Stress

Every year that goes by, I find myself increasingly worried about the amount of stress that students are under–and the impact of that stress on their health and well-being. A recent New York Times article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis focused on the increasing number of students in high schools and colleges who suffer from severe anxiety. From that article:

In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year.

When I first started teaching, I would often blame the parents. And certainly I've heard from plenty of students who feel a lot of (undue) pressure from their parents to succeed. But more and more, the parents I meet are not the primary source of anxiety; rather, the students are putting this pressure on themselves. From that same New York Times article:

It’s tempting to blame helicopter parents with their own anxiety issues for that pressure (and therapists who work with teenagers sometimes do), but several anxiety experts pointed to an important shift in the last few years. “Teenagers used to tell me, ‘I just need to get my parents off my back,’ ” recalls Madeline Levine, a founder of Challenge Success, a Stanford University-affiliated nonprofit that works on school reform and student well-being. “Now so many students have internalized the anxiety. The kids at this point are driving themselves crazy.”

It's not just anxiety or depression–there are many ways in which stress impacts students' physical and emotional wellbeing. From a 2015 article in The Atlantic by Alexandra Ossola:

But too much stress has many effects on the body and mind, [Mary] Alvord says. In the short term it can cause anxiety; over long periods of time, elevated levels of stress hormones can degrade the immune system, cause heart problems, exacerbate respiratory and gastrointestinal issues, and bring on chronic anxiety and depression. That’s bad for anyone, but it can be especially bad for high schoolers... And since everyone has a different psychological capacity for stress, it’s hard to know when a student is pushed to the point of degrading his or her health.

As educators, we can't fix all these issues, but we have to be attentive to them and do what we can to help our students succeed without sacrificing their physical, mental, or emotional health. As writer (and writing teacher) John Warner puts it:

Increasingly, I think there’s a barrier I haven’t previously considered that needs addressing if my students are going to succeed: anxiety... We need to build a pedagogy that removes some measure of that anxiety and that allows students to practice–and see the benefits of–resiliency.

And you don't have to take my word for it. Ask the students, as they're acutely aware of the different stressors in their lives. In 2015, a junior at Palo Alto High School wrote about "the sorrows of young Palo Altans," and much of it sounded very familiar to me. Ms. Walworth may have only been a junior in high school, but I can't say it any better than she: "Effective education does not have to correlate to more stress."

So what do we do?

Earlier this spring, the New York Times covered some attempts to address this issue in Lexington, Mass.:

Elementary school students now learn breathing exercises and study how the brain works and how tension affects it. New rules in the high school limit homework. To decrease competition, there are no class rankings and no valedictorians and salutatorians. In town, there are regular workshops on teen anxiety and college forums designed to convince parents that their children can succeed without the Ivy Leagues.

There's a trend to say that schools should focus on teaching "grit," but to quote John Warner again, "Simply demanding greater resiliency isn’t going to work. We don’t badger people suffering from depression to be happier." I have little patience for teachers who justify policies that exist primarily to cause stress by saying, "I have to teach them a lesson," as if by simply living in a state of anxiety or stress for long enough is enough to help them learn to cope. As Alfie Kohn writes:

But people don’t really get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. In fact, it is experience with success and unconditional acceptance that helps one deal constructively with later deprivation. Imposing competition or standardized tests or homework on children just because other people will do the same to them when they’re older is about as sensible as saying that, because there are lots of carcinogens in the environment, we should feed kids as many cancer-causing agents as possible while they’re small to get them ready.

So the key is to give students some experiences where they feel challenged, while maintaining an environment that is unconditionally supportive. Alfie Kohn again writes about the importance of "unconditional teaching":

One study found that students who felt unconditionally accepted by their teachers were more likely to be genuinely interested in learning and to enjoy challenging academic tasks—as opposed to just doing things because they had to and preferring easier assignments at which they knew they would be successful (Makri-Botsari, 2001). To provide this unconditional support, we must actively oppose the policies that get in the way, such as those that encourage us to value children on the basis of their academic standing—or, worse, merely on the basis of their test scores.

Mr. Denizet Lewis' piece spends some time discussing the use of exposure therapy, an important piece of cognitive-behavioral therapy for those suffering from anxiety. We teachers are not clinicians, of course, but those same principles could perhaps inform how we aim to challenge students while still supporting them unconditionally. How can we help students have challenging experiences, while still making it clear to them that they are safe?

If teachers are challenging our students, stretching them to try new experiences, learn new skills, and think in new ways, it's not inherently bad that they feel some stress or anxiety about the process; those moments of discomfort can be where the growth happens. At the same time, we teachers can make sure that students feel entirely supported throughout that process. For example, do my classroom policies make students feel stress or anxiety about valuable things, like trying to write the best paper they can, or do I cause them to feel stress about extraneous details like unnecessary deadlines? Many times I worry that the entire process of assigning grades to student work is counter-productive to this unconditional support, but if grades are a necessary evil, how can I minimize the damage? I can say to my students, "Don't worry about grades," but if only the students with the highest GPAs are recognized, what message does that send?

I have my own experiences with anxiety, and my heart goes out for these kids who find themselves feeling overwhelmed and helpless. Life is challenging enough, and if we in schools make it unnecessarily difficult for our students, that's not some kind of vaccine that will protect them later. We can't make their world completely free of stressors, nor should that be the goal. But I do think we have a duty to support them–in many cases, better than we have done.

→ "5 Dumb Things I Used to Think About School" →

This is a thoughtful post, but I really liked the point the author makes about deadlines and late work (a topic I've mentioned before):

“Deadlines in schools are for adults. We adults have so many things to do by a certain time that we need deadlines. The fact is, there are very few drop-dead deadlines in life, and most things in life can be handed in late. May there be a monetary penalty? Yes, and that is the lame rationale for paying students with lower grades for late work, because again, grades are currency, not feedback.”

→ "Why I Threw Away My Rubrics" →

Professor Jennifer Hurley writes about her struggles with rubrics, and why she's ditched them (emphasis mine):

The real reason I think we’re attracted to rubrics is because we like the simplicity and efficiency of them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make giving feedback into a scientific process? That would be so efficient and so less fraught with uncertainty! But why are we so afraid to admit that the evaluation of writing is subjective and depends much upon the individual reader? I think it comes back to grades. We’re frightened that if we admit that good writing is sometimes a matter of opinion, then we are no longer the authority, and we no longer can defend our grades.

I've struggled with rubrics myself, for exactly this reason–good work, especially complex work like writing or a presentation, is impossible to quantify into any manageable number of categories. Too often, I think in my head, "This is a B+ paper," and then I look to reconcile the rubric with that grade. Yes, the rubric does sometimes keep me on track while grading, making sure I look at each different area and don't forget to give credit where it's due. When the rubric isn't tied directly to the grade, it's slightly more useful, but only slightly.

→ "The Emotional Weight of Being Graded, for Better or Worse" →

Yet another good post about the impact of grading, this time from the always thoughtful KQED MindShift blog. (As always, emphasis mine.)

The trouble with these extreme emotional reactions to grades is that students’ knowledge of a subject is tied to their experience of the grade, says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, associate professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Powerful emotions attached to grades drown children’s inherent interest in any given subject.

“Whether the grade is good or bad, you’re taking the student away from focusing on intrinsic interest and tying their experience to grades,” Immordino-Yang explained. Under such circumstances, genuine interest in learning for its own sake wilts. “Grades can be an impetus to work, and can be really satisfying,” she said. “But when emotions about the grade swamp students’ emotions about a subject, that’s a problem.”

I've certainly seen this in my own classroom. Now matter how much I try to preface an assignment with comments like, "Don't worry about the grade," their emotional reaction trumps everything else. I've tried to do small things in my classroom to reduce that focus on the grade, but so long as grades are the primary source of feedback in the school, there's not much I can do.

“Your Hand’s Not Raised? Too Bad: I’m Calling on You Anyway”

I first came across this article by Alfie Kohn on the practice of cold-calling students last year, and I felt embarrassed that I had never really questioned this aspect of my own pedagogy.

Should teachers call on students who haven’t indicated they want to talk and, in fact, have tacitly indicated they don’t want to talk?

I’ve never been too much of a jerk in the classroom, but I’ve certainly used cold-calling on students whose hands are not raised as a way to keep them “on their toes” or even to shame those who were very visibly not engaged. So what’s the alternative? Mr. Kohn suggests:

What we need to develop — with students, not just for them — is a model of discussion that encourages everyone to speak up when they’re ready without forcing anyone to do so, and that supports the community in becoming self-governing rather than giving one person in the room the sole authority to decide who talks when.

I have not successfully created this kind of atmosphere, but it sounds like a goal worth working towards. I do think there's a way to build a rapport with my students such that I can call on them in a way that is still respectful, as part of a "self-governing community" like he describes.

The closing statement from Mr. Kohn sums it all up quite nicely:

But the general rule is that treating students with respect — which means we neither compel them to speak nor determine unilaterally who gets to do so — is ethically appropriate, educationally beneficial, and practically realistic . . . as long as we’re willing to give up some control.

“When Grading Harms Student Learning” →

Another good post about grades and their impact in the classroom.

His take on giving a student a zero:

Zeros do not reflect student learning. They reflect compliance. Instead of zeros, we should enter incompletes, and use these moments to correct behavioral errors and mistakes. Often, one zero can mathematically destroy a student’s grade and pollute an overall metric that should reflect student learning. Here, grading is getting in the way of truly helping a student, as well as showing what that student really knows.

Imagining a Class without Grades

I have complained before about grading. The thing is, the more I do it (and as an administrator, I am now responsible for tracking the grades of over 700 students each year), the more flaws I see in the entire process.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Ashley Lamb-Sinclair highlights this issue. I want to quote the entire article, but please just go read it. It begins:

At the beginning of this school year, my colleagues and I decided to avoid giving the sophomores in our English classes any grades for six weeks. Research shows that providing students with a number or letter in addition to quality comments prevents them from authentically reflecting. Quantitative grades also diminish student interest in learning, reduce academic risk taking, and decrease the quality of thinking. But beyond academics, as teachers, we saw the negative impact grades made on our students’ mental and emotional health.

The article is full of links to research that supports her experiment, and I have done my own share of reading on the topic (I'd recommend anything by Alfie Kohn on the topic, starting here). Personally, I would love to rid my classroom of grades, freeing myself and my students for authentic feedback. As it is, I sometimes try and trick students into actually paying attention to my feedback and to their learning, by giving them comments without the grade attached, asking them to assess themselves or their peers, and other strategies. And while these are all fine, they are not much more than Band-Aids. At the end of the day, students often care far more about the letter grade on their report card than the feedback I've provided over the semester.

One way in which this problem manifests begins with forcing students to study topics in which they have no interest, simply because The Curriculum demands it. Then, once that student is sitting in World History or Geometry or Chemistry class, the grades become one way for teachers to compel performance from those uninterested students. Grades become a way to raise the performance floor, to ensure at least a minimum level of achievement (and compliance).

In my environment, the more-noticeable impact of grades is not preventing students from simply sleeping through class or skipping school (they have other extrinsic motivations in their lives to prevent that). No, what I see here is that along with that raising of the performance floor, a lowering of the performance ceiling. Students are absolutely going to do what they need to do to get the A+, they will accept no less. However, many are also less willing to do more. If the rubric lists exactly what to do to get an A+, what's the incentive for going beyond that, for working harder or thinking more creatively than the teacher expected when writing that rubric?

What would my classroom look like without grades? To be honest (don't tell the administrators), I've deemphasized grades a lot in my World History class. It's not just that I'm an "easy" grader, but I've found that the more paths I give students to earn the grade they want, the less energy they'll spend trying to fight over every point. But if I truly got rid of grades? A few possibilities:

• I would have to work harder on creating assignments and giving feedback. Currently in my class, there are some student tasks where the only feedback I provide is a number or letter grade, which essentially says to the student, "Thank you for doing what I asked." Without grades, I would have to spend more time giving thoughtful feedback, but also more time planning those assignments. If the assignment is not worth me providing feedback, is it still worth their time doing it?

• If grades aren't motivating students, then what will be driving them? Maybe their own interests, or a desire to share good work with their peers, or any of the myriad other reasons that adult humans around the world do good work without getting a numerical grade for every task. Students would be preparing for the "real world" much more authentically.

• I would need to work harder to engage with every student. Again, I have a population that is relatively driven. But most of them are in World History simply because it's required rather than out of love for the material. For some, if they don't have the incentive to work for that A+ towards their GPA, they may not be interested in doing much. How would I engage them? I could give them more choice in topics we study, or maybe more freedom to demonstrate what they learned to their peers. Whatever it takes, I couldn't fall back on, "Just do this because I told you to."

• Communication with parents would become very different. Sadly, some parents in my community check their daughter's grades as if they are a stock ticker, either up or down every day. For most parents, the primary way I communicate with them is by the numbers I type in the grade book for their daughter. Without grades, how do I help parents feel connected and informed, while also helping them give their children the space to succeed on their own? Without letter grades and 200 canned comments to choose from for report cards, I would have to proactively give parents meaningful comments about their daughter's progress and what she's been doing. Not only would that take time to do that communication, but it would also require me to have strong relationships with the students to be able to have anything meaningful to say.

I know I've glossed over much of the research (but go read it, really) and potential outcomes. And the issue of grades is wrapped up with many of the consequences of compulsory education. But two things are clear to me: grades are harmful for students, but make things easier for teachers. I know what tends to win out in that scenario most of the time.

→ "Reading is no way to learn" →

Attention-grabbing headline aside, there's some good insight in this piece from Roger Schank.

No learning takes place without conversation.

And:

Every year I would ask my students on the first day of class at Yale and Northwestern if they could pass the tests they took last year, right now. No one ever thought they could. They studied. They listened. They memorized. And then they forgot. We don’t learn by reading nor do we learn by listening.

→ "Late Work" →

I long ago decided that penalizing late work was not helping the students achieve any of the learning goals for my course. I want them to learn how to read Latin or write a compelling essay. Generally speaking, if it takes a student an extra day or two to accomplish that, that's preferable to me giving them a zero and then them not doing it all.

Plenty of teachers do not see things the same way, and enforce strict penalties for assignments that are submitted even minutes late. Whenever I ask teachers about these policies, the response is usually some form of, "We need to teach them a lesson?"

At a teaching blog run by Instructure (full disclosure: my school uses the Canvas LMS owned by Instructure), Sean Morris asks many of the same questions that I do, and tries to follow them to their logical conclusion.

What is the classroom meant to be? Should it be a microcosm of an unforgiving world? Should it be a retreat from that world? Should it be some kind of safe synergy of novelty, rigor, and relevant experience? And if it is this last, what “rules” must we establish in the classroom to keep our pedagogy intact?

→ "The Growth Mindset : Telling Penguins to Flap Harder?" →

When I read psychologist Carol Dweck's now famous book Mindset, much of it rang true to me personally. I could certainly see myself in many of her examples of a fixed mindset, and I've written about that before. And teaching our students to be more receptive to challenges is, in my mind, a valid goal.

As Dweck's book has become more popular, so too have critiques against those with an overly-simplified takeaway for schools from her research, namely the idea that "grit" (hard work and perseverance) and a mindset that sees failures as positive are all students need to find success in school. I've been dismayed in my own position by teachers who use the phrase "growth mindset" as a cover for claiming that students simply need to work harder. There's a subtlety to Dweck's claims that seems to be getting lost.

I think "Disappointed Idealist" does a good job expressing some of my own concerns about those who are using the growth mindset in a way that harms students.

For all the reasons above, some children will be penguins in an education system which values flight as the ultimate goal. And when they flap their wings as hard as they can, repeatedly, and still fail to take off, they are then hit with a double whammy: firstly they’ve failed to fly, and secondly they’re being told that the only reason that they’ve failed is because they’re not trying hard enough.