The Importance of Trust

Before diving into any educational change initiative, a solid foundation must be in place. When thinking about building resilient schools, this foundation is no less essential, especially with regard to trust.

Trust in this sense involves the relationships of all educational stakeholders. More than relationships between students and teachers alone, the relations between teachers with teachers, teachers with principals, and school personnel with the community are also important considerations. 

When high relational trust exists, people believe that everyone is competent in their roles.  For example, students believe they have effective teachers who are under the leadership of effective principals. Furthermore, within every relationship, people respect each other and rely on the involvement of every person. Relational trust is based on what people believe and on what they observe. So, not only do they believe in the competence of each other, but they also validate this belief by what they see on a regular basis.

Research on school change has shown that successful reform is linked to the level of trust in schools. For schools with low levels of trust, reform efforts have a one in seven chance of increasing student learning. With high levels of trust, schools have a 50/50 chance to see increases in learning.

We live during times that require better ways of coping and higher levels of resilience. Before we start developing plans to meet these needs, we must first build and nurture trust for all those who are involved in these efforts.

Trust...is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. ~Barbara Smith

Building Resilience

Our turbulent world offers challenging situations for all of us, most especially for our children. These complex life events, from divorce and death to violence and poverty, are negatively affecting our social and emotional health. In schools, we can counteract these effects by helping students develop strong coping and problem-solving skills. In doing so, we can reduce the negative effects of the real life issues that our children face.

Compelling research focusing on both adults and children shows that when we strengthen our emotional awareness and deepen our social skills, we can reduce anxiety and depression. When anxiety and depression are reduced, we are more effective at work, in school, and in life.  

As we build our social and emotional skills and strategies, we are able to persevere, to problem-solve, and to negotiate. We build resilience.

We are resilient when we

• understand our own emotions, and with this understanding, we can control them.
• have impulse control, meaning that we first think before we act.
• are realistically optimistic, and we know that things will get better.
• are flexible in thinking, and we see options and alternatives when faced with problems.
• believe in our ability to make it through challenging situations.
• have empathy for others who are handling their own life difficulties.
• know when and how to reach out for help.

Building resilience should be a priority for all involved in educational endeavors. Resilient schools have more effective teachers and administrators. Resilient students are happier, more hopeful, and open to learning. By building resilience, we increase our ability to cope with and to thrive in the complex lives we are living, both in and out of school.

Social Emotional Health Is a Global Issue

A recent international summit established educational standards of equity and quality with a focus on early childhood for schools around the world. Most notably, this global consensus honored the cross cutting nature of education, from promoting literacy to teaching physical well-being. More than achieving basic mathematical skills and attaining other content area knowledge, this international panel charged schools with helping children deal with real-life issues of poverty, war, violence, and disabilities, among many other realities. Our children must be taught resilience in order to thrive in a turbulent world.

The key to resilience is being socially and emotionally healthy; it is the basis of all successful human endeavors. By acknowledging this on an international level, we are now reminded that the educational process must also emphasize social and emotional literacy. This acknowledgement also reminds us that without having self-awareness, relationship skills, and other important components of social emotional health, our children will be unable to navigate through our current environment.

Beyond geographic borders, socioeconomic status, and any other demographic and man-made check boxes, this international summit has highlighted the moral imperative for all of us to tend to the social and emotional health of our children- it is needed now more than ever.

The Need for Recognition

Our efforts to improve public education have created a focus on results and a reliance on technology.  We now use sophisticated ways to track learning; our students’ scores on national, state, and local assessments are warehoused in systems that follow them through their educational experience.  Cutting edge technology helps us deliver a national curriculum, evaluate our effectiveness, and prepare students for the 21^st century. We use a variety of data as evidence of our progress.

However well-intentioned these reform efforts, they have resulted in unintended consequences. As our attention shifted to results and technology, we lost focus on the only critical components of education: our young people and their educators. They have become invisible. If our efforts are to be successful, we must begin at a personal and individual level. We must recognize our students and teachers.

In this sense recognition does not refer to praise or reward for some behavior. Recognition is instead seeing the value of another person, acknowledging that person as "one of us."  When we are recognized, we see ourselves as a valued part of a collective action. Without this recognition, we find it difficult to see ourselves as part of a greater whole. 

In order to move forward, we must recognize those for whom these extraordinary reform efforts are designed to serve.  Moving students and their teachers to the forefront of any and all educational initiatives is the only way.

We must say to them in actions and in words, “I see you.”

Social Emotional Health Creates Readiness for the Core

When a new initiative is being introduced into a system, most of the efforts focus on planning, training, implementation, and evaluation. The Common Core, an initiative on a level never before seen in educational reform efforts, shares this focus. For several years we have anticipated the implementation with curriculum development and educator training. We are making progress toward meeting the technology capacity needed in every school. Lately, the discussion is moving toward the assessments based on the Core.

What is often missing in the design of reform efforts is readiness. Despite the capacity needed on so many levels for the successful implementation of the Core, readiness is a critical first step.

Readiness goes beyond the capacity building, and instead refers to the school climate and group norms that must be in place before the implementation occurs. The climate must be a safe and positive environment conducive to learning. The development of norms among educators is just as vital as those developed within individual classrooms with students.

The Core requires deep levels of discourse and collaboration that can only occur when there is a sufficient level of trust among students, between students and teachers, and among educators in a school building.

By tending to the social and emotional health of our school buildings now, we will create and strengthen both our school climates and our relationships. In doing so, we will have achieved a readiness necessary for successful implementation of the Core.

"Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success." ~Henry Ford

Social Emotional Health at the Core of the Common Core

While the push for academic content standards continues at a constant rate and with a looming launch date, the social emotional health of our children must be at the forefront of this initiative in order for the implementation of the Common Core to be successful and to make the  greatest difference.

The Common Core standards assume a level of social skill ability that cannot be ignored. Before the Core is in our classrooms, we must first be sure that our students are ready for this substantive change on an emotional and social level.

Some educators are overwhelmed at the thought of having students perform at the high level required of them by the Common Core. One way to shift perspectives to a proactive stance is to tend to social emotional needs now and make it a part of every moment in the classroom.

Teaching students to become better decision makers, increase their self-awareness, and develop strong and healthy relationships will help them in all aspects of their lives, including their initiation to and success with the Common Core.

Social emotional learning "is not adding to your plate. It is the plate." —Dr. Ed Dunkelblau from the

Institute for Emotionally Intelligent Learning

Shovel-Ready Bullet Points 101

In a recent Ed Week blog post, Nancy Flanagan urges her fellow teachers to speak up and offer their perspective on the Common Core. She encourages them to develop salient ideas, and then asks teachers, "Can you put them into shovel-ready bullet points, for the limited attention span of your average legislator?"

Having teachers weigh in the Common Core is so needed, after all they are the first-order Core users. The much-needed voice of the teacher has been almost absent from the Common Core policy making table. Even as the weight of  educator accountability evolved to the misguided connection between standardized assessment scores and teacher quality, the public has so rarely heard from the teacher. Even as conventional wisdom seemed to turn on the teacher, and as teacher unions were dismissed as self-serving, the teacher voice is missing.

One explanation, and one that I have heard most often, is that teachers are so busy doing the thing they know and do best that they have no time to engage in policy conversations. In a vacuum teachers might spend every waking hour improving their practice to increase student learning; however, our teachers live in the real world. They interact with the public. They are family members, they are friends, and they are neighbors. They are not silent, but we have yet to hear their voice.

This silence has been so difficult to understand. Teachers are rarely, if ever, without a perspective on what is happening outside their classroom or without a prediction on how it plays inside the classroom. They understand the political nature of schools. Teachers know that almost everything they do, from the curriculum they deliver to the contracts they negotiate, is heavily influenced by the greater political environment. It is in their best professional interest to aware of and well-versed in the current atmosphere. Most teachers understand that holiday dinners and friend/family gatherings provide yet another opportunity to tease out the complex state of education to interested parties. Teachers stand ready and able to provide impromptu performances like these. Where have their voices been?

I began to think of "shovel-ready bullet points" in a different way. I started to wonder whether the short attention span and the language barrier of our policy makers were at the core of this perceived silence. Teachers have not been silent; teachers have been speaking in their native tongue.

If our teachers, those who feel the impact of the Common Core first and most profoundly, are to weigh in on the Common Core, they make a commitment. They must first combine their knowledge, experience and insight into a nugget or two of wisdom. Then, they must translate this wisdom into a simple language that our policy makers identify as their own.

The language of our policy makers frowns upon complete sentences, has no patience for elaboration, and delights in numbers and characters, especially dollar and percentage signs. They believe that one message fits all, and by George, it better be a short message. Conflict is inevitable and is resolved as the majority crushes all other perspectives. There is little time for discussion, no interest in putting flesh around the numbers, and  new terminology catches like wild-fire. If it happens to be an election year? This new terminology becomes a staple in every stump and sound bite.

While teachers are speaking in their native tongue, policy makers have been exchanging ideas and topics, considering new approaches to education, determining new standards for our students, and developing assessments to measure student progress toward these standards. Teachers have been discussing the complex, messy thing called learning. while our policy makers have been racing to the top in order to leave no child behind. The public, policy makers, many others have assumed the silence of the teachers to be acceptance of the recent educational reform efforts.

Instead, teachers have been doing just what the Common Core requires. Among other complex skills and abilities, the Common Core requires students to attain higher-order thinking skills, to develop sound arguments, complete with compelling evidence that supports their claims. These sophisticated ways of thinking are difficult, if impossible, to represent in shovel-ready bullet points. Most importantly, developing these skills and abilities take considerable time. In this process, students could not and would not be required to translate nuggets of wisdom into simple language and as soon as possible.

In order to maintain their professional integrity, teachers have not learned policy maker language; they have not registered for Shovel-Ready Bullet Points 101. It pushes against the Core that they have been mandated to deliver. It flies against what they know to be true about teaching and learning.

How do we resolve this situation where two very different cultures, complete with different languages, expectations, and behaviors, are both trying their very best to improve education for all children - especially when the power lies in the hands of those who speak a simple language and display a microwave mentality?