April is Autism Month

 April is Autism Month

During the month of April, we give attention to the issue of autism.  Which is a good thing because during the other months of the year we can spend looking for appropriate programs for kids and adults who are on the spectrum.

According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, autism is a condition that results from differences in the way that a brain develops.  Autism is a spectrum disorder.  That means its manifestation can be very minor and subtle or at the other end be very severe to the point of totally overwhelming an individual’s life.

As with anything else, the extra attention in the media has created an influx of identification.  That, taken together with the historical (Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson) identifications, being diagnosed with mild autism is almost a social benefit.

One of the more common treatments is ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) usually done one to one and requiring many hoops through which families need to jump in order to receive the service.  All 50 states now have laws requiring that insurance cover the treatment for people identified.  However, treatment is expensive so insurance companies are slow to accept the need.

What else is there?  First and foremost, we should be essentially past the view that kids on the autism spectrum are are emotionally disturbed and should  be treated as such.  People on the autism spectrum are not emotionally disturbed, even if their behaviors might sometimes mimic those who are.

Secondly, instruction in social awareness and speech and language therapy are crucial interventions to ensure that more mildly impacted individuals can thrive at their highest level.  Lastly, the earlier the better, is particularly critical for those on the autism spectrum.  Progress can be slow but the earlier intervention begins the better.

But what of adults who may be late to the diagnosis.  Counseling for social awareness and compensation in social situations ensures that adults can make the most of their abilities.

Autism is with us all year long.  It’s a lifelong complication for those on the spectrum.  The manifestations of the diagnosis are multiple and often co-morbid with other disabilities.

May will soon be here.  It would be good to double down on providing service for the remaining eleven months until we come around again to autism’s month.

 

Free to fail

 Free to Fail

Would you let your child run out in front of a moving vehicle?  Probably not.  But would you let your child fail a school?  How far should teachers and parents go in letting kids fail?  How much will you complain if a child is not doing well at school?

Every good teacher knows we learn more about how a child learns when he/she fails at something than when they get the question correct.  Why is that?  Because when we fail, we can figure  out why we failed.  But when we succeed we don’t take the effort to figure out why and often we can succeed for the wrong reasons.

Children (and adults) need to fail to improve learning.  The trick is to figure out  how much failure is encouraging and how much is discouraging to the point of believing we can’t do something.  In essence we are looking for the Goldilocks spot where we get it just right.

Is doing the best a child can do good enough for success.  Maybe, but not always.  In the real road of life, excuses are not going to be made for a child because he or she has a disability.  In fact, quite the contrary is true. If a child has a disability that child may have to work harder to get a job than the plain kid who doesn’t have a disability even though both individuals may be able to do the job equally well.  Trying out for a team or interviewing for a job, doing the best one can do will not necessarily bring home the victory.

Children need to be allowed to fail.  Neither parents nor teachers should jump in and rescue a child before he or she is allowed to fail.  Resilience is a critical life skill.  The road of anyone’s life is going to have some potholes.  A child needs to be prepared for that road.  Parents and teachers are not going to be able to run ahead filling in those potholes.

Antifragile teaching and parenting is about allowing kids to explore and fail at age appropriate tasks. Otherwise, kids become fragile adults, falling into those potholes.  It’s about intervening to teach the child how to do the task him or herself, not running ahead and doing the task for the child or removing the reason for failing.  Intervening to make sure your kid gets a job or is admitted to a school that is not merited is ultimately setting the child up for failure.  

Jumping in when tasks are too hard rather than allowing the child to have a reasonable struggle and enjoy the glow of having achieved something hard is not only better for the child now but better for the adult the child will become.

Both teachers and parents want kids to believe in themselves.  That isn’t going to happen if they are never given a chance to earn their success  and, thereby, have a reason to believe.  Free to fail is the price of success.

So what's YOUR IQ

 So What’s YOUR IQ

What’s your IQ?  You probably don’t know and if you think you know, you are probably wrong. 

IQ, or intelligence quotient, is best determined in your pre-teens or early teens.  It is also best measured by an individual IQ test, either the Stanford-Binet (SB) or one of the Wechsler series tests.   The two tests are similar in that they each yield a rating of a person’s intelligence, but they are very different in outcomes.  The SB test has its roots in France where Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet were commissioned to develop a test to determine which children would benefit from a public school education and who would not.  Later Lewis Terman, working at Stanford University, adapted the test for American children.  Hence we have the Stanford Binet.  Poor Terman gets little credit.  The important things to remember about the Binet test as it is often called, is its original purpose AND that is it very language based.  Therefore, children with good language skills will do better than children whose language skills are not as well developed.

The Wechsler series of tests were developed by David Wechsler.  There are separate tests for very young children, school age children and adults.  The Wechsler tests differentiate between verbal skills and performance skills.  The Wechsler tests deliver better information to inform instruction.  

Both test purport to tell the examiner how smart a student is.

But do they?   Yes and no.  First of all remember the original Binet test was developed to determine who would succeed in a typical French school.  In many ways today, the tests do their best job at determining which kids will do well in a typical American school.  And they are pretty good at that.  What the tests don’t tell us is which students who do poorly in these tests, MAY still do well in school.

Schools today are increasingly trying to provide alternative methods of instruction.  The traditional school is highly verbal.   If you have good language skills you will do well on both the tests and  in school.  However, there are lots of kids who don’t have great verbal skills.  As schools move to provide learning through other channels of input besides language- think digital games, Smartboards, and project based learning- these children can show their “smarts” as well.

The other big question is, does a person’s IQ score change.  Will how well a person scores on the test  change?  The test activities are based on what the vast majority of kids at a particular age can do.  If a child is tested at a young age and doesn’t mature at the expected rate, his/her scores will go down.  On the other hand, if a child has increased environmental experiences and improved language abilities, scores could go up.

Both tests use a 100 score as average.  Deviation from that mid-point measures above average and below average academic ability.  These tests do not, nor were they ever intended to, measure other talents such as art, music, science or personal relations.

The good news is that educators are learning to rely less and less on these scores so we can all relax a bit.

Let's Make it easier

 Let’s make it easier

 

There is a considerable shortage of teachers all across the country.   In Maryland, the larger counties are scheduled to end the school year with still well over 200 vacancies.  Baltimore County is taking the approach of just eliminating those positions.   

Both the State Department of Education and the State Legislature are taking a different approach.   Right now, in order to get a license as a teacher, an individual must pass an exam called the Praxis I, which is a national exam to measure basic skills in reading, writing and math.  The Educational Testing Service has established cut off points for passing.  Many teacher candidates, especially candidates for elementary teachers, fail the math test.  On the one hand, you would think that a college graduate should be proficient in basic academic skills, yet failing parts of the test once or even twice is not out of the ordinary.

Under proposed new guidelines these tests would be gone.  Instead, school districts would develop their own onboarding requirements which the MSDE would need to approve.  Will that get more folks interested in becoming teachers?  We don’t know.  But the corresponding question is do we want people who can’t pass a test of basic academic skills teaching our kids basic academic skills?  

The teacher shortage is serious.  There is no disputing that fact at all.  What does appear to be in question is just what is the best way to address the shortage.

The Maryland Blueprint for Education will raise starting salaries to 60K within a few years.   Will better salaries attract more teachers?   What happens when people discover that in order to afford the higher salaries, school districts are doing away with the customary year 2 and year 3 longevity increase steps?  

Teaching is a hard job.   And teaching is one of the most important jobs in our society.  Maybe we should work at giving teachers the professional respect they deserve.   Let THEM decide when their students are ready to move on in the content rather than the pacing guide.  Let THEM come up with creative ways to deliver the content instead of cookie cutter lesson plans.  And most importantly, let THEM develop relationships with their kids rather than keeping them long distance.  In the old days, that is what attracted teachers.  It was hard, but there wasn’t a shortage.  Will making it easier work? 

Are you happy yet?

 Are You Happy Yet?

 

Really, right now, are you happy?  Well maybe not happy, maybe just ok, just fine.  We seem to have entered into a period of preoccupation with being happy.  We worry that our kids are not happy.  And if they are not happy somehow it is within the power and responsibility of someone else to make them happy.  Along the way we have lost the notion that each of us is in charge of our own happiness.   And while we are there, “happy” is not a permanent state.   It is mostly an elusive moment. 

Most recent research has shown that emotions are highly reactive to the attention that is paid to them.  Yet we have apps on our phone to check in on our happiness, there are articles online of how to check on your happiness, we worry children to find out if they are happy.

All this attention to happiness seems to forget that what we want our children to be in resiient.  Remember the old Timex watch commercials.   “Takes a beating and keeps on ticking.”  That’s what we want for our kids.  Because in truth, into each life a lot of rain will fall.

Evidence shows that the more people value happiness and the more they chase it, the less happy they tend to be.  Asking students to continually reflect on their feelings belies the fact that how they feel right now may not be anything like what they will feel in an hour or maybe even 15 minutes.   Asking kids how they feel tends to amplify the negative feelings and ignore that these feelings may well be fleeting.  

In the past, when a child was complaining about what had gone wrong and her life in general, we would often encourage the child to manage, life will get better.   Today we rush the child off to be evaluated for meds or therapy.  We are in a period where it is hard to find someone who is not in counseling or therapy because they are not “happy” with their lives.  

Psychologists have noted there are people who adopt an “action orientation”, they  are able to focus on the task at hand without getting distracted by their emotional state.  On the other hand, those folks who have a “state orientation” can get so far down the rabbit hole of how they feel, that the task at hand doesn’t get done.

How successful in life will our kids be if their own feelings are always front and center?   How will they manage to complete a day’s work if they are consumed with how they are feeling in the moment?  Teaching kids to overvalue their own emotions sets them up for failure.

So, are you happy yet?  Truthfully, that’s not my job.  Suck it up buttercup.

 

Take a message, I'll get back to you

 Take a message, I’ll get back to you

 

Cell phones are taking over.   A chemistry teacher in California complained that kids were watching Netfix on their phones during class.   A teacher in Maryland says that students are using gambling apps during the school day AND placing bets.

In almost every classroom, students are sending Snapchat messages, listening to music and shopping online.  Many parents are not aware of the almost addictive like behavior kids have with their phones.  Maybe that’s because parents are behaving the same way.  

Most schools have rules regarding cell phone use.  The problem is that those rules are only sporadically enforced.  It’s too much trouble. Teachers don't want to get into the fight, especially since they don't feel supported by admin. Some teachers out and out admit that when a student is using her cell phone, she isn’t causing any behavior issues.

Governors and state legislators are getting into the act.  The Governor of Utah is urging all school districts to ban cell phones in school.  Last year, the Florida legislature passed a law that requires school districts to ban student cell phone use during class time and to block social media access on district WiFi.  Some districts like Orange County are banning phones altogether during the school day.

Nationally 77% of school districts prohibit cell phones for non-academic use.

But sort of like the speed limit on roads, enforcement and adherence are slim.

One teacher in Maryland bought a 36-slot cell phone caddy for students to store their phones.  But few students comply and some say they don’t have their phones, even if they do.  So he has given up and figures as long as they are quiet…

Students and parents push back saying they need to be in contact with their kids.  Kids need to be able to call parents.   REALLY- How did kids and families stay in touch before cell phones?   Amazingly, folks managed.

Students will tell you enforcement varies from teacher to teacher.   Teachers will tell you that enforcing the cell phone ban should be an administrators’ responsibility. Often students are calling their parents to complain about a teacher, but that's a story for another day.  The best working systems are those that require students to check their phones at the door with the assumption that every kid has a phone.   That system seems to work.

Next up to distract, are air pods under hoodies and hair  and smartwatches.  Students might need an administrative assistant to take their calls so they can have time to learn.

There are secrets out there

 There are secrets out there

 

You might have heard of teachers sneaking a smoke outside.   Or perhaps, taking a sick day because there is an early concert that they don’t want to miss.  But have you heard of teachers hiding books so students CAN read them?  That is what’s happening in multiple classrooms in multiple states where school districts are banning books with certain subjects.  It’s even happening in bright blue Maryland.

Here is how it works.  School districts are banning books written by Black authors, written about the struggle for equality, advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, books about the LBGTQ community and books written either by or sympathetic to that community.  

The school districts doing banning reading materials are mostly very predominately White.  Which makes it all the more important for marginalized communities to be able to access books that speak to their personal experiences.   It is also true that while the suicide rate is rising among all teens, it is rising much more quickly among African-American and LBGTQ kids.   These youngsters feel like the “other”.  They do not fit in.  Who would care if they were gone.

Books speak to those struggles and show kids that there is a way forward and that they are not alone.  A number of teachers in communities that have banned books are establishing underground secret libraries where students can borrow books on the banned book list.  Yep, does remind you of another underground adventure.

Of course, anything that is banned by adults automatically becomes interesting to any teen.  The good news about that is it is wonderful if students from the majority community read some of these banned books too because then they, too, might gain an understanding of the marginalized communities.

Teachers with these secret libraries are building them from the books that have been removed from classrooms as well as purchasing them with their own funds and contributions from others.  Secret library books are not displayed on shelves with their covers facing out to attract readers.  They are instead packed away in boxes at the back of classrooms or in closets. Student volunteers sort and organize the selections and run the sign-out process.

Perhaps the book banning has had an unintended consequence.  More kids want to read the banned books, in both the majority and minority communities.  After all, who doesn’t want to read what you aren’t allowed to read.