils aged ten to fourteen, one of the first questions I ask them is how they would know if a friend had good mental health. This question tends to give them pause. They’ve generally had lessons, by this stage, about mental illness. They have a range of vocabulary to describe various states of poor mental health and know about symptom spotting. But positive mental health? Generally, they’ve had fewer occasions to think about that.

What invariably happens is that eventually one of the class raises their hand and gives the answer: ‘They’d be smiling and/or happy’.

This is a great opportunity for me to explain two things. The first is that it is a mistake to conflate good mental health with constant happiness. As human beings, we experience a range of emotions and not all of them are pleasant. Sadness, anger, nervousness, stress, guilt, shame – they’re all part of life’s tapestry and entirely normal.

The second is that, counter-intuitive as it may sound, a person appearing to be happy all the time is potentially a symptom of mental health struggles. Some people put on a mask to avoid confronting the reality of anxiety, depression or suicidal ideation with their friends and colleagues.

For me, a person can be described as being in a state of good mental health if they have the ability to do the following four things:

Sit with emotion

We live in a world where there are hundreds of things we can use to distract ourselves. We’ve trained our brains to chase the temporary highs we get from junk like caffeine, sugar and likes on social media. All of these can be a distraction from what we’re really feeling and, in the moment, preferable to confronting our pain.

But negative emotions like the ones listed above don’t simply go away if you ignore them. They demand to be worked through. By distracting ourselves, we ensure that they will come out at another time, probably when it’s less appropriate (for example, shouting at someone who doesn’t deserve it, or having a panic attack out of the blue).

Recognise when the emotion has become ‘too big’ to handle alone

Sometimes, we need help in order to work through a life event or a complex response. Recognising when we are at that stage and when we need to reach out for help is key.

Learn from the Experience

Ultimately, the reason we have emotions that don’t feel pleasant is because it’s our body’s attempt to teach us a lesson. Sometimes, this isn’t possible – the reasons we feel sad or angry are completely outside of our control. A bereavement, for example. Other times, though – and this is particularly true where guilt and shame are concerned – there is a learning opportunity. We can ask ourselves ‘how will I amend my attitude or behaviour so I can avoid feeling this way again?’

Move on in a Timely Fashion

Learning from the unpleasant experience is part of processing, which ultimately allows us to move forward and prevent dwelling.

I see my job – which involves visiting schools and colleges throughout the world delivering workshops and conducting research on issues related to mental wellbeing – as giving young people the tools they need to achieve these four things, where possible. I also hope the interactions we have allow them to make vital distinctions between difficult or challenging emotions and mental health issues that require professional support.

Here in the UK, the years 2010 to 2020 were ones of intense awareness-raising around mental health by charities and in media. Successive governments promised (but ultimately failed to deliver) ‘parity of esteem’ between physical and mental health – i.e. mental health issues should be treated with the same urgency and be given the same resources as their physical counterparts.

Unfortunately, this period coincided with the decision to impose austerity measures which meant mental health services were stripped back in most communities. This ultimately led to a ‘bottle necking’ effect, whereby everyone was talking about their mental health more but, unless they had the necessary wealth to access private care, they were unable to get support.

It also led to an unhelpful conflation of different phenomena. After all, mental health is an enormous umbrella term which can cover a huge range of issues – just as ‘physical health’ can apply to anything from a stubbed toe to cancer. Teachers began reporting that their pupils were refusing to do homework or exams because, they said, it negatively impacted their mental health. What they meant, usually, was that the prospect made them anxious. Without help from a qualified professional, however, there was no real way to tell whether this was symptomatic of an anxiety disorder or just the normal, everyday stress, which most people experience.

That is not to say that the latter doesn’t require attention. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to start wanging on about ‘resilience’ at this point and to label young people a generation of ‘snowflakes’ (which was, irritatingly, the path chosen by several prominent figures in our media). Children and teenagers need help to navigate so many unfamiliar experiences; whether that be advice, access to a creative or physical hobby which helps them work through gnarly emotions, or a community of people who share common interests. It is simply that not every challenge requires clinical intervention.

The future of the mental health conversation, I have believed for some time now, is one of greater specificity. After all, if I said I was having ‘problems with my physical health’ it would be ludicrous for me to expect the person on the receiving end to understand precisely what I meant by that, or how they could help. The same principle applies, here.

As educators or those with responsibility for young people, we can begin by seeing mental health disclosures as an opportunity for further investigation: As the beginning of a journey, rather than its end.

Natasha Devon MBE is a writer, activist and broadcaster. She tours schools and events throughout the UK and beyond, delivering talks and conducting research on mental health, body image, gender & equality. She presents on LBC (one of Britain’s most popular speech radio stations) every Saturday and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, as well as appearing on television. She has a monthly column in Teach Secondary magazine.

Natasha is a Fellow of The University of Wales: Aberystwyth. She is an ambassador for charities Glitch UK and The Reading Agency, as well as a patron for No Panic. She is a certified instructor for Mental Health First Aid England and eating disorder charity Beat.

She has written non-fiction titles ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental: An A-Z’ for adults and ‘Yes You Can: Ace School Without Losing Your Mind’ and ‘Clicks: How to Be Your Best Self Online’ for young people aged 12+. Her debut YA novel ‘Toxic’ was published in July 2022 and is about coercive control in friendship. The sequel ‘Babushka’ was published on 5^th October 2023.

Find out more at www.natashadevon.com.

All the World’s a Stage: Using Theater Techniques in the Classroom

Richard M. Cash, Ed.D.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, William Shakespeare)

I was one of those students who wasn’t a top performer in reading or math. Physically, I wasn’t built for sports. So, my trajectory through junior and senior high school was to pursue the arts (music and theater). Going beyond high school, my options were limited to the arts. I am proud to say I achieved a bachelor’s degree in theater, with honors!

After years of suffering for my art, I decided I needed to change directions. I went back to school and earned a post-baccalaureate degree in education. I figured, where else was I going to get a captive audience!

Little did I know I would be relying heavily on my theater training. Theater teaches you how to be focused, solve problems, think critically and creatively, work as a team, and self-regulate to achieve a goal—many of the skills and attitudes we expect our students to develop in today’s classroom.

Using the techniques of theater in your classroom gives kids a safe place to try new things, make mistakes, and learn from others. Along with developing creativity, theatrical tools teach problem-solving, critical reasoning, and collaboration. Kids also learn risk-taking skills, affective resilience, nonverbal responsiveness, and social mindfulness.

Theater activities encourage students to think on their feet without the fear of being wrong, because the number one rule is “there are no mistakes, only opportunities.” Through using movement, pantomime, improvisation, role playing, and group discussion, students develop greater communication skills, social awareness, confidence, problem-solving abilities, and self-concept. The goal is to guide children to a greater sense of self-fulfillment and personal and social acceptance.

Actors have five tools they use to communicate: voice, body, imagination, concentration, and collaboration. Teaching students how to build their own toolbox of strategies can benefit them in learning and communication processes.

Voice: The ability to use your voice to be heard and understood
Articulation is critical in being heard and understood. All actors routinely go through diction practice. Our students must be articulate to project ideas and communicate effectively with others.

Start with simple practices such as: Sally sells seashells south of the seashore or Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Move on to more complex sound reproductions such as tongue twisters (repeated numerous times as fast as possible):

Unique New York
Red leather, yellow leather
She says she shall sew a sheet

And then move to more difficult and longer statements: She stood on the balcony, inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping, and amicably welcoming him home.

While working through these diction activities, have students concentrate on their breathing, being sure to breathe from their diaphragms. Focus on breathing deeply. Also pay attention to lip and tongue movement—really work those muscles.

For more diction strategies, click here.

Body: The ability to use your body to communicate messages
Actors use their bodies to project characters, emotions, and ideas. The use of the body in communication is extremely important—it’s called body language. Poor body language can communicate the wrong messages, whether in verbal or nonverbal interactions. To help students develop this language, start with basic physical stretches. Not only will stretching help your students loosen up, it can also release stress.

If you are into yoga, teach your students the poses. Or ask your physical education teacher to share with you stretches students do in gym class. You can also use the “shake and stretch” method. Starting at the top of the head:

Shake and stretch each body part individually.
Shake and stretch body parts in pairs (head and arms, shoulders and feet).
Shake and stretch up high and down low.
Shake and stretch wide and thin.
Shake and stretch fast and slow.
Shake and stretch without bending your knees or elbows.

Another fun way to warm up your body is to draw the alphabet with different body parts. Ask the students to use their nose to draw the letter B. Now, ask them to use their ear to draw the letter Z. And so on.

For more movement activities, click here.

Imagination: The ability to come up with different ideas
The best ideas are formed through an expansive imagination. Imagination is the ability to come up with novel and unique ideas through different ways of thinking. Creative thinking is one of the most powerful tools of imagination. The strategies of fluency and flexibility are a great place to begin.

Fluency is the ability to come up with a lot of ideas. To develop students’ fluency, start with simple steps such as asking them to list everything they can think of that is green within one minute (you can use any color you wish). Have them share their lists with a partner and compare and contrast the lists. Do it again with another color or shape. Routinely asking kids to do this simple activity can open up their minds to thinking more expansively. Wait for unique ideas to pop up—for example, the kid who writes envy when asked to list things that are green.

You can expand this idea to your content by asking kids to list things that are “independent,” or any other concept you are working on. You can also have your students draw pictures of what the concept looks like. Seeing what kids list or draw gives you an idea of how well they understand the concept.

Flexibility is the ability to think of things in a new way. I used to have a “junk bag” in my classroom full of strange and common objects (like a wooden spoon, an electrical outlet cover, an extension cord). Look around your house or school for those odd-looking objects to put in your junk bag. Using one of the objects, ask kids to think of the item as something that it’s NOT. So, for the wooden spoon, kids may say it’s a microphone, a baton, a sword, a magic wand, and so on. Being a flexible thinker helps in finding unconventional ways to solve problems by using what is available.

For more ideas on building imagination, click here. I also have many more ideas for developing creative thinking in my book Advancing Differentiation: Thinking and Learning for the 21st Century.

Concentration: The ability to stay focused
Our students are being raised in a very concentration-challenged environment. With technology, everything is at their fingertips immediately—there is no need to persevere or wait. While technology has made our lives more efficient, its downside is that it has made us want instant gratification and has decreased our ability to concentrate for long periods of time.

Concentration is a learned skill, and you can teach kids to stay focused through engaging activities. To build concentration, find a time during your day for kids to go “off the grid”—no gadgets, tablets, phones, or computers. During this time, go old-school: Use thinking or memory games or crossword or jigsaw puzzles, or have students put a list of words into alphabetical order (use similar words such as adjustments and adjusting so that kids alphabetize beyond the first few letters).

Also have your kids put their heads down on their desks. Tell them to sit up when they think one minute has passed. Monitor your kids, listing when kids sat up and how close they came to one minute. Practice this activity over time to see how close kids can come to the one-minute time.

For more ideas for building concentration, click here.

Collaboration: The ability to work with others to get things done
We are all in this together. The best ideas come when people work together. No actor does it alone—even in a one-person show. Many people contribute to the production. Each person has a role to play in making the show a success. So, too, in the classroom. When students work together with purpose, great things can happen. Working collaboratively takes practice. Just like in a Broadway musical, everyone has a role to play to make the production a success.

One activity that can build collaboration and teamwork is having small groups of students go on a scavenger hunt. Have your students look for things hidden around the classroom or school. Use a list of clues that lead to more clues and ultimately to hidden objects. Consider using information students learned during lessons to help them find the items. (For example, your clue might be, “The date of the Boston Tea Party.” The answer to this is 12/16/1773, which can lead kids to room 1216 or 1773, where the next clue is located.) Group the students based on each having a special talent or a different area of knowledge—so that collectively they can find the objects. Another idea is to give each member of the team a specific job to do—so that collectively they can find the object.

For more ideas on building collaboration and teamwork, click here.

Knowing how actors learn, practice, and apply their skills can be an exceptional way to help students be more confident, self-aware, and productive. Who knows, maybe you will spark the next Viola Davis, Dame Maggie Smith, Sidney Poitier, or Sir Lawrence Olivier!

Dr. Richard M. Cash is an award-winning educator and author best known for his work in differentiation and advanced learners. Over his 3-plus decades in education, his experiences include teaching, curriculum coordination, and program administration. Prior to his education career, Richard was an actor and children’s theater director. Currently, he is a widely respected education consultant with nRich Educational Consulting, Inc. (www.nrichconsulting.com). His consulting work has taken him throughout the United States, and internationally.

His areas of expertise are educational programming, rigorous and challenging curriculum design, differentiated instruction, 21^st century skills, brain-compatible classrooms, gifted & talented education, and self-regulated learning. Dr. Cash has authored books on differentiation, gifted learners, and self-regulation for learning.

Dr. Cash may be reached at: www.nrichconsulting.com $C:\Users\Dr.RichardM\Desktop\nRich-logo-print.tif$ richard@nrichconsulting.com

1-612-670-0278

What it Really Takes to Be a Successful Middle School (3 min)

Support, connect, balance. When the ELMLE team selected these words as the theme of the 2023 conference, they certainly had no idea they would also so accurately summarize what we’ve learned from AMLE’s Successful Middle School programming during the 2021-2022 school year.

We’ve facilitated studies of The Successful Middle School: This We Believe to help schools understand middle grade best practices, conducted the Successful Middle School Assessment to help schools gauge their implementation of those practices, supported schools and districts through ongoing coaching and professional development, and recognized twelve schools as our inaugural Schools of Distinction for their robust implementation of those very practices. Although we already knew what makes a middle school “good,” we’ve learned a lot about what it actually takes to get there.

We’ve learned that successful middle schools foster a symbiotic relationship of support, empowerment, and collaboration among staff, students, and the community. When the upper administration trusts a school leader to do their job well, the school leader feels supported and empowered. If that school leader feels supported and empowered, they can trust their staff to do their jobs well, and the staff feel supported and empowered. If school staff feel supported and empowered, they can trust their students to do their job well, and students feel supported and empowered. If students feel supported and empowered, they take the success of a school far beyond the school’s walls, fostering trust and positive relationships between the school and their families and community. When families and the community feel connected to the school, they trust upper administration to do their job well. Support, connection, balance.

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We’ve learned that successful middle schools develop these relationships intentionally and meticulously. Although the following list is by no means exhaustive, it provides a few tangible practices and mindsets that we’ve seen them utilize to create favorable conditions for these relationships to grow.

Staff understand and appreciate their students, including a strong foundation of young adolescent development.
A clear vision unifies staff and guides every decision.
Policies and practices are developed collaboratively and are evaluated transparently to ensure they are unbiased, student-centered, and fairly implemented. Staff and students know they have a voice in the decisions that are made for their school and believe they are listened to.
Structures foster meaningful relationships for students and staff, such as small learning communities through interdisciplinary teaming and advocacy for each student through advisory.
The empowerment of staff extends beyond administrative and teaching staff to include support staff and those in other roles.
Professional development honors the existing expertise of each staff member while working toward goals in line with the school’s vision.
Students believe they have a voice–in their academic experiences, in how their school operates, and in their larger community–and they know adults will listen.
The school engages with the community so that students’ learning experiences have both real-world relevance and impact.
The school views families as equal partners with the school in the best interest of the students and ensures families have authentic opportunities to not just spectate but actually influence the life and work of the school.

We’ve learned that when staff, students, and families feel trusted and empowered as part of a collaborative school community, the vision and mission of The Successful Middle School truly comes to life. We look forward to sharing more of what we’ve learned with you at ELMLE in January!

Bridging the Executive Function Gap in the Classroom in 47 seconds a Day (8 mins)

**Bethany Febus** is a Professional Certified Life Coach specializing in ADHD and Executive Function in Seattle, Washington, USA. Bethany is passionate about supporting her clients in understanding the way their unique brain works so they can develop supportive strategies and systems that are interesting and relevant to who they are. Her work with families includes improving skills around academics management, time awareness, planning, collaborative problem solving, emotional regulation, organization, social skills and more. Bethany trains and mentors coaches at the ADD Coach Academy, an internationally recognized coach training program.

If you are a fan of TikTok, and an educator, you may have come across reels of the middle school science teacher Maddie Richardson, or “Miss R.”, teaching her middle school students ⁸. She teaches science, but she includes a mini Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lesson as a “brain break” in her classes every day. Despite my ambivalent feelings about TikTok, stumbling onto little gems like Miss R. has been revelatory for me. As a certified ADHD coach, I’m inspired by this simple but impactful integration of SEL into the classroom.

As an ADHD and Executive Function Coach, I work with students to help them understand their brains better and to create personalized strategies and structures to meet their personal and academic goals. We focus on building skills in planning, prioritizing, organizing, problem-solving, and time management. This is what we usually mean when we refer to “Executive Function Skills”. However, there are additional executive function skills that I also work on with my clients
that are even more integral to student success, but that are often seen as less important in academics. These include emotional regulation, self-awareness, working memory, self-talk, social skills, self-monitoring, and motivation. The demand for my services has grown tremendously over the last couple of years as the stress of the pandemic has pushed students to the limits of their ability to cope and their ability to mask their challenges.

I sometimes work with my client’s teachers to better support their learning needs, and I often find their teachers at a loss as to how to help them. They often have exhausted their usual repertoire of support systems. I believe that this is partly due to a pervasive misunderstanding of how executive functions develop and impact student’s success. We tend to assume many of these skills are developmentally consistent across children, and we make assumptions about what students “should” be able to do based on their age ¹². While a majority of children develop executive functions along a consistent timeline, many children need more support to bridge the gap between expectations and performance¹. Worldwide statistics estimate close to 6% of children may have developmental delays of 3-5 years in executive functioning ^{11, 1}. In the US it is estimated to be almost 10% ^{10, 1} . These numbers do not even include students whose executive functions may be impacted by lack of sleep, anxiety, depression, or a multitude of other life stressors.

For example, here are some factors that might impede a hypothetical 7th grader’s ability to succeed in math class:

A 7th grader walks into class after the bell rings, walks right past the turn-in bin without turning in their math packet, slumps down into their chair loudly, and then proceeds to stare out the window without taking out paper or pencil.

The teacher feels frustrated by what seems like disrespectful behavior and is worried about the pattern that seems to be developing with this student. They hold back their criticism and prompt the student to get out their supplies.

The student looks annoyed and snaps back “I know, I’m getting it!” They slowly pull out their notebook, and then loudly ask their neighbor if they can borrow a pencil. The teacher’s resolve crumbles.

Does this sound familiar? When we peel back the layers of this student’s experience and identify which executive function skills might be lacking, we can see the reasons that they are struggling:

They take an inefficient route through the halls to their locker (planning/working memory/problem solving).

When they get to their locker, it takes three tries to get their password right (focus, working memory, fine motor skill challenges).

When they get their locker open their mind goes blank (working memory, situational awareness). They grab their math book and nothing else (working memory, future thinking, planning) They ignore the bag of pencils that have been sitting in there since the first day of school.

The bell rings which sends a burst of cortisol through their system. Fearing they will be late again (emotional regulation), they slam their locker shut and tell themselves how stupid they are and how they will never get anything right (emotional regulation, verbal working memory).

When they enter the math class, everyone looks at them, which makes their stomach flop and their face flush (emotional regulation). They are flooded and shut down². Even without the shutdown, they may not have had the situational awareness required to remember to turn in their homework.

They are so stuck in negative thoughts and fears that it feels to them like they have just sat down when the teacher prompts them to get out paper and pencil. The prompt reaches their limbic system like a threat to which they react reflexively.

What does this have to do with Miss R. and her TikTok’s? Miss R. introduces Social Emotional Learning topics to her students that include the effects of lack of sleep on the brain, responsible decision making, making failure a norm, and more. Each lesson is about the length of the average TikTok video, 47 seconds. And from the enthusiastic voices of the students in the background, she has their full attention. I am not suggesting that every teacher start making TikTok videos with their class. What I love about this model is that it shows that it doesn’t take a lot of time to meet the needs of a variety of students. Some teachers are already finding ways to implement executive function education and support⁹. According to researcher and SLP, Sarah ward, those teachers have seen an increase in self-esteem and autonomy in their students as a result⁹. I believe this could be done on a large scale without curriculum changes. Teachers could weave this learning into their lessons and the classroom culture regularly.

Not sure where to start with your own classroom? We know that when students are regulated, they are more able to take in information and learn from it⁵. If educators could do one thing to support our students with executive function challenges, it would be to see the connection between emotional regulation and execution¹³. Help them find ways to get out of fight/flight (which many are otherwise trapped in all day long) and back into their learning brain. We can do this in many ways including modeling conscious breathing, mindfulness and considering sensory needs or sensitivities and movement needs. We can model and teach a “pause” before action. Dr. Russell Barkley, a well-respected executive function expert, says that students with executive function challenges need to “repeatedly practice self-monitoring, self-stopping, seeing the future, saying the future, feeling the future, and playing with the future to effectively plan and go toward the future⁶.” The key to supporting executive functions is to make them explicit and repeated. Your whole class may not need this, but they will all benefit from it, and they will all grow in empathy and self-awareness when they understand the various challenges and skills of their classmates.

If a student isn’t meeting behavioral or academic expectations in the classroom, ask yourself, “why?”, and “why now?” Peel back the layers and see if there is a way you can include the whole class in the scaffolding. We can help students to understand that their inability to meet expectations in the moment is merely because of a skill they have yet to learn. Rather than telling themselves “I hate writing, I can never think of something to write about”, they might think “I couldn’t pick a topic today because my ‘decider’ was all worn out after picking a book, so I asked Miss Lara if she could narrow down the choices for me or let me have the night to think about it.” Giving language to the challenges they are facing helps students build self-awareness and ultimately independence⁴.

At the end of each lesson, Miss R. encourages students if they aren’t proficient at the lesson topic yet, “that’s ok, you are in middle school, let’s take a deep breath and let it go…And if you brought any stressors, depressors, or anxieties with you today, I want you to let them know you will be with them later … all you have to worry about right now is science and it’s not going to be that bad” The same message can be said to teachers. Maybe you are already doing all the suggestions I have listed and more. If so, Bravo! But, if you haven’t yet understood the role of executive functions in your student’s ability to access the curriculum, and you have blamed their behavior on something else entirely, or you have given up on a couple of students completely, I want you to take a deep breath and let it go. As neuroscience changes how we understand the brain, we are all still learning how to effectively support our students, and all you have to think about right now is being the amazing teacher you already are and know it’s not going to be that bad. In fact, it could be pretty amazing!

¹Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D. Dedicated to Education and Research on ADHD (n.d.) The Important Role of Executive Functioning and Self-Regulation in ADHD© Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D. [factsheet] http://www.russellbarkley.org/factsheets/ADHD_EF_and_SR.pdf

²Brown, T. (2014). Smart but Stuck: Emotions in Teens and Adults with ADHD. Jossey-Bass.

³Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (29 Oct. 2020) Activities Guide: Enhancing & Practicing Executive Function Skills. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/activities-guide-enhancing-and-practicing-executive-function-skills-with-children-from-infancy-to-adolescence/.

⁴Jacobson, R. (2021, August 15). Metacognition: How Thinking About Thinking Can Help Kids. Child Mind Institute. https://childmind.org/article/how-metacognition-can-help-kids/

⁵Shanker, S. (2017, July 4). Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life (Reprint). Penguin Books.

⁶Barkley, R.A. (2012) Executive Functions: What they are, how they work and why they evolved. New York: Guilford

⁷Shaw P, Eckstrand K, Sharp W, Blumenthal J, Lerch JP, Greenstein D, Clasen L, Evans A, Giedd J, Rapoport JL. (2007 Dec 4) Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.;104(49):19649-54. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0707741104.

⁸Richardson, M, [@themissrproject]. (2022, September 2) Day 17 – #teamwork and #commucation also happy Space day #nasa #artemis1 🚀 (launch on Saturday) #teacher #sel #leadership #teachersoftiktok #wholebrainteaching [Video].TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@themissrproject/video/7138930747238567214?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

⁹Ward, S. (2014, July 12) A Clinical Model for Developing Executive Function Skills Sarah Ward https://www.efpractice.com/_files/ugd/78deb2_0ee2dbd06e384650a209f48d9101ac3d.pdf

¹⁰ Danielson M, Bitsko R, Ghandour R, Holbrook J, Kogan M, Blumberg S (2018 January 24) Prevalence of Parent-Reported ADHD Diagnosis and Associated Treatment Among U.S. Children and Adolescents, 2016. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 47:2, 199-212, DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2017.1417860. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5834391/pdf/nihms937906.pdf

¹¹Willcutt EG (2012) The prevalence of DSM-IV attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analytic review. Neurotherapeutics. 2012;9:490–499. doi: 10.1007/s13311-012-0135-8.

¹²Sippl A (nd) Executive Function Skills By Age: What to Look For Life Skills Advocate [blog] accessed 2022 08 13 https://lifeskillsadvocate.com/blog/executive-function-skills-by-age/

¹³Barkley R (2012) Self-Regulation and Executive Functioning Theory Burnett Lecture Part 2 ADHD

How can we protect kids? By knowing that sex education and grooming are not the same.

By Justine Ang Fonte, sexuality education teacher and Leah Carey, sex and intimacy coach and host of the podcast “Good Girls Talk About Sex”

As sex educators, we are deeply concerned about the recent effort to paint our work as “grooming” or “sexualizing” children. In fact, our goal is the exact opposite: to make sure children have the skills needed to repel the tactics used by predators.

In May 2021, conservative commentator Candace Owens accused one of us of being a pedophile. “[S]he should have to register as a sex offender,” Owens tweeted to her 3 million followers.

The crime? Acknowledging to first-graders that it’s normal to be curious about their genitals.

In today’s fractious political climate, critics argue that in giving children accurate, scientifically based information about their bodies, we are either preparing them to be molested or are predators ourselves.

In March, Tucker Carlson called it “common sense“ to not talk to children younger than third grade about their genitals because it is “disgusting and probably illegal.”

This line of reasoning is gaining traction every day, whether in Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay“ law, or a New Jersey school district announcing it would limit sex ed instruction to a single 35-minute period on the last day of school in grades 2, 5 and 8.

That is hardly enough time to cover basic anatomy, let alone the other things we believe young students need: an understanding of appropriate boundaries and how their body communicates danger signals to them.

The rhetoric has grown so fevered in recent weeks that we wanted to get perspective from someone on the front lines: Rahel Bayar, a former sex crimes and child abuse prosecutor.

She is the founder and CEO of The Bayar Group, an organization that works with schools to prevent sexual misconduct and child abuse.

“What I saw as a prosecutor was kids who didn’t come forward, or when they did come forward, they would say things like ‘My tummy hurts’ or ‘My tummy itches,’” Bayar said. “What they really meant was their vulva, not their tummy.”

Without the correct language for their anatomy, adults don’t understand what children are trying to say.

“One of the biggest pieces of abuse prevention is to teach your children the correct anatomical names for their body parts and not attach any type of shame or embarrassment to them,” Bayar said.

When kids learn that anything “down there” is shameful, they are less likely to come forward because they’re afraid of getting in trouble for admitting that someone touched them.

So the question of the moment is: How is sex education different from grooming?

“My God! Why is that even a question?” Bayar laughed. “Grooming typically involves secrecy … which is one of the reasons why we teach the difference between secrets and surprises. Secrets have no ending and surprises do. We start teaching kids that at a very, very early age because secrets are what people who groom children use to silence them.”

Grooming preys on fear, shame and silence. Sex education seeks to dispel them through transparency.

Lessons for young children include correct anatomical terms for body parts including genitals and having control over their “body bubble,” or zone of privacy.

The goal is to help children recognize and repel predatory behavior by understanding their body’s warning signs of danger: things like sweating when it’s not hot, trembling when it’s not cold, a racing heart when you haven’t moved, or feeling like you have to urinate when you just went to the bathroom. Then they practice different ways of saying “no” and “I don’t keep secrets with adults.”

Children don’t need to hear the words “sex” or “predator” to learn basic safety skills that can repel groomers.

While children may not yet be able to verbalize why these lessons are important, there is no scarcity of adults with stories to tell about how lack of appropriate education harmed them as children.

On the podcast “Good Girls Talk About Sex,” everyday women discuss their sex lives, including their earliest introduction to their own body. In over 100 interviews conducted since 2019, more than 25 percent of interviewees report that they began exploring their own genitals by age 5. But for many, this exploration was shrouded in the type of secrecy and shame we’re seeking to eliminate.

Lynn, age 49 at the time she was interviewed, had no access to information about her body at home or school. “I was so uninformed about it that I reached down between my legs … and my fingers sort of fell into my vagina,” Lynn recounted. “I thought that I wasn’t finished at the bottom. I thought I had a birth defect.” For over a year she believed she was dying. This fear of her own body, coupled with lack of accurate information, left her susceptible as a teenager to grooming by men 20 years her senior.

As uncomfortable as it may be to think about, skilled predators have an especially insidious tool: manipulating the child’s body so the abuse brings the child a sense of physical gratification. As Bayar noted, “We have to acknowledge the fact that our bodies have physiological reactions to touch and at different ages, that means our bodies respond in different ways.”

Cathy, 52 at the time she was interviewed, was molested from age 6 to 11.

“My first memory of sexual pleasure was very confused because I was having pleasure but it was during abuse … There wasn’t sex ed and I felt ashamed. I wasn’t sure why my body was responding the way it did.” For decades, it was hard for her to decouple the concepts of sexuality and abuse, so even masturbation was fraught. “I had associated sexuality with abuse or power struggles, and not having control over my body.”

Both of these women — and so many more — would have been well served by basic education about their bodies as children. Although we hear the most about disclosures of assault from women and girls, sexual abuse occurs across all genders. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys in the U.S. experience child sexual abuse. Because there is a social prohibition on boys appearing “weak,” their abuse experiences are even less likely to be reported.

Melissa Pintor Carnagey, founder of Sex Positive Families, said in a conversation with us that “informed kids grow into empowered and prepared adults who are better able to have healthy relationships, know their bodies and to be safer along their journey. Sexuality education is the resource that helps them get there.”

In the current climate, how can you make sure that all children receive the education they need and deserve?

Vote.

Too often we vote for the national races at the top of the ticket, then gloss over elections happening closer to home. Decisions about sex ed are being made at your local school board and on the city, county and state level.

Before going to the voting booth, learn how candidates view the need for dedicated time to teach children about consent and anatomy, and vote accordingly.

Whether or not your school embraces sex education for all students, you can also help kids get the information they need at home. Work with your school’s PTA to offer parents workshops from sex educators who can provide tools to communicate with children about sex with less anxiety.

There is a #MeToo generation of adults who struggle to have effective conversations about these life-saving topics, but this can stop with Gen Z. We, as their trustees and caregivers, can equip our children with at least one tool that has been proven to protect them: sex education.

Originally posted on NBC’s THINK: Opinion, Analysis, Essays

How Educators can Help Middle Schoolers Thrive in Turbulent and Calm Times

**Phyllis Fagell-Key Note Speaker at ELMLE Connect (Porto)**

In a conversation last spring with Cindy Conley, a principal at Irving Middle School in Springfield, Va., she told me that yet again, she was surprised by something her post-lockdown students were doing. At an end-of-year celebration for eighth-graders, a group of boys began playing duck, duck, goose. Soon, more than 50 boys were playing the game, one that is usually enjoyed by much younger children. “That never happened pre-pandemic,” she told me. “But some of these kids left in sixth grade and came back as instant eighth-graders, and I don’t think I anticipated how much the elementary part was still in them.”

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve written articles about how educators, coaches, parents and other adults can preserve middle schoolers’ well-being as they navigate a vulnerable phase and growing up in turbulent times. It’s a double whammy, but I think we’re entering a new phase. While educators initially were caught off guard by some of the trickle-down effects they saw on children when they returned to in-person schooling, they now have more realistic expectations and a better understanding of what children need to be successful. The last few years have upended conventional notions about what students can or should be able to do by a certain age or grade, and that’s a good thing. I’ve yet to meet a middle schooler who performs better because they think they’re “behind” or lacking in some way.

While it may be particularly important to meet middle schoolers “where they are” when they’re contending with uncertainty and disruption, that’s always been true for tweens. And the best way to help a child do well is to help them do well – in other words, to set them up for success. In a recent article for The Washington Post, I talked about how adults can set kids up for a “better year,” but many of the tips I included are timeless. Here are some “evergreen” ways that educators can help middle-school students learn, connect with others and maintain a strong sense of self, regardless of what’s happening in the world.

Let go of the notion of ‘normal

Middle schoolers are sensitive to criticism and peer approval, and they can feel blindsided if they struggle in unexpected ways, whether they don’t complete an assignment or panic when they need to present in class. To help kids stay positive when things go awry, “interrupt the concept of normal,” said Christopher Emdin, a professor of education at the University of Southern California and the author of “Ratchetdemic.” When we spoke, he encouraged adults to let kids start each year fresh, to dream about how they want things to be. Ask, “‘When you went through school before, did you like it all?’” he said. “No. Based on what things were before, how do you want it to be now?’”

Even subtle changes to students’ physical spaces “can radically change the learning experience,” Emdin told me. When he was scholar-in-residence at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 2021, he partnered with students to build prototype post-pandemic classrooms. “I wanted them to feel like it can’t look like what it looked like before.” They swapped out fluorescent lights for blue bulbs, brought in planters of grass and piped in music. The idea is to ensure they see school as special, comfortable, and beautiful, “so that you start training the mind to see the educational work as fun,” Emdin explained. “When you bring in flowers and grasses, change the lighting, the sounds, the seating, it invokes relaxation and helps kids associate reading or homework as, ‘This is when I’m chilling.’”

Take their emotional pulse

Check in regularly with students. Ask questions such as, “What were your highs and lows this week?” “In an ideal world, how would you adjust the workload or the way you demonstrate your learning?” and “How can I best support you?” Explicitly acknowledge that the past few years have been tough, added Jason Ablin, a former principal, school consultant in Los Angeles and the author of “The Gender Equation in Schools.” “Say, ‘We want you to feel great about going to school every day, and if you feel like things are going off the rails, we’re here for you.’

It’s helpful to know a child’s baseline stress level, said Michelle Hoffman, a licensed counselor at Granite Academy, a therapeutic school in Braintree, Mass. If a student tells you they’re worried about a test or a fight with a friend, ask them to rate the stress on a scale of one to five. The number itself is less important than what it tells you about their perception of the situation and their capacity to cope with it, Hoffman explained. “Once you have a basis for comparison, you can have a conversation about what might lower their stress,” she said. Validate their concerns, even if they seem overblown. You might feel the pandemic is over and students should be able to handle more pressure, but “stress is additive. Kids are resilient, but they’ve used up their reserves,” she said.

When you know what’s troubling a student, you can help them reframe the situation and think about next steps. Emily Kircher-Morris, a counselor in Missouri and the author of “Raising Twice-Exceptional Children,” recommends walking children through the best-case, worst-case and most-likely scenarios, then devising a plan. If they’re worried about missing an assignment, for instance, Kircher-Morris might ask: “Who can you go to for help? How can you communicate with them?” If the issue relates to social anxiety, she might suggest they talk to the teacher about a way to ease into giving a presentation. For instance, maybe they first present to the teacher and a classmate, or perhaps they pre-record their presentation.

Students often feel powerless because they have little control over things such as when they eat lunch at school or whether they take math in sixth grade. You can give them back a sense of agency by having them set and work toward personal goals. Encourage them to commit their goals to paper, because research shows that people are 42 percent more likely to reach their goals if they write them down and monitor their progress regularly. Every year, Larry Haynes, the principal of Oak Mountain Middle School in Birmingham, Ala., recruits 35 professionals from the community to mentor eighth-graders. At the end of each grading period, the mentors meet with their mentees to discuss their report cards, their progress and their goals. Afterward, the students write their goals on a reflection sheet.

“I tell them to display their goals in a prominent place where they will see it, because that keeps it fresh in their mind and serves as a motivator,” Haynes told me, adding that he always tells the students about Thomas Holloway, a former student who stated in middle school that his goal was to play football at West Point. “Thomas graduated from West Point in 2014,” he tells them. Setting goals also can ease students’ anxiety related to events in the news. To help them, shift the focus away from the state of the world and back to their own lives. “If you zoom out to space and everything on Earth looks tiny, then it can seem like there’s no meaning to any of it, and that can feel really overwhelming,” Kircher-Morris told me. “But if you zoom back in, you get to decide what your meaning and purpose is.” That could be a goal such as doing better in a class or sitting with a new friend at lunch.

Offer structured fun, directed social time

After the turmoil of the past few years, many children are focused on friendships, but their skills are rusty. Research shows that connecting with others can improve mental health, and middle schoolers need the practice, but they may need an assist. If they’re too anxious to socialize, do structured icebreakers and other get-to-know-you activities in class. Suggest they participate in structured activities, such as an after-school club that reflects their interests. The idea is to find low-pressure opportunities where kids can practice making eye contact and resolving conflict. Haynes offers alternate activities for kids at school dances, for example. He might have board games in the cafeteria or a kickball tournament outside.

Affirm that they’ll be fine

“We talk about kids almost in monthly terms: Academically they should be here, their social-emotional development should be here,” Ablin told me. “But when things are as disrupted as they have been, we need to see kids where they actually are; be calm, loving and thoughtful about that; and really believe that, eventually, the child will be just fine.” That means letting go of the idea that students have “fallen behind.” As Ablin noted: “It diminishes children and kills the joy in learning. When we say, ‘You’re not where you’re supposed to be,’ we’re also saying, ‘You’re not who you’re supposed to be.’”

If you adopt that attitude, it takes the pressure off of you, too. When educators set reasonable, attainable goals, students tend to do the same. Plus, emotions are contagious. If you dial down the pressure you put on yourself, your students are likely to “catch your calm.”

*Tips drawn from an article I wrote that ran in the August 18, 2022 issue of The Washington Post