Food for Thought: The importance of Social and Emotional Learning

Dear all,

This week's Food for Thought focuses on social and emotional aspects of life and education. I thought that you might find these reflective interviews with centenarians interesting as they provide an insightful view of what is valuable to us as human beings. Something that will become more and more important with the arrival of A1. There are certainly some common themes.

I'd like to follow this video with an article from Mindshift about setting school culture with social and emotional learning routines.

"Over the past several decades public education has shifted to focus on literacy and math learning, largely due to high stakes tests measuring those two elements of school. But educators have long known that while reading, writing and math are important to academic success, they are far from the only qualities students need to go forth and lead productive lives. In recent years, the pendulum of education trends have swung back to emphasize the importance of relationships to learning. Schools are using social and emotional learning curricula to help students develop interpersonal skills and learn ways to solve problems peacefully. But there's still debate around which social and emotional skills — such as empathy, executive functioning or persistence — are the most important to teach and some educators feel unprepared to take on a role that seems more like parenting. In a video series called "Schools That Work," Edutopia offers some examples of social and emotional learning routines that successful schools use. At Highlander Charter School in Rhode Island, elementary school students talk about the importance of morning meeting to their day. "It puts me in a focused and good mood," said Monica, a third grader at the school. Every morning during the 15-minute meeting, students greet each other, have sharing time, do a quick movement activity and review the schedule for the day. Educators say this routine is an invaluable way to help students transition from home to school; it helps build a community where students feel cared for, known and ready to learn. "I like it when people share because we get to know them a little better," said first grader Dianelys. Educators at this school said carving out this time every day creates a culture in which students respect each other and their teacher." Video about morning meetings which is part of the responsive classroom model used in many US Primary Classrooms. Watching this 4 minute video certainly demonstrates how this sort of activity can develop social and emotional links between students and create a culture of care providing a structured start to the day and of course the agenda could be managed to include mindfulness. SEL in High School "While elementary school may seem like the perfect place to learn social and emotional skills, often by high school the focus of educators and parents has turned to academics. But adolescence is a crucial time for young people to know an adult cares about them and can serve as a mentor. At Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City, California, students take a "Habits, Community, and Culture" class devoted to improving their emotional intelligence and the skills that will help them cope with stress, setbacks and crises of confidence that are typical in high school. Their teacher, Aukeem Ballard, wants each teen to feel seen, heard and known." This sentiment is very important for our Culture of Care at ISHCMC "So my primary defense, is to tell a kid, and mean it, that I love you. I see in you all the years of pain that come with you. I will hold space for you every single time and I refuse to be a bystander in your life. I refuse to see you as a dot or a data point. I see you. The mentors I had along the way that said, and it seems impossible now, but I'm going to help you remove as many barriers as I can, and I'm going to step away. I'm going to let you do the great work that I already see inside you. And I hope I can get out of my kids way more, that's my hope." Chuc Mung Nam Moi, Be happy and Healthy, Yours Adrian

Food for Thought: Schools of the future

Dear all,

I hope that you had a good social on Friday and are having a relaxing weekend.

I was looking for a video about positive emotions and how we can get them more firmly embedded into our everyday lives in school. Interestingly, whilst about to pull on my shirt yesterday morning i notice that the label in the collar was not washing instructions or the brand and size but rather a simple message, "Choose to be Happy Today." I thought what a good way to start your thinking for a day. Anyway I digress. Whilst looking for a video I received this TED talk entitled searching for Aha moments. Thinking that this might relate directly to positive emotions and that feeling of awe I decided to watch. as it turned out it didn't relate as much to positive emotions as to education and providing yet more thoughts on the directions that we are going and how we can develop academic mastery, social intelligence and creative thinking all at the same time.

This talk uses very similar ideas and language to that which we have in our mission and have been exploring over the last linking clearly to engaging and empowering as well as our culture of achievement. Matt Goldman ask big questions about why schools have allowed so many to struggle in a system that has not adapted its learning environment. He became successful in areas where school labelled him as a failure. By starting his own school he wants to make "Aha" moments happen more regularly and deliberately for students. He has developed a structure of around 8 values that he believes will create an environment in which creative thinking can occur in a safe learning environment. Here are his key drivers for making this happen. Notice how close they are to thinks that we so often talk about:

1. Clear intent, purpose and assion
2. Personal integrity
3. direct communication and clear explanation
4. Grit and perserverence
5. Collaborative teams
6. Embrace multiple perspectives
7. Take risks and celebrate mistakes
8. Speak in one voice

If you watch the video he explains this a little more.

Whilst searching for more information about Matt Goldman's Blue school, I discovered this expanding group of schools in the UK, Studio Schools, that further reflect the path that schools could be going to ensure that all students can be successful. It is a very interesting combination of academics and vocational training. An advanced form of personalized learning which is as you know a strand of the Cognita way. It is only 6 minutes long and again provides possibilities for the direction that we can move with secondary students even here in Vietnam given the contacts that we have through our parent body.

Have a good Sunday,

Yours

Adrian

Food for Thought: Helping ourselves.

Dear all,

What a great start to the second part of the school year. Thanks to all your hard work on Monday and Tuesday both campuses looked great on Wednesday and all our students seemed excited to be back at school and ready to dive into learning. walking around both the Primary and Secondary it was clear that you had prepared some interesting activities for the students as they were immediately engaged in their work.

I hope you all enjoyed the visit of Jason and his work on Philosophy for Children. I believe that if we get our students thinking like philosophers and following clear thinking strategies then we will be preparing our students well for the future and empowering them to be able to articulate their feelings and thoughts in a well structure manner no matter who the audience.

This weeks Food for Thought focuses on you. The second part of the year has started at an incredible pace and as always time plays a big factor in whether one is able to flow with the torrent or start to feel stressed anxious and drowning. Hence, I thought this first short Ted Ed video that provides advice that can save us all time, especially when dealing with those endless lists of emails, might be a useful tool for helping us reflect upon our time management processes. This video shows us how we can use machine thinking to help us in our lives.

In this second part of my Food For Thought I would encourage you to take this opportunity to learn more about Mindfulness by participating in this 10 day free summit. Her is the link THE MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION SUMMIT ONLINE EXPERIENCE. 32 thought leaders from the world of meditation and mindfulness will be running sessions and giving workshops during this summit and here are some of the areas that will be covered.

NEW NEUROSCIENCE

---

Learn emerging tools and principles for amplifying and accelerating the benefits of mindfulness meditation—creativity, mental focus, emotional calm

INTERCONNECTEDNESS

---

Experience the shift from a limited self–identity to a vaster consciousness that connects us to all of humanity and the planet

MINDFUL KIDS

---

For parents, caregivers, and educators, discover the keys for nurturing emotional calm, interpersonal mastery, and success in children

RESILIENCE

---

Use mindfulness training to amplify your ability to bounce back from failure, intense exertion, and setbacks

TAKING ACTION

---

Discover how mindfulness can radically shift how you face and engage with racial and social biases, conflicts, and crises of all kinds

WORK–LIFE BALANCE

---

Work together better, become a more compassionate leader, and nurture a more successful organization

As we have enjoyed the Philosophy man working with us in school this week it would seem appropriate that I include a philosophical article that encourages us to think and question. Hence, I thought I'd share the following article linked to sustainability and the need for us to be prepared to be able to take action that changes the way we live our lives in favor of a more simple existence. This article comes from AEON magazine which publishes very interesting essays on a wide range of topics.

" The he good life is the simple life. Among philosophical ideas about how we should live, this one is a hardy perennial; from Socrates to Thoreau, from the Buddha to Wendell Berry, thinkers have been peddling it for more than two millennia. And it still has plenty of adherents. Magazines such as Real Simple call out to us from the supermarket checkout; Oprah Winfrey regularly interviews fans of simple living such as Jack Kornfield, a teacher of Buddhist mindfulness; the Slow Movement, which advocates a return to pre-industrial basics, attracts followers across continents.

Through much of human history, frugal simplicity was not a choice but a necessity – and since necessary, it was also deemed a moral virtue. But with the advent of industrial capitalism and a consumer society, a system arose that was committed to relentless growth, and with it grew a population (aka ‘the market’) that was enabled and encouraged to buy lots of stuff that, by traditional standards, was surplus to requirements. As a result, there’s a disconnect between the traditional values we have inherited and the consumerist imperatives instilled in us by contemporary culture.

In pre-modern times, the discrepancy between what the philosophers advised and how people lived was not so great. Wealth provided security, but even for the rich wealth was flimsy protection against misfortunes such as war, famine, disease, injustice and the disfavour of tyrants. The Stoic philosopher Seneca, one of the richest men in Rome, still ended up being sentenced to death by Nero. As for the vast majority – slaves, serfs, peasants and labourers – there was virtually no prospect of accumulating even modest wealth...................................................... read more

Have a good Sunday,

Adrian

Food For Thought: Controlling our emotions

Dear all,

Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful 2018.

I hope you all had a relaxing and refreshing vacation. Welcome back to what should be a very exciting 2018 as we continue to challenge education and prepare our students for their future's.

I wasn't going to send a Food for Thought this weekend but then I watched a TED talk by Lisa Feldman Barrett and thought that it is important that I share as we have such a big year ahead of us in 2018. Last year we spent time thinking about and focusing on our 10 Positive Emotions that can and do impact our lives. We did this work because it is very important that we are able to model positive emotional behaviors for our students as we create a school based around the concepts of Positive Education. With a new secondary campus about to open and massive refurbishment work taking place at the Primary campus there will be many emotional moments ahead for all of us. Hence, watching this TED talk which explains that we aren't at the mercy of our emotions but that our brains create them might be useful for us all to understand better. Of course, as Ms Feldma Barrett concludes, this means that we have to take responsibility for our emotions as they are based upon our previous experiences and predictions. However, this also means that by creating new ways of thinking about experiences etc we can control our emotional responses.

Again this research leads directly back to our mission and the word empowerment: giving students the skills to take control of their lives. The more we enable our students and our self's, through mindfulness, to understand and take control of our minds, the healthier and more successful will be our lives.

I hope you find the talk interesting.

Have a great 2018.

Yours
Adrian

Dear all,

I was going to write a post about peace and happiness that fitted in to the festive season that is approaching. However, I got distracted by this talk, educating the Heart and Mind by Sir Ken Robinson because it is humorous, will make you laugh as well as feel good about what we are doing at ISHCMC. This talk is 48 minutes long so please allow yourself time to listen to his words. I assure you the time will pass quickly   In this talk Sir Ken touches on consciousness and our rational mind, feelings and thinking, our inner world and education's obsession with the outer world rather than focusing on what essentially makes us human. His logic encourages us to provide more time and opportunities for our students to engage more with what is inside them. This links beautifully with the affective skills that we are developing through the AtL's and PYP Attitudes. Sir Ken's thinking supports are work on character traits and developing an increased understanding of self and empathy. Sir Ken concludes that there needs to be personalized learning, a central position for the arts and finally the need for mindfulness within education. A move away from impersonal mechanistic school cultures towards one that is more organic and respects our differences as individual beings.

Reflecting back on Sir Ken's talk I have to admit feeling very proud of our alignment with his thinking and that of the educationalists and philosophers that he refers to in his talk. As he ends the talk I had goose bumps thinking that in his advice for education, and how it needs to change, he could have been describing ISHCMC and the journey we are on.

Thanks to all of you for the enlightened path you are treading.

Hope you enjoyed.

Have a safe, happy and relaxing winter break.

Yours
Adrian

Food for Thought: The Importance of Handwriting

Dear all,

It feels like an eternity ago but in reality it is only a few weeks I wrote about the importance of reading. Today this Food for Thought will begin with a few insights into writing. I want to share these with you because in our age of technology the importance of writing can be lost as we type/ thumb on so many of our devices. These articles are for all of us to read because i believe it is important that as ISHCMC teachers we understand the whole story from EE2 through to upper secondary school. in today's world of education you never know when skills that should be developed in lower primary school may be needing teaching in upper secondary as they have to hand write exams in a legible form.

Also as we gaze into the future and AI I wonder whether the ability to hand write and therefore demonstrate personality through our writing style and formation of letters will be something that might be used to differentiate humans from machines. Yes, I know that machines can produce perfect hand writing but by being perfect and consistent they give away that they are a machine. Isn't it our imperfections as humans that will eventually stand us a-side from AI. Can a machine be made that is programmed to be imperfect? (Food for Thought all on its own)

This first article was sent to me recently about the right time to teach the mechanics of handwriting successfully for our students, The Stages of Hand Grip for Writing. As I said in the introduction we should all be cognizant of these developmental skills because there are many older students who write terribly and often it is because they have not been taught the mechanics of writing at the right age.

"As a teacher and educator, I am very concerned about the push down of handwriting.  It is scary to see the wide spread practice of teaching three and four year olds to write before they are physically ready.  I wanted to share a few developmental pieces I have regarding the development of the hand grip.

As you look at the physical developmental picture of a child’s capacity to hold a writing instrument, think of the practices in your classroom or with your child.   While we all know every child’s readiness is individually based – for most four year olds,  the fine localized movements required to write effectively have not developed.  Looking at Stage Four, we see that many children will not develop this until age 6.  In countries like Finland, Switzerland and Sweden, children are not formally taught to write until seven years old.  This allows for the vast differences in readiness."

This article, Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths raises questions not about the importance of handwriting, because it recognizes that research shows it has an important part to play with cognitive development, but whether it is worth teaching cursive.

"I should make it clear I’m not referring to handwriting itself, often seen as synonymous with cursive. There is ample evidence that writing by hand aids cognition in ways that typing does not: It’s well worth teaching. And I confess I’m old-fashioned enough to think that, regardless of proven cognitive benefits, a good handwriting style is an important and valuable skill, not only when your laptop batteries run out but as an expression of personality and character. I should also say that cursive is a perfectly respectable, and occasionally lovely, style of writing, and children should have the opportunity to learn it if they have the time and inclination. My eldest child loves cursive and has the most elegant handwriting, in which I take great pride. And I love a good Victorian copperplate as much as anyone."

To conclude this week's Food for Thought here is an interesting piece of research which questions the use of taking notes on a laptop as apposed to writing on paper. It is certainly Food for Thought for all secondary school teachers and particularly those teaching the IB Diploma. The research was entitled  The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard. Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking by Pam A. Mueller, Daniel M. Oppenheimer. 

Here is the abstract from this research:

"Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."

Digging a bit deeper I found this article, from Journalist research that refers to this research and provides a good synopsis of its conclusions. These conclusions certainly have implications for how we are expecting our students to record their understanding of our teaching.

The study’s findings include:

• "In all three experiments, students who took notes on laptops wrote significantly more words than those who took notes longhand. In the first, those who typed wrote an average of 309 words compared to an average of 173 words for those taking notes longhand.

• In the first experiment, there was no difference between laptop users and longhand note-takers on factual recall questions. However, on conceptual-application questions, laptop users performed significantly worse. Two countervailing forces appeared to influence this result: Students performed better when they could take more notes, which they did when using laptops, but they also performed better when the notes contained less verbatim content, which was the case for longhand note-takers. The benefits of taking more notes when using a laptop was seemingly outweighed by the propensity to “mindlessly transcribe.”

• In the second experiment, participants using laptops were explicitly instructed not to simply transcribe the lecture — “Take notes in your own words and don’t just write down word-for-word what the speaker is saying.” Despite these instructions, those typing notes were much more likely to take down phrases verbatim than longhand note-takers.

• The third experiment tested students a week after viewing the lectures. The researchers wanted to see if the more extensive notes taken by laptop users helped when reviewing the subject material before the test. Among those students who were not given the opportunity to study notes before the test, there was no difference between those who took notes by laptop or longhand. However, when students were allowed to review their notes for 10 minutes in advance of the test, those who took longhand notes performed better on both factual and conceptual questions.

• The findings of the third experiment appear to undermine the “external storage” hypothesis — that the greater quantity of notes taken by laptop users should help when reviewing material before a test. This may provide evidence that longhand notes have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions. However, it is also possible that, because of enhanced encoding, reviewing longhand notes simply reminded participants of lecture information more effectively than reviewing laptop notes did.

The authors conclude that “laptop use can negatively affect performance on educational assessments, even — or perhaps especially — when the computer is used for its intended function of easier note taking…. For that reason, laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a healthy dose of caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good.”

I think there is lots of Food for Thought in the above post.

Have a good Sunday,

Adrian

An addition that I have just stumbled upon doing afternoon TED surfing. This links to the idea of what it means to be human but related to writing poetry. Good article, 

Was this poem written by a computer or human?

"One of his takeaways from this experiment is that it’s actually not about whether computers can write decent poetry. Instead, it’s about forcing us to question what we believe it means to be human.

In other words, when you thought that a poem was written by a human, what about it made you think it was crafted by a flesh-and-blood writer?

“This has led me to understand that ‘human’ is not a cold, hard fact,” says Schwartz in his talk. “Rather, it’s something that’s constructed with our opinions and something that changes over time.”

So, as we design different forms of artificial intelligence, he adds, “we shouldn’t only be asking ourselves, ‘Can we build it?’ But we should also be asking ourselves, ‘What idea of the human do we want to have reflected back to us?’“

Food for Thought; The Importance of Reading

ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH MAZZETTI


Dear all,

This week's Food for Thought is generated from visiting the new primary school library and noticing the number of students reading either on their own, with friends or parents. This made me think about the importance of reading for all our students at ISHCMC and whether we should build in more reading time for students across the school. I remember when I was teaching that I would regularly berate my students for not reading enough. Hence, with a new secondary library design being built to complement the feel of the primary library I thought it important to do some reading about the importance of reading and its connection with academic success.


What I discovered is not really surprising but I thought that I would share with you. Researchers have found that there is a strong correlation between reading and academic success.  Parents reading with and to their children is an excellent way to encourage children to enjoy reading and become enthusiastic readers themselves. Having discussions about what has been read adds further value to the reading exercise. 

Evidence shows that a student who is a good reader: 

• is more likely to do well in school and pass exams than a student who is a weak reader.

• is able to learn to understand individual sentences and organizational structure of a piece of writing. 

• is prepared to comprehend ideas, follow arguments and detect implications. 

• can extract from the writing what is important for the particular task they are employed in and they can do it quickly.

• has a wider vocabulary.

Research also pointed to the obvious fact that  the greater the vocabulary students have the more likely they are to succeed academically. Having a large vocabulary is especially important when crafting sentences that demonstrate higher order analysis for academic work related to the MYP and IB Diploma. Vocabulary also enables students to articulate their thinking at all levels of the learning process. In this essay, in the Huffington post the author asks the question whether modern media will take the place of reading. The conclusion suggest that we need to find a balance.


" Words conjure deeper, more creative possibilities of thought and interpretation than what is pre-packaged for our consideration. The heart of storytelling is the ultimate quest for “what happens next,” which motivates us to contemplate our mortality. It is the mystery of all human life, a necessary component of our existence. Where are we going? What is ahead? Is there anything beyond disintegration and the end of life? These are the primal questions behind the idea of storytelling. The imagination is indispensable to our existence and the speculations that reside in fiction, as presented in words, are the stimulant that facilitates that projection.

............................................. Of course, there are those who will present passionate arguments for the superiority of the moving image over the written word. Each has its place. My argument is for making the preservation of the art of the written word a priority and finding the right balance between it and the moving image."


The data on the correlation between reading and academic success is quite over powering and should stop and make us think about whether our students are doing enough reading everyday. The research for reading  shows a wide range of positive additional academic outcomes related to spelling, verbal fluency and reading comprehension. This table drawn from the work of  Adams, Anderson, Wilson and Fielding clearly shows the impact that independent reading has on Standardized Test scores like MAP.

Where would a Food for Thought be without a TED. This short TEDEd is an excellent example of why we need students to read if they are to reflect upon their own work and improve their own ability to hold a readers attention. The TED is about writing introductions that grab the attention of the reader. If you are not a reader then you would not understand this concept however, this concept applies equally to a fiction writing as it does to an academic literature or history essay.

We must also be careful not to isolate the impact of good reading scores to just Primary and Secondary School. My reading clearly indicated that success at the university level depends on existing pre-entry college attributes, including the mastery of some fundamental academic skills. These include –reading.  What we have to remember is that by the time students reach university/ college level they are expected to be able to read academically. Their new professors are unlikely to teach these skills. Unfortunately, for many students entering college/ university they do not possess academic reading skills which results in using strategies that produce only a superficial level of reading.  

This article, the Importance of Teaching Academic Reading Skills, "discusses some strategies, examples, and resources aimed at promoting students to take a deep approach to reading. The major tenet of this article is that if teachers explicitly teach students how to read academic texts in aligned courses where students have ample opportunities to engage in reading activities throughout the term, students are more likely to adopt a deep approach to reading. It begins with a discussion of the difference between a surface and a deep approach to reading. It then recounts an action research study conducted to analyze whether explicitly teaching academic reading skills, coupled with the introduction of teaching and learning activities designed to encourage students to actively engage in deep reading in aligned courses, makes a difference in the approach students take to reading. Then, the paper explores the categories of analysis needed to read academic texts and the importance of aligning courses. Finally, it discusses teaching and learning activities aimed at fostering students’ adoption of a deep approach to reading. "

The overwhelming conclusion from my search for information is that ensuring our students have a solid foundation for their reading is imperative. However, equally important are the needs to keep students motivated to read and the deliberate and sequenced development of academic reading skills that will enable students to access, interpret and use text for the rest of their lives. It is clear from the research that reading is vitally important for academic success, innovation and creativity because of the way it stimulates us to problem solve, be curious, imagine and empathize. There have also been links made recently to reading bringing benefits similar to meditation to our health and happiness to our lives.

Have a good evening,

Yours
Adrian