Our brains, like muscles, grow stronger with hard work.

Research indicates that effort praise's effectiveness depends on beliefs about effort and ability.

Teachers always seek more ways to motivate students in classrooms.

Allowing students to write down and discuss their needs for a successful year builds engagement.

Teachers also remind students if they are not upholding their responsibilities.

Offering students options in reading, study topics, assessments, and projects increases their excitement.

Confidence and interest grow when students form their own questions and choose project approaches.

Teachers can be a main reason students look forward to attending school.

Teaching involves the complex, sometimes uncomfortable, human process of learning and growth.

Introducing students to lifelong ideas is a foundational teaching opportunity.

Teachers sometimes nurture talent by recognizing student work, such as displaying student art.

Educators should focus on addressing the needs of the whole child.

Playing music, such as classical, can foster productivity and concentration in students.

In mathematics, students combine conceptual understanding with procedural skills to solve problems.

Helping students build mental models of problems enhances problem-solving.

Math learning should be made relevant and engaging for better student success.

Parents agree that engagement increases the likelihood of student success in math.

Encouraging redo opportunities shifts the focus from toughness to learning.

Active guidance is necessary to ensure positive educational outcomes.

Staying in school and being motivated are critical challenges for students.

Effective teaching strategies are often shared and learned from peers and mentors.

Writing can be a powerful learning tool, particularly in English classrooms.

Students often strive for the correct answer and respond positively to affirmation.

Teachers and students should reflect on their positions on issues to foster critical thinking.

Our brains, like muscles, grow stronger with hard work.

Title:

Content: Skip to content
Neuropsych

Stanford duck syndrome: How the myth of effortless genius hurts learning

When we view hard work as a sign of low aptitude, it harms our ability to learn and grow.
Key Takeaways
  • Research shows that like a muscle, our brains really do get "stronger" through effort and hard work.
  • When people work hard to learn something new, they develop more neural connections between different brain regions.
  • Recognizing effective effort can increase motivation and help people overcome challenges, argues Mary C. Murphy in her 2024 book Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations.
Adapted from Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations by Mary C. Murphy. Published by Simon & Schuster. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.

Just like a muscle, our brain gets stronger through hard work. The idea sounds catchy, but is it true? After all, our brain isn’t a muscle — it’s far more complex

Hoping to answer this question, a group of researchers placed study participants in an fMRI machine, then monitored their brain activity while they listened to two tones. Their task was to press a button to indicate whether the second tone was longer or shorter in duration than the first. In the “easy” portion of the test, the tones were more clearly differentiated, whereas in the “difficult” portion, the second tone was more like the first. As the researchers dialed up the difficulty, the participants’ brains began to light up: The more challenging the task was and the more effort it required, the more areas of the brain were recruited to help.

Not only was there more activity and connectivity among different parts of the brain during the challenging task, one of the areas that came online during the hard part was the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This part is associated with higher-level executive functions such as our working memory, ability to switch between multiple concepts, and abstract reasoning. The more we’re challenged, the more parts of the brain we call on to help us and that, in essence, increases our overall abilities to meet the goal.

Research also shows that it’s not just any effort that makes us grow new neural cells and pathways, but effort expended in the process of learning — something we call effective effort.

Scientists compared the brains of two groups of “gym rats,” which were put on different physical exercise regimens, with a control group of “cage potato” rats and a group of “acro-rats” who learned to navigate an elevated obstacle course — a task that was mentally, but not physically, challenging. Though both groups of gym rats developed a higher density of blood vessels in their brains than the cage potatoes, the acro-rats developed more synapses per nerve cell than all three other groups. When we’re working hard and learning something new, we develop more connections among different parts of our brain, and that helps us complete tasks more quickly and easily in the future.

The neural pathways we don’t use die off over time. What makes our brains hold on to these pathways — and create more — is not simply repeating the same things we’ve learned over and over again, but continually taking on difficult problems. Just like exercising our muscles or our cardiovascular system, once we’ve got something down so well that we can perform it with little effort, it may boost our ego, but it won’t boost our performance. We’ve got to keep dialing up the level of challenge.

If you’ve heard the advice that the way to keep your brain sharp is to tackle Sudoku or the New York Times crossword puzzle, those activities may serve you up to a point, but only so long as they remain challenging. Spending an afternoon with a Rubik’s cube would make my brain grow (and make me grow plenty frustrated), but not so for mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil, who’s been solving them since she was 14. Neuroscientist David Eagleman says that in order to keep his brain healthy, he constantly invests in challenging activities, such as learning new software programs and wrestling with Mandarin.

Yet if multiple avenues of scientific exploration tell us that it’s only by engaging in challenging tasks that we develop and grow, why does the belief that having to apply more effort means less ability persist? What’s keeping it going?

Fueling false beliefs about effort and ability

You might be familiar with some version of the widely acknowledged “Stanford duck syndrome” — something I experienced personally in grad school. To be successful in the elite, high-pressure educational environment of Stanford, you were expected to glide gracefully across the water, though, beneath the surface, you were kicking like crazy to keep up. Hardship and struggle were expected to simply roll off your back.

In the day-to-day, undergrads, in particular, could be seen lounging around the student union or coffee shops, listening to music or socializing as if they didn’t have a care in the world. No one seemed to have to try hard to make it. By evening, they would begin to hit the books, sometimes studying alone in their rooms through the night in an effort to, well, hide their effort. The price they paid to align themselves with the cultural value of genius was a high one: Exhaustion and psychological distress were common.

Fellow researchers and I saw something similar at Cornell University. Through a series of focus groups with students, Cornell Health Counseling and Psychological Services counselors identified an unusual and disturbing trend. As is typical at many colleges and universities, companies selling a variety of dorm room posters — everything from puppies to popular bands — would come on campus to peddle their wares. During the most challenging times of the semester, such as during midterm and final exams, the most popular poster was one that was supposed to be motivational. It read, essentially, While you’re sleeping, someone else is getting ahead

One could argue that the posters simply encouraged the students to dig in and work hard. When such “motivation” links to a cultural belief system where hard work is thought to signal low ability or talent, it can fuel mental health issues.

These beliefs tend to start young. Kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers attending our summer institute often describe how difficult it is to counter children’s perceptions that if they have to try hard at something, it means they’re not good at it. The teachers, themselves, sometimes harbor these same beliefs. One of the ways we see this is when teachers take our baseline evaluation survey and they give an affirmative response to statements such as, I hate to see my students struggle; Seeing my students struggle makes me uncomfortable; and I am likely to assist right away when I notice my students struggling. However, struggle is a critical element of the learning process.

The idea of errorless learning — the perception that fewer errors on tests means better learning — leads one to assume that getting answers wrong would have a negative impact. In fact, the opposite is true; when we get a question wrong, we’re actually more likely to get it right in the future if we take the time to struggle with it afterward. Struggle enhances learning and recall.

Still, we don’t want to blindly encourage all struggle, but instead emphasize strategies that enable effective effort. It’s critical that we praise effort in the right direction. Research further clarifies that the effectiveness of what we refer to as effort praise is tied to our beliefs about effort and ability. Among students who believe that effort is an important way to increase their ability, having their effort praised boosted their views of themselves and their levels of intrinsic motivation. The stronger their belief, the bigger the boost.

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Research indicates that effort praise's effectiveness depends on beliefs about effort and ability.

Teachers always seek more ways to motivate students in classrooms.

Title:

Content: Opinion Blog

Classroom Q&A

With Larry Ferlazzo

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. Read more from this blog.

Teaching Opinion

How to Get, and Keep, Your Students Engaged

By Larry Ferlazzo — March 29, 2023 14 min read
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We teachers can never get enough ways to help create the classroom conditions for students to motivate themselves.

This post kicks off a series sharing lots of ideas, and today’s contributors also participated in a ten-minute podcast we did together.

‘Build Great Relationships’

Chandra Shaw has more than 24 years of experience in education, as a teacher, reading specialist, instructional coach, and now a literacy consultant at one of her state’s regional service centers. Chandra is a TEDx speaker and amateur YouTuber:

One of the best strategies to create classroom conditions where students are more likely to motivate themselves is to build great relationships with students by making learning relevant, making them feel comfortable, showing how much you care about their learning, and teaching them what they need to know.

One way I did this was to start off the year by asking students to imagine this being the best school year they’ve ever had. I’d ask them to write down and discuss what I would need to do in order for it to be the most successful and best year for them. They’d work in groups and create a list. As they worked, I’d walk around and read through some of the things they’d written, affirming pretty much anything they’d put down by saying, “Oh yeah, I can definitely do that.” Once they’d shared their lists with the entire class, we’d make the class’ top 10 list from the things that had appeared the most on the groups’ lists.

Each year, the students’ lists would undoubtedly include things like, “You need to be nice, provide treats, not show favorites, play games, allow student use of phones in class, and teach them what they need to know to be successful.” OK. That last one is what I’d often suggest as I walked around listening to their groups, and they usually agreed it was important and added it to their lists. At any rate, once the class list was done, and I’d assured them that I would absolutely do everything they’d listed in order to make this year the best year ever, I’d then share MY list of what I needed from them!

Throughout the year, I’d point to the list and ask if I was holding up my end of the bargain. And if they weren’t holding up their end of my list, I’d point that out as well. By returning to our lists again and again, it showed that WE were in this together and all trying to make this the best year. It really seemed to motivate the students when they saw how consistent I was with doing what they needed to succeed.

Asking Questions

Irina McGrath, Ph.D., is an assistant principal at Newcomer Academy in the Jefferson County public schools in Louisville, Ky. She is a co-creator of the ELL2.0 Google site and is a co-director of the Louisville Writing Project (LWP) and a University of Louisville and Indiana University Southeast adjunct professor:

Over the years, I have discovered that certain strategies are more effective than others at getting and keeping students - especially English Language Learners - motivated to learn . One such strategy is simply giving students the opportunity to ask questions and search for answers on their own. Studies have shown the power of asking questions, and some cognitive scientists believe that they are so important that we cannot learn properly until the right one has been asked: If memory does not ask the question, it will not know where to index the answer” (Bain, 2004). By encouraging students to pose their own questions about what they are learning, teachers will be able to help fuel students’ curiosity and promote further engagement in the classroom.

A great way to stimulate question asking is the Read Aloud Response Cards strategy, which teaches students to pay attention to the metacognitive process happening in their heads while listening to a passage being read out loud. The activity involves colored cards indicating tasks for the students to perform based on the card they receive: Those with yellow cards generate questions, green document their connections, red create a summary of the passage, and purple draw images either on paper or in their minds while listening to the passage. When the passage is completed, the students are sorted based on card color and work together to discuss and compare the results of their task, and eventually representatives from each group speak to the rest of the groups about their discoveries and questions during the activity. Ultimately, once posing questions becomes a routine and students realize that they are welcomed and encouraged, ELs’ curiosity will start fueling their learning and desire to discover something interesting and new.

Another strategy that promotes conditions for students to motivate themselves is choice. Students get excited when they are provided with options for books to read, topics to study, assessments of learning, and final product. Every student is a unique learner, and by offering them a choice, we offer an opportunity to build on their interests and talents and take on a new topic in a way that brings joy to learning and gets students excited. For example, if we think about the end of the lesson reflection, there are different ways English-learners can accomplish that when they are provided with choice. Students can either list three or more things they learned that day or create three true statements and one lie about content covered in class. They can also use Vocaroo, Padlet, or any other app/platform to record a note to themselves with advice on how they might approach the lesson’s task differently. Students can even create a two-minute video or a sketch to help classmates understand the lesson’s content better.

Overall, students are more likely to be motivated to learn if given a sense of autonomy and self-derived excitement for a topic. The best ways I have found to help them have confidence and interest is to allow them to pose questions and to give them choices in their projects.

‘Opportunities for Choice’

Meg Riordan, Ph.D., is the chief learning officer at the Possible Zone, a youth-entrepreneurship and work-based learning program with a mission to advance economic equity. She has been in the field of education for almost 30 years as a middle, high school, and college teacher; researcher; leadership coach; school designer; and director for a network of schools:

While many factors influence students’ motivation and engagement, it is central to ignite connection via relationships, share and uphold expectations, uncover and tap into students’ strengths, create relevant learning experiences, and design for choice. Such strategies can unlock students’ motivation for learning that lasts a lifetime.

Prior to the pandemic, a student survey of over 3,000 schools found that motivation and engagement declines as students progress in school; while 5th graders reported their engagement level at almost 75 percent, by 10th grade, students’ engagement hovered at 33 percent. Read that again: 33 percent. Despite this stark statistic, there is hope: two items drive motivation and engagement: 1) when students “strongly agreed” that school was “asset- and strengths-based” and 2) when they affirmed that they had “at least one teacher who made them excited about the future,” they were 30 times more likely to be engaged compared with those who disagreed. Search Institute research corroborates that students are motivated and goal-oriented when they feel a sense of belonging, safety, and acceptance.

Since the pandemic, additional forces amplified students’ lack of motivation: virtual instruction, social distance from peers, economic hardships, and racial reckonings, to name a few. Given these conditions, what strategies can educators employ to create classrooms where students motivate themselves and sustain engagement? I explore ways to motivate, engage, and support learners.

1. Build relationships and seek out students’ strengths

Research shows that young people who experience strong developmental relationships demonstrate increased academic motivation, social-emotional growth and learning, and a sense of responsibility. Developmental relationships are “close connections through which young people discover who they are, cultivate abilities to shape their own lives, and learn how to engage with and contribute to the world around them.” In the classroom, this might take the shape in the following ways:

  • Design opportunities for students to show who they are: Kick off the school year with a project in which students take selfies or create profile silhouettes of themselves and share words, symbols, and pictures of things that they value; teachers can connect with and build from students’ assets. Throughout the year, educators can provide opportunities for two-minute interviews in which students speak on a topic they’re passionate about (e.g: the worst pizza in town or why Serena Williams is the best athlete ever); knowing who our students are and seeing their strengths is a powerful driver to build relationships and spark motivation.
  • Provide clear expectations, ask what students expect from you, and strive to uphold and meet expectations: When educators are clear about expectations and invite students to share their needs, the relationship becomes bidirectional and is more likely to offer space to express care and challenge growth, both key aspects of developmental relationships. School designs like EL Education promote co-creation of norms and ongoing opportunities for students and educators to revisit and reflect on owning and meeting shared expectations; this cultivates an environment where voices and actions are valued.

2. Create relevant learning and opportunities for choice

Students experience motivation and engagement when educators help them get excited about the future. To see oneself in the future, it’s important to activate students’ self-concept and create opportunities to develop self-efficacy and agency. Consider these ideas:

  • Create authentic projects for real audiences: Research shows that when students actively pose questions and problem-solve real issues, conduct fieldwork, talk with experts, and produce meaningful work with impact beyond the classroom, not only does engagement soar but so does achievement. While educators may feel constrained by standards, consider small and larger steps to integrate relevant projects. This might include integrating interviews into a unit or, go big, like The Possible Zone, which engages young people in consultancies with local industry partners to solve authentic challenges and present solutions. Schools like High Tech High offer models of projects for inspiration.
  • Embed options throughout students’ learning experiences: Student choice and autonomy develop agency, building decisionmaking skills for careers and lives. In the classroom, this might include entry points such as choosing where to sit, “how” to learn (e.g.: reading, listening to podcasts, interviewing an expert), or choice of topics (e.g.: demonstrating research and synthesizing skills via a topic determined by student interest). When designing—or co-designing—learning environments with students, educators should ask: Where can I offer productive choices? When determining where to sit, for example, a teacher might suggest, “Choose a seat where you’ll be most engaged,” or “Sit where you’re comfortable.” Students can revisit choices and reflect on their predictions.

Classroom Culture

Andrew Sharos is a teacher, administrator, speaker, and author in Chicago. He wrote the Amazon-best-selling book All 4s and 5s, which has become the road map to instructional methods and culture building for gifted and talented teachers. He also co-authored Finding Lifelines, a book for new teachers and their mentors:

Motivation for students really comes back to classroom culture. We hope to create a classroom culture that is so fun, engaging, and magnetic that students actually WANT to be in school. Teachers who engage students are ones who create a unique and different experience for the students every day.

In terms of concrete strategies, I like to have students learn outside the classroom in the halls, courtyard, on the grass, or in the auditorium. The walls of a classroom have limitations, and mixing it up in different spaces keeps the students on their toes.

I enjoy having a theme every day, like Weekend Monday, Positive Tuesday, Thankfulness Wednesday, Joke Thursday, and Cookie Friday. It might waste a few minutes at the beginning of every class, but it is time well wasted if the students are more engaged after we engage in some playful dialogue at the beginning of class. These are hallmarks of the class and moments students enjoy.

When students are not engaged, the teacher has to find ONE thing that connects the student and the teacher. The teacher could, and maybe even should be the reason why the student wants to come to school. This can only be made possible when there is a relationship built on love and trust.

Sometimes, this takes time. One student of mine was impossibly difficult to connect with, or so I thought. I recited a movie line from “Ace Ventura” one day, and she was the only person in the class who “got it.” From that moment on, we connected. We have to keep chipping away at the less motivated. The students don’t have to love the content and skills we are teaching, they just have to feel connected to us to be motivated to learn.

This is the first post in a multipart series.

The question of the week is:

What strategies have you used to create classroom conditions where students were more likely to motivate themselves, including those who didn’t initially seem very engaged?

Chandra Shaw, Irina McGrath, Meg Riordan, and Andrew Sharos kicked off this series today.

Chandra, Irina, Meg, and Andrew were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Thanks to Chandra, Irina, Meg, and Andrew for contributing their thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@educationweek.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all EdWeek articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 11 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Allowing students to write down and discuss their needs for a successful year builds engagement.

Title:

Content: On Teaching (Elliot Eisner)

Too few policymakers have ever taught in public schools. Even fewer can say clearly exactly what it is about teaching young children, youth, and adults that binds teachers and students together and makes the experience of learning memorable, satisfying, and long-lasting. One person I knew well was Elliot Eisner. He has expressed the many satisfactions that inhere to teaching in a fluent and thoughtful way.

Elliot Eisner was Professor Emeritus of Education and Art at Stanford University. He taught in the Chicago public schools before becoming a professor. This is an abridged version of his 2006 Commencement talk to School of Education graduates and their families. Eisner died in 2014.

Among the many satisfactions in teaching there are six I would like to describe. The first pertains to the opportunity to introduce students to ideas that they can chew on for the rest of their lives. Great teaching traffics in enduring puzzlements and persistent dilemmas. Certainties are closed streets, not locations that interest the mind. Great ideas have legs. They take you somewhere.

Ideas can also provide a natural high. With them you can raise questions that can’t be answered. But why do puzzlements provide satisfactions? I believe because they invite that most precious of human abilities-imagination–an opportunity to take wing. Imagination is the neglected stepchild of American education. Questions invite you in. They stimulate the production of possibilities. They give you a ride. And the best ones are those that tickle the intellect and resist resolution.

Second, the satisfactions of teaching provide opportunities to reach out to students in ways that ensure your own immortality. The images of teachers past populate our minds and memories. They sit on our shoulders ready to identify infractions of one kind or another and to offer praise for work well done. Their lives live in yours and your life lives in theirs.

The immortality I speak of is the private, rather than the public immortality that is garnered by only a very few. Yet living through the memories of the great and not so great teachers we have known is no meager accomplishment; you don’t have to be a Mahata Ghandi to be remembered or to be loved.

Third, teaching makes it possible to play your own cello. Despite the beliefs of some well intended technocrats, there are no recipes for performance, no teacher proof scripts to follow. Teaching well requires improvisation within constraints. Constraints there will always be but in the end teaching is a custom job within which the teacher becomes an inseparable part of what is taught.

The inseparability of what is learned from the manner in which it was taught is a lesson best taught by the arts. The arts teach us that form and content cannot be divided; how something is described effects what is described. Curriculum once enacted cannot be separated from the way it was taught because how it was taught influences how it is learned.

Fourth, teaching provides ample opportunities for both artistry and for memorable forms of aesthetic experience. After forty years in the classroom I still have vivid recollections of my sophomore high school art class in which I taught thirty-five eager and some not so eager adolescents. Those memories, in many ways, are among the most aesthetically satisfying and vivid I own.

Teaching well also depends upon artistry. Artistry is the ability to craft a performance, to influence its pace, to shape its rhythms and to modulate its tone so that its parts merge into a coherent whole. You come to feel a process that often exceeds the capacity of language to describe.

Why are these memories so vivid? The nature of long term memory might have something to do with it, but I think there is more to it. I still remember my third grade teacher, Miss Eva Smith calling my name from one end of the classroom to the other to tell me, in a voice that the whole class could hear, “Elliot, Your work is getting better!” Oh how I needed to hear that; I did not do well in school. Or Miss Purtle who gave me a one person show of my paintings on the walls of her classroom when I was in the fourth grade. These were memorable events given to a nine year-old boy not knowing he would carry them with him for the rest of his life.

Fifth, teaching provides occasions to share with others your deep affection for what you teach. There is a sense of contagion when your eyes twinkle with delight at the prospect of introducing students to what you love. Your love of what you teach is conveyed to them; it is the sincerest and most powerful invitation you can extend.

Finally, teaching provides the opportunity to discover that something you once said in class that you cannot now remember made a difference to a former student who you happen to encounter twenty years later. Teaching is filled with such surprises. They reassure us that our contributions sometimes exceed what we can recall.

But the satisfactions of teaching extend beyond the academic. Indeed, the most lasting contributions come from rescuing a child from despair, restoring a sense of hope, soothing a discomfort. These are the occasions whose memories last longest because they are often the occasions that matter most. They are the occasions whose importance transcends academic interests. They address the human needs that all of us share.

It is especially important today at a time when schools are buffeted by performance standards and high stakes testing to remember that the student is a whole person who has an emotional and social life, not just an intellectual one. And this is as true for graduate students in the grandest citadels of higher education as it is for students in elementary school. The more we stress in school only what we can measure the more we need to remember that not everything that is measurable matters and not everything that matters is measurable. As the old progressives used to say, we need to pay attention to the whole child. This is accomplished by how we teach. How we teach is related to the deep satisfactions of teaching I described today.

I have had the moments that I have described-and you will too. I envy you the journey. Oh, to be able to begin that journey once again today!
No such luck!

Filed under Uncategorized

Teachers also remind students if they are not upholding their responsibilities.

Title:

Content: Opinion Blog

Classroom Q&A

With Larry Ferlazzo

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. Read more from this blog.

Teaching Opinion

How to Enhance the Craft of Teaching

By Larry Ferlazzo — February 22, 2023 13 min read
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(This is the third post in a seven-part series. You can see Part One here and Part Two here.)

The new question of the week is:

What do you think are the best one-to-three things a teacher can do to improve his/her/their craft?

Carissa McCray, Ph.D., Latrese D. Younger, Kayla Towner, and Verónica Schmidt-Gómez, M.Ed., started this series in Part One.

Carissa, Latresee, and Kayla were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

In Part Two, Aisha Christa Atkinson, M.S., Angela M. Ward, Ph.D., Meghann Seril, and Altagracia H. Delgado contributed their suggestions.

Today, Ron Berger, Nancy Frey, Ph.D., Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., and Mary K. Tedrow continue the discussion.

‘Questions and Responses’

Ron Berger has over 45 years of experience in education, 28 of those as a public school teacher. He is the author of a collection of books on education including Management in the Active Classroom and Leaders of Their Own Learning. He leads EL Education’s vision for teaching and learning:

This is a challenging question. To list a hundred things would be easy; to narrow it to one or two is daunting. One challenge: Which dimension of our teaching craft? Relationships—ensuring that all students are cared for, valued, and inspired? Inspiration—building classroom communities that bring out the best in students? Planning and Instruction—designing and leading learning experiences that are challenging and meaningful? Assessment—building student agency and ownership for growth? And what format for improving our craft? Peer observations? Professional learning communities? Working with a coach?

But the charge here is to be focused and specific, so I will choose one topic: Questions and responses. I am amazed by the power of great teachers to use questions artfully and respond to student answers in ways that open minds and doors. Our craft will profoundly improve if we can all get better at this.

When I observe lessons, most teacher questions are low-level recall questions, regardless of whether it is in a kindergarten or high school classroom (e.g., “The next step in the process is …?”, “And who discovered that?” “We call that a …”). We often don’t even realize this is the case unless we watch ourselves on video with this specific focus. It is a habit we learn as students and repeat as teachers.

But sometimes, I observe classrooms where teachers regularly push students’ thinking and open minds with their questions. They compel students to reflect on their thinking, explain it to each other, and question one another: “You have an interesting hypothesis. Can you explain it to us?” “What evidence would you point to for that?” “It sounds like you disagree with Jalen. Jalen, how would you defend your idea given this argument?” “Katelyn, I don’t think I understand your solution. Can you explain the mathematical steps you took to get there?” Questions like these empower students to own, reflect on, and defend their thinking and then debate it with their peers.

Equally important to how we as teachers ask students questions is how we respond to student questions. We often wait for the “right answer” to appear, and when it does, our faces light up, and we confirm that it is correct. Students know this game; many are passive and wait for a peer to respond. No sense in wasting time thinking or risking being wrong. They attend to the teacher’s words and face to affirm that they don’t have to think—they are off the hook.

But everything changes if the teacher gives a neutral response—an intrigued face that does not telegraph right or wrong: “Fascinating, Susana. Explain why you feel that’s right.” Students will immediately look at the teacher to read her face. They need to know: fascinating as in “correct” or fascinating as in “wrong”? Which is it? If the teacher can keep a neutral face, students have to actually stop, listen, and think. Do they agree with Susana or not? They may have to choose a side. They have to think and understand, and everyone is engaged. A neutral stance can change everything.

I worked with a sparkly-eyed teacher, John Reid, who showed his students strange and puzzling geological scenes in the field or through slides—rocks, rivers, landscapes. He asked them to describe in detail what they saw and explain the story of how they thought those scenes came to be. Every time a student came up with a hypothesis, he asked a series of probing questions, drawing out their thinking and simultaneously teaching concepts via the questions themselves. And then, he named that hypothesis after that student and recruited a different idea from another student. The students couldn’t wait to discover who was right and why, but John was inscrutable. He was excited and amused equally by all the ideas. Sometimes, he even ended a class without closure, and students eagerly rushed to research which hypothesis made the most sense.

This advice also applies to drawing out questions from students. I love visiting classrooms where the walls are covered with student questions that drive learning—anchor charts of “100 questions we have about our classroom snails”; “Questions we have about whose story is not told in our history book”; “Questions we have about the universe.”

Recently, I met with middle school teachers who were implementing “Crew” (EL Education’s name for a daily advisory-meeting structure and school culture that focuses on personal and academic wellness). An excited teacher shared a strategy she used: “I gave my Crew index cards, and they anonymously wrote questions about topics they hoped we could discuss. Their questions dealt with things like mental health, race, gender identity, body image, parents, social media, love, death, bullying. … It was eye-opening. Our conversations have been remarkable, and they really matter to my Crew.” Empowering students through recruiting, respecting, and giving time for their deeper questions can transform classroom culture.

Focusing on questions and responses may seem like a small part of our craft, but doing it well can fundamentally improve learning and life.

‘Professional Generosity’

Nancy Frey, Ph.D., is a professor in educational leadership at San Diego State and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Her published titles include Visible Learning in Literacy, This Is Balanced Literacy, Removing Labels, and Rebound.

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High. He has published numerous articles on teaching and learning as well as books such as The Teacher Clarity Playbook, PLC+, Visible Learning for Literacy, Comprehension: The Skill, Will, and Thrill of Reading, How Tutoring Works, and most recently, How Learning Works:

Educators are knowledge workers, and the currency of our profession is the knowledge we possess. An educated society enjoys more robust economic growth and better health outcomes. Our investment in educators is long-lasting and extends far beyond the schooling years. As educators who are members of our communities, we owe it to ourselves to invest in our own professional knowledge. But to do so requires that we invest in ourselves with intention and don’t leave it to chance. Here are three practices to ensure that we continuously build our knowledge and skills.

Set annual knowledge goals and develop an action plan to attain them. The notion that experience equals skill has a shelf life—while skill development increases rapidly during the early years in the profession, it levels off after five years. A teacher with 17 years of experience isn’t likely to be more skilled than one with seven years under their belt. The difference, however, is knowledge. Teachers who pursue advanced degrees, attain national-board certification, and seek new opportunities to enhance their skills continue to invest in themselves. Take an annual inventory of your own skills and performance. Identify areas where growth occurred as well as where knowledge gaps persist. It can be helpful to meet with a trusted colleague to identify these areas. Once you’re done so, develop an action plan to address your next steps for growth.

Spend time in colleagues’ classrooms and invite them into yours. There’s a real danger in isolating oneself in a single classroom. And there is so much to learn from collegial observations of teaching. In fact, this should be a central feature of professional learning communities. Capacity-building learning walks are not evaluative observations but rather are short, scheduled 10-minute visits through a succession of classrooms. Members of a 3rd grade team may arrange with their 4th grade colleagues to walk classrooms to gain knowledge about expectations for their students next year. Geometry teachers might conduct a learning walk of the classrooms of their Algebra 1 colleagues to gain a better sense of how mathematical thinking is manifested. Schools that regularly conduct teacher-led learning walks enjoy higher degrees of relational supports among teachers as well as an increased collective responsibility for student learning across the building. Importantly, learning walks are a catalyst for the spread of effective instructional practices.

Get involved with school and district organizations and committees. You possess the ability to positively impact the professional lives of teachers through your advocacy and leadership. Your voice is an essential one for obtaining resources, building student learning, and fostering family empowerment. In the meantime, the learning you gain from such experiences is immeasurable as you interact with others on shared goals. The next time you are approached to join a committee, resist the urge to catalog why you can’t and, instead, consider how you might. Your time is precious, to be sure, but must include opportunities to interact with adults to discuss what is central to your professional life—continuous learning.

If you have detected a common thread of professional generosity, you’re right. Doing so means that you are generous to yourself in focusing on what your learning needs are. In addition, it extends to the supportive relational conditions needed for schools to be learning, not just teaching, organizations. And it is further evidenced in an intention to be a part of our institutions’ need to address inequities and gaps. We are knowledge workers—how will you invest in your knowledge this school year?

Annual Goals

Mary K. Tedrow, NBCT, taught in the high school English classroom beginning in 1978, ending her K-12 career as the Porterfield Endowed English Chair at John Handley High School in 2016. She currently teaches and directs the Shenandoah Valley Writing Project at Shenandoah University in Winchester Va. Tedrow is also a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Write, Think, Learn: Tapping the Power of Daily Student Writing Across Content Areas:

I have benefited from including the following habits into my own teaching practice. Not only have they changed practices, they keep me engaged and growing in my chosen career.

  • Set an annual goal on an aspect of teaching for improvement. I accept this challenge each year and have added the following to my repertoire: How to lead a better whole-class discussion. This led to Socratic Seminars and then to the Harkness discussion model. How to use writing as a tool for learning in the English classroom. This was an ongoing challenge to embed writing to learn language arts concepts. How to build collaboration into class and still meet curricular goals. This challenge forced me to think about student-centered learning and to shift the responsibility for learning over to students. All of these questions arose out of a true reflection on what needed improvement.
  • Take your goals and questions to your professional community. That community could be the other teachers in your building (our resident expert let me sit in on one of her seminars and shared handouts and guidelines), online communities (I learned about Harkness discussions on an Advanced Placement discussion board), or professional books. My favorite professional books are written by teachers who have walked the talk like Nancy Atwell, Kelly Gallagher, and Penny Kittle.
  • Don’t forget to ask the students! If students know your question is an honest overture for input, they will provide valuable feedback. When I am stumped in resolving a problem, I ask students for suggestions. Some of the best changes made came directly from student feedback. In fact, I trusted them so much that the students annually revised our Staff Manual for the Journalism lab. We relied on these guidelines for producing the paper.

Thanks to Ron, Nancy, Douglas, and Mary for contributing their thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@educationweek.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all EdWeek articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 11 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Offering students options in reading, study topics, assessments, and projects increases their excitement.

Confidence and interest grow when students form their own questions and choose project approaches.

Teachers can be a main reason students look forward to attending school.

Teaching involves the complex, sometimes uncomfortable, human process of learning and growth.

Introducing students to lifelong ideas is a foundational teaching opportunity.

Teachers sometimes nurture talent by recognizing student work, such as displaying student art.

Educators should focus on addressing the needs of the whole child.

Playing music, such as classical, can foster productivity and concentration in students.

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The Sound of Success: Ideas in Music for Concentration and Productivity

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Does music help you concentrate? Since we spend a lot of time in front of computers trying to finish our work, wouldn’t it be nice to listen to some of music to help concentrate? Well, music lovers, it seems like Mozart and Beethoven could actually help you with your productivity. Beethoven once said: «Music is where the spirit lives, thinks and invents.»

This relationship between music and the brain is an area that has been intensively explored in research. Many studies point to the ability of music to help employees be more productive and help children in their learning process more effectively. University research in France found that students who listened to music for an hour while reading, scored significantly higher on a questionnaire compared to a group of students who read without music.

Your attention span is better when listening to music

It seems that music for concentration puts students in a heightened emotional state, so that they can be more receptive to information. «It is possible that music causes a change in the learning environment and influenced students’ motivation to stay focused while reading, which led to better performance on a multiple-choice questionnaire,» concluded the french research team in a recent article.

But before you start playing any type, you have to find the music that works better for the type of work you are trying to carry do. For example, the classic from the Baroque period is said to do wonders for brain activity when you are studying or writing. But not all classical music is created equal, so dramatic changes and complicated fugue changes may not be as conducive as a smooth piano piece. So if you have to choose a composer, we would say Mozart. There seems to be evidence that Mozart’s improves mental performance: it is called «The Mozart Effect”.

Build a harmonious space

If you don’t like classical, the discreet sound found in ambient music may work well for you instead. What is the purpose of this if you are not at the airport, you ask? Well, for creative purposes, it’s better than emptiness and silence. According to one of its pioneers, musician Brian Eno: “Background music must be able to accommodate many levels of attention when listening, without forcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting ”.

In fact, researchers have shown that a moderate level of noise, such as that found in the environment, can actually get creative juices flowing. Music with especially low-lows or especially high-highs should be avoided. Certain types of jazz instrumental melodies can also get your brain working.

Music without lyrics

In general, if you are doing work that requires writing, you should avoid listening to music with lyrics as the words in a song are especially destructive to your concentration. Since hearing words activates the brain’s language center, attempting to perform tasks related to another language would be like trying to have a conversation while someone else is speaking to you. But, if you are a cartoonist, and you don’t deal with sentence construction, hearing letters may not have the same effect.

Finally, studies show that listening to music you’re already familiar with may be better if you really need to focus. New songs take you into the unknown and your brain will want to listen closely to see what comes next. With the music you are familiar with you know what to expect, so it doesn’t distract you from your work. And if you like the tune you’re listening to try not to whistle it while you work, as that will only distract you.

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In mathematics, students combine conceptual understanding with procedural skills to solve problems.

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Why Word Problems Are Such a Struggle for Students—And What Teachers Can Do

By Sarah Schwartz — May 01, 2023 12 min read
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Give Cindy Cliche a math word problem, and she can tell you exactly where most students are going to trip up.

Cliche, the district math coordinator in the Murfreesboro City school district in Tennessee, has spent decades teaching elementary schoolers how to tackle their first word problems and now coaches teachers in how to do the same. Kids’ struggles, for the most part, haven’t changed, she said.

Take this problem, which students might work on in 1st grade: There are some bunnies on the grass. Three bunnies hop over, and then there are five total. How many bunnies were there to begin with?

The problem is asking about a change: What’s the starting, unknown quantity of bunnies, if adding 3 to that quantity equals 5? In other words, x + 3 = 5. But most 1st graders don’t make that connection right away, Cliche said. Instead, they see the numbers 3 and 5, and they add them.

“Nine times out of 10 they’re going to say, ‘eight,’” Cliche said. “They’re number pluckers. They take this number and this number and they add them together or they take them apart.”

This is one of the biggest challenges in word problem-solving, educators and researchers agree—getting students to understand that the written story on the page represents a math story, and that the math story can be translated into an equation.

Making this connection is a key part of early mathematical sense-making. It helps students begin to understand that math isn’t just about numbers on a page, but a way of representing relationships in the world. And it’s one of the ways that kids learn to unite conceptual understanding of problems with the procedures they will need to solve them.

“When students struggle [with word problems], it tends to be everything else they have to do to get to the calculation,” said Brian Bushart, a 4th grade teacher in the West Irondequoit schools in Rochester, N.Y.

There are evidence-backed strategies that teachers can use to help students make these connections, researchers say.

These approaches teach students how to understand “math language,” how to devise a plan of attack for a problem, and how to recognize different problem types. And though they provide students tools and explicit strategies, these techniques are designed to support kids’ sense-making, not circumvent it, said Lynn Fuchs, a research professor in the department of special education at Vanderbilt University.

The goal, she said, is “understanding the full narrative of what’s being presented.”

How word problems are used in early grades

Story problems serve a few different purposes in early grades, said Nicole McNeil, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame who studies students’ cognitive development in math.

They can help connect children’s preexisting knowledge to the math they’re learning in class—"activating that knowledge kids have in their everyday life, and then showing, how do mathematicians represent that?” McNeil said.

Cliche likes to use word problems in this way to introduce the concept of dividing by fractions.

“We’ll tell the kids, ‘I have three sandwiches here and I need to divide them in half so that everyone will get a piece,’” she said. “‘How many people can I feed?’”

After students solve the problem, Cliche introduces the operation that students could use to divide by fractions—marrying this conceptual understanding with the procedure that students would use going forward.

But word problems can also be used in the opposite direction, to see if students can apply their understanding of equations they’ve learned to real-world situations, McNeil said.

And there’s another, practical reason that teachers practice word problems: They’re ubiquitous in curriculum and they’re frequently tested.

There are lots of different kinds of problems that kids could work on in math classes, said Tamisha Thompson, a STEAM (for science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math) instructional coach in the Millbury public schools in Massachusetts, and a doctoral student in learning sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Many story problems have one right answer, but there are also problems that could have multiple answers—or ones that aren’t solvable. Spending more time with a broader diversity of problems could encourage more creative mathematical thinking, Thompson said. “But we’re really driven by standardized tests,” she said. “And standardized tests typically have one right answer.”

In general, between 30 percent and 50 percent of standardized-test items in math feature these kinds of story problems, said Sarah Powell, an associate professor in the department of special education at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Until things change, and until we write better and different tests, if you want students to show their math knowledge, they have to show that through word problem-solving,” Powell said.

Why students struggle with word problems

Sometimes, students struggle with word problems because they don’t know where to start.

Just reading the problem can be the first hurdle. If early-elementary schoolers don’t have the reading skills to decode the words, or if they don’t know some of the vocabulary, they’ll struggle, said McNeil.

That can result in students scoring low on these portions of standardized tests, even if they understand the underlying math concepts—something McNeil considers to be a design flaw. “You’re trying to assess math, not reading twice,” she said.

Then, there’s math-specific vocabulary. What do words like “fewer than,” or “the rest,” mean in math language, and how do they prompt different actions depending on their placement in a problem?

Even if students can read the problem, they may struggle to figure out what it’s asking them to do, said Powell. They need to identify relevant information and ignore irrelevant information—including data that may be presented in charts or graphs. Then, they have to choose an operation to use to solve the problem.

Only once students have gone through all these steps do they actually perform a calculation.

Teaching kids how to work through all these setup steps takes time. But it’s time that a lot of schools don’t take, said Cliche, who has also worked previously as a state math trainer for Tennessee. Word problems aren’t often the focus of instruction—rather, they’re seen as a final exercise in transfer after a lot of practice with algorithms, she said.

A second problem: Many schools teach shortcut strategies for deciphering word problems that aren’t effective, Powell said.

Word problem “key words” charts abound on lesson-sharing sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. These graphic organizers are designed to remind students which math words signal different operations. When you see the word “more,” for example, that means add the numbers in the problem.

Talking with students about the meaning of math vocabulary is useful, said Powell. But using specific words as cues to add or subtract is a flawed strategy, Powell said, because “there is no single word that means an operation.” The word “more” might mean that the numbers need to be added together—or it might mean something else in context. Some problems have no key words at all.

In a 2022 paper, Powell and her colleagues analyzed more than 200 word problems from Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced math tests in elementary and middle school grades. Those tests are given by states for federal accountability purposes.

They found that using the key words strategy would lead students to choose the right operation to solve the problem less than half the time for single-step problems and less than 10 percent of the time for multistep problems.

Evidence-based strategies for helping struggling students

So if key words aren’t an effective strategy to support students who struggle, what is?

One evidence-based approach is called schema-based instruction. This approach categorizes problems into different types, depending on the math event portrayed, said Fuchs, who has studied schema-based instruction for more than two decades.

But unlike key words, schemas don’t tell students what operations to use. Instead, they help students form a mental model of a math event. They still need to read the problem, understand how that story maps onto their mental model, and figure out what information is missing, Fuchs said.

One type of schema, for example, is a “total” or “combine” problem, in which two quantities together make a total: “Jose has five apples. Carlos has two apples. How many apples do they have together?” In this case, students would need to add to get the answer.

But this is also a total problem: “Together, Jose and Carlos have seven apples. If Jose has five apples, how many apples does Carlos have?”

Here, adding the two numbers in the problem would bring students to the wrong answer. They need to understand that seven is the total, five is one part of the total, and there is another, unknown part—and then solve from there.

To introduce schemas, Vanderbilt’s Fuchs said, “we start with a child and the teacher representing the mathematical event in a concrete way.”

Take a “difference” problem, which compares a larger quantity and a smaller quantity for a difference. To demonstrate this, an early-elementary teacher might show the difference in height between two students or the difference in length of two posters in the room.

Eventually, the teacher would introduce other ways of representing this “difference” event, like drawing one smaller and one larger rectangle on a piece of paper. Then, Fuchs said, the teacher would explain the “difference” event with a number sentence—the formula for calculating difference—to connect the conceptual understanding with the procedure. Students would then learn a solution strategy for the schema.

Children can then use their understanding of these different problem types to solve new problems, Fuchs said.

There are other strategies for word-problem-solving, too.

  • Attack strategies. Several studies have found that giving students a consistent set of steps they can use to approach every problem has positive effects. These attack strategies are different from schemas because they can be used with any problem type, offering more general guidance like reminders to read the problem and pull out relevant information.
  • Embedded vocabulary. A 2021 study from Fuchs and her colleagues found that math-specific vocabulary instruction helped students get better at word problem-solving. These vocabulary lessons were embedded into schema instruction, and they focused on words that had a specific meaning in a math context—teaching kids the difference between “more than” and “then there were more,” for example.
  • ‘Numberless’ problems. Some educators have also developed their own strategies. . One of these is what’s called “numberless” word problems. A numberless problem has the same structure as a regular story problem but with the quantities strategically removed. An initial statement might say, for example, “Kevin found some bird feathers in the park. On his way home, he lost some of the feathers.”

With numberless problems, instead of jumping to the calculation, “the conversation is the goal,” said Bushart, the 4th grade teacher from New York, who has created a website bank of numberless problems that teachers can use.

The teacher talks with students about the change the story shows and what numbers might be reasonable—and not reasonable. The process is a form of scaffolding, Bushart said: a way to get students thinking conceptually about problems from the start.

Balancing structure and challenge

These approaches all rely on explicit teaching to give students tools that can help them succeed with problems they’re likely to see often in class or on tests.

But many math educators also use word problems that move beyond these common structures, in an attempt to engage students in creative problem-solving. Figuring out how much structure to provide—and how much challenge—can be a delicate balance.

These kinds of problems often require that students integrate real-life knowledge, and challenge them to “think beyond straightforward applications of mathematical situations,” said McNeil of Notre Dame.

There may be an extra number in the problem that kids don’t have to use. Or the problem might pose a question that would lead students to a nonsensical answer if they just used their procedural knowledge. For example: 65 students are going on a field trip. If each bus can hold 10 students, how many buses are needed?

Students might do the calculation and answer this question with 6.5, but that number doesn’t make sense, said McNeil—you can’t have half a bus.

In a 2021 study, McNeil and her colleague Patrick Kirkland rewrote some of these challenging questions in a way that encouraged students to think more deeply about the problems. They found that middle school students who worked on these experimental problems were more likely than their peers to engage in deep mathematical thinking. But, they were also less likely to get the problems correct than their peers who did standard word problems.

Other research, with young children, has found that teaching students how to transfer their knowledge can help them work through novel problems.

When students are given only problems that are all structured the same way, even minor changes to that format can prevent them from recognizing problem schemas, said Fuchs.

“What we found in our line of work is that if you change the way the word problem reads, in only very minor ways, they no longer recognize that, this is a ‘change’ problem, or a ‘difference’ problem,” she said, referencing different problem schemas.

In the early 2000s, she and her colleagues tested interventions to help students transfer their knowledge to more complex, at times open-ended problems. They found that when children were taught about the notion of transfer, shown examples of different forms of the same problem type, and encouraged to find examples in their own lives, they performed better on novel, multistep problems than their peers who had only received schema instruction.

The results are an example of how explicit instruction can lay the groundwork for students to be successful with more open-ended problem-solving, Fuchs said.

Exactly how to sequence this learning—when to lean into structure and when to release students into challenge—is an open question, McNeil said.

“We need more researchers focused on what are the best structures? What order should things go in? What is the appropriate scope and sequence for word problems?” she said. “We don’t have that information yet.”

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Helping students build mental models of problems enhances problem-solving.

Math learning should be made relevant and engaging for better student success.

Parents agree that engagement increases the likelihood of student success in math.

Encouraging redo opportunities shifts the focus from toughness to learning.

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School & District Management Opinion

The #1 Thing My Students Want Their Parents to Know: They’re Stressed

Four strategies for relieving student stress
By S. Kambar Khoshaba — February 13, 2024 4 min read
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In preparation for an upcoming meeting of my school’s parent/teacher/student organization, I recently asked three of my most talented teachers to help me answer an important question: What do high schoolers wish their parents knew? After roughly 130 students weighed in, I was surprised to learn that the number one issue students wanted their parents to know was that they were highly stressed.

During the parent meeting, we discussed the various reasons why students discussed stress as a main concern in their lives. Answers varied: taking multiple Advanced Placement or advanced classes; participating in clubs, sports, and music programs; dealing with cyberbullying; and mentally preparing for the college-application experience.

After the meeting, I was left with this pit in my stomach about the emotional state of my students. How could I be part of the solution instead of being a bystander? I came to the realization that handling stress isn’t something that will come naturally to students, like blinking or breathing. Someone has to teach it to them. As great educators, we have to prepare our students for how to learn, not just what to learn.

About This Series

In this biweekly column, principals and other authorities on school leadership—including researchers, education professors, district administrators, and assistant principals—offer timely and timeless advice for their peers.

When I think about teaching conceptually, I immediately remember one of my favorite poems. In “Teach Him Gently, If You Can,” Dan Valentine lists several concepts that the world will teach his son but requests that teachers also teach the son the more positive aspects of life.

During the course of my 27 years in education, I’ve personally found four strategies that can be taught “gently” to students to help them cope with stress. I believe that implementing even one of these basic strategies can make a world of difference in relieving the stress our students experience.

Movement

Several years ago, I participated in a shadow-a-student activity, where I followed a student through school for the day. One of the main takeaways was that students do not get enough movement during the day. Why does this matter? Consider how you feel after you drive in a vehicle for six hours. You may feel exhausted and depleted of energy, and that’s without having to exert any mental or emotional energy.

Now, combine those feelings with expectations for classroom performance. It is a recipe for burnout and underachievement, which is why we need to instill more movement in our classrooms.

It can be as basic as changing an oral multiple-choice question to asking students to move to a corner that corresponds with the letter choice they think is correct (i.e., if you think A is correct, move to this corner, if you think B is correct, move to that corner, etc.).

There are several other (more elaborate) ways to incorporate movement, so principals should encourage teachers to be the experts they are and try something new with movement.

Academic conversations

During a recent training about enhancing the services we provide to students who speak English as a second language, this strategy clicked for me. I used to prioritize access, thinking that getting English learners in the class with English-speaking students was the primary goal. However, at this training, I was reminded of the other part of the formula: getting students to have academic conversations about what they were learning. Being in the class and silent was not helping them learn English as much as it would if they were having conversations about what they were learning.

This is true for all students, including those with language deficits, disabilities, or other conditions that leave them reticent about volunteering in class. In terms of stress management, how are students supposed to process emotions and decompress if they sit in class silently for 60 or 90 minutes at a time? It is important for them to communicate with their peers and teachers as a form of stress relief, making interpersonal connections, and engaging with the content being taught. These skills help build a confident learner, satisfying the needs of the whole child.

Trusted adults

My school’s leadership team works hard to make sure every student has a trusted adult at school, someone who they can go to when they have a challenging situation to handle. It is no surprise that students, especially at the high school level, often turn to others outside their home when they are dealing with complicated feelings. We must be available and sensitive to our students’ needs.

Relationships take time, so I encourage each of you to be the type of teacher and administrator that you would want for your child. For some, this skill of building relationships comes naturally. For other educators, you will have to work at it, but our students are worth it.

The art of the redo

A teacher I know allows students to redo all major assignments, regardless of the first grade earned. She shared that this practice makes them more relaxed and confident. Does it create more work for this teacher? Not necessarily.

Some new assessment programs can tell the students which answer is wrong but not tell them the correct answer. Teachers can then allow them to go back and try it again, if needed. Many students just enjoy and appreciate the option to get back up and try again and learn from mistakes if needed. After all, the goal is learning, not seeing how tough we can make it.

When students know they have a second chance to show what they’ve learned, it decreases their anxiety significantly. The focus needs to be on the fact that they learned the content, not how many times it took them to learn the material.

Students are dealing with unimaginable stressors, both in quantity and severity. Many need help with learning how to effectively manage them. Educators and parents should partner to help students identify effective and positive ways to deal with their stress. If we don’t step in, someone else may. And that individual might not have the child’s best interest at heart. Let’s be the first to teach our young people but remember to do so gently.

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Active guidance is necessary to ensure positive educational outcomes.

Staying in school and being motivated are critical challenges for students.

Effective teaching strategies are often shared and learned from peers and mentors.

Writing can be a powerful learning tool, particularly in English classrooms.

Students often strive for the correct answer and respond positively to affirmation.

Teachers and students should reflect on their positions on issues to foster critical thinking.