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Resilient ClassroomsNeuroscience and Learning

Resilient children are children who are successful despite the

odds. School classrooms can become

resilient communities that provide essential support and guidance so that vulnerable

children can learn despite the odds!

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Why change classrooms instead of kids?

• Behavioral Engagement is being in alignment with students socially, emotionally and cognitively.

• 49 million students• 17% living in poverty• Each year 836,000 are identified as physically

or emotionally abused or neglected and for 581,000 the abuse is so severe the children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care (Children’s Defense Fund, 2002)

• One out of every 8 students attending public school in this country has been identified with a disability. Children identified with a disability drop out of school twice as often as their peers, enter into higher education at half the rate, and are far less likely to be employed after graduation

• Most children with disabilities spend 80% of their time in a regular classrooms

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Our Students• One out of every five or six students

meets the diagnostic criteria for at least one mental illness listed in the text revision of the DSM IV

• Typical school classrooms with 25 students will have at least 5 children with significant mental health and emotional needs, 4 students living in poverty, and one child struggling with severe abuse! Schools located in communities of concentrated poverty, unemployment crime and violence will show inevitably higher rates!

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Our Students

Nationwide, there is a documented gap of 12-15% of school age children who have urgent needs for social and emotional support but are not receiving it through community providers. Schools cannot hire enough school mental health professionals to meet the needs of these children in ( change-the-kid) way!

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Our Students• Longitudinal studies have shown that when high

risk children develop competence in the midst of adversity, it is because systems have operated to protect the child and counteract threats to development.

• Characteristic of these systems are close nurturing relationships between children and care-taking adults , access to successful adult models, support for children’s self-efficacy, opportunities for students to practice self-regulation support for warm and effective peer relationships and a sense of connectedness in at least one environment.

• James Comer’s experience with impoverished

inner city schools taught him that children need caring adults to support them and school environments that support the total development of the child

( Comer, Haynes, Joyner, and Ben-Aire, 1996)

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Six Components to Resilient Classrooms

• Academic Efficacy- beliefs that students hold about their ability to learn and be successful in the classroom. It is a construct of self-fulfilling prophecies: children who expect to be successful take the steps that make their success likely; whereas those who expect to fail behave in ways that almost ensure their failure!

• What do we do?• Feedback feedback feedback

from peers and adult mentors!

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Behavioral Control• Classroom behaviors that are essential for

learning include being responsive to the teacher and the lesson, staying actively engaged in academic work , interacting effectively with peers and moving through transitions.

• What do we do?

• To ensure behavioral engagement and efficient learning even when the teacher is not physically present, we need to empower the students with creating guidelines, surveys, consequences and most importantly: students need to create personal goals and the incremental steps to see these through! This is entitled “Academic Self-Determination” We give students practice, feedback, and direct instruction in academic goal setting, decision-making and self-evaluation .

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Effective Teacher and Student Relationships

• Caring relationships among students, teachers, and other adults in a school are consistently associated with increased academic engagement and student satisfaction. Caring teachers raise academic efficacy even in classrooms where students work in active competition with one another.

• Conversely, isolation and lack of personally meaningful relationships with teachers contribute to school failure.

( Elias et al., 1997; Baker; Terry and Bridger 1997; Pianta and Walsh, 1996).

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Peer Relationships

• The importance of peer relationships to the development of social and academic competence is well established in the research.

• Middle School Years –KEY!

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Effective Home School Relationships

• Family Connections-Extending Belongings

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Relationship Characteristics of Resilient Classrooms

• Trust and Authenticity- tell your story

• Ask Questions• Write before the test• Novelty • Ongoing frequent conversations

and feedback!• Rather than give solutions, assist

students with developing a plan when a challenge arises.

• Five minute chat boards- sign up! • Frequent classroom meetings and

changing it up! • Give out weekly surveys ( I have

some for you)

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Peer Relationships

• Zone of Proximal Development used socially

• Butler University Basketball Story- encourage students to share resources, problem-solve, reflect, serve one another

• Baby pictures and toddler pictures and all stages of life pictures

• Home school Relationships- video tape for parents

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Student Choice• A simple way to adjust task assignments

to student needs is to routinely include students in decisions about what tasks should be completed and in what order, what are appropriate HW assignments, and how should learning be evaluated?

• Track their own progress- when students track their own progress toward learning goals, they gain more positive and powerful messages about their academic efficacy than when compared to other student scores…

• What did I do well? What were my challenges? How did I take notes? Was I organized? What strategies did I use?

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Academic Self-Determination

• Self Assessment od social and emotional skills

• Reteach those executive function skills just as we would reteach a math skill

• Model- as in my book!

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Behavioral Engagement

• Disciplined and engaged behavior predicts grades better than measures of verbal and nonverbal performance and ability!

• When there is an academic or behavioral challenge , try the Million Dollar Experience

• 1. Call a friend• 2. Use the audience• 3. Eliminate two

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Assessment Strategies• Classroom Characteristics can be

assessed through surveys, rating scales, direct observation, discussion, etc.

• Choice and Voice• Welcome Wagon with Manuel!• Student participation is essential to

ecological classroom change, because the system’s multiple participants must share responsibility for intervention in order for changes to be meaningful and large!

• Please share with students this year the factor of “euifinality” there are many ways and options to achieve the same outcome

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Strategies… What can we do? • Present classroom data to

students and let them see dialogue and choose options

• Example:• In writing math and science, only

half the students know when they make mistakes on their work.

• Less than half the students know how to get the help they need.

• How can we solve these problems• Higher cognitive thinking is about

finding the problem, not just the solution

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Strategies that promote collaborative Communities

• Mystery reward for whole class work completion

• Service activities• In school field trip with

lots of guest speakers- student planned

• Parent expertise