001good evening and welcome to our first parent university of the year I'm Abby right I'm the director of student services it's wonderful to have you here it is my honor to welcome dr. Benson tonight as a champion of teachers and leaders dr. Benson is passionate about rethinking educational experiences and fostering the conditions that empower kids to thrive as learners and beings serving in various capacities as a k-12 teacher adjunct faculty member and a district leader for 25 plus years she has extensive experience in leading professional development specific to teaching and learning in the response to the complex context and experience in today's schools mindset as a way to nurture resilience real world ready kids is an important part of her work valuing the impact of teachers leaders parents and school and community members in the
002lives of the students we all serve is at the core of her message please help me welcome dr. met dr. Benson good evening very glad you're here thank you for having me I think very grateful that your superintendent has structured a parent University series talking about that which I think is most important and how we're taking care of our kiddos just gonna see if we can cue that light back just a little bit so I can see the peeps in the room my friends in technology group if you could dim that one just a smidge if that's possible then I can see the parents I appreciate that so to get us started um this is um why I wanted to be able to see you how many of you have a parent of a middle
003schooler grades 6 through 8 okay how many have a parent k5 both of us how many have our birth to kinder to pre-k is an eclectic group how many have a student beyond eighth-grade alright and anybody here that's not a parent that's just a community member that is interested in learning how we can take better care of our kiddos fantastic welcome very glad you're all here I started being interested in what's going on with kids and the role that mindset might have in that as a parent as well so I've been an educator for 25 plus years the bulk of that as an administrator now and the bulk of that in the Scottsdale Unified School District as a director and executive director of the teaching and learning world at the minute I have the privilege
004of serving kids in the southwest region of our country running around to California Nevada with imagine schools and serving the teaching and learning needs of students there so well I am a huge supporter of teachers leaders support staff and parents and how we're taking care of kids in terms of the world of academics it's been what's going on outside of the world of academics and how that's impacting in academics and our kids that's really been resonating with me for the last couple of years so despite the grand narrative at work I think it's fascinating that so many persons suggest kids really don't want our support that they'd like to be isolated that they got this figured out that they have it on their own and at the end of the day we know that's not
005true teenagers sites adult support as one of the most significant predictors of their own well-being so whether we're a teacher a coach a principal a leader of a district a parent a member of our community in any capacity that's significant also significant is that we know if we can get our kids connected to their schools to their school community to their community they're likely to demonstrate more resilience fewer risk behaviors have a more positive well-being and tend to outperform others who maybe aren't that that research isn't new we know that students that feel connected to one adult are likely to exhibit more resilience than those that don't my interest in this also is comes from that of being a parent I have two beautiful boys clay and Cole that's the College World Series in Omaha
006this summer I have a millennial and an I gen or Gen Z and the difference I saw and continue to see I mean the behaviors of both of my children same mom and in their kids has been fascinating to me and I think it warrants paying attention to it something we didn't anticipate we didn't see the spaces the interactions of kids changing quickly enough so I'm grateful you're here is thinking about that because you've got more time to be responding to that than some of us did snuck up on us quickly how social space changed and we're going to talk more about that site your superintendent has been fantastic to suggest that the social emotional well-being of our kids is something we need to be paying attention to and so at the kickoff a bunch
007of us Katie McPherson had arranged to be working with the teachers and leaders and support staff there got to hear his message where he reiterated students need safety belonging and love to succeed in school in life so all of the message messages through parent University all the speakers that Katie McGee resan has lined up are in step with this so in order for us to be successful and in the shared space that we have here and we just can't invite you to think and adhere to two norms and our time together to be here now fully fully present and to care like crazy not just for your own kid but for the community of learners and community of parents that we have with us this evening so let's get started in 2018 Tim Elmore started
008doing research and paying attention to what's happening with how adults are situating what's going on with our kids and across the country overwhelmingly there was a one common response to this I want you to think about how would you respond to that today American adults top emotion about kids the regarding kids today is since we're a small group anybody want to popcorn that out I don't yes fear well exhaustion anybody else distracted I think there's that we could make a case for all of those but the most common descriptor was concerned but across the country most adults feel concerned for the state of where kids are at right now I think we could stop right here and talk about that for the rest of the night because how we are responding to that is pretty
009significant turns out there's reason for that kind of concern this is research from ASU there has been a hundred and forty percent increase from 2010 to 2018 in students that are being treated for anxiety 118 percent increase for depression same time and not as much of an increase in terms of kids and the way that they are suggesting they're experiencing stress I think that's really really important for us to think about so while they're feeling a little more stressed out the way they're responding to their stress over the top kids are having or struggling more with how to deal with being uncomfortable than ever before that's real Generation Z the 18 to 22 year old portion of Generation Z we'll talk more about who they are in a bit is significantly more likely than any
010other age group to say they experienced feelings associated with loneliness seventy percent of our kids in this little bucket believe no one knows them very well and I would argue the next group of kids underneath that would say similar things so how we respond to that it's gonna be pretty darn important because typically when adults a get concerned what do we do what do you say usually one of two responses tough-love suck it up we got this or we over support some of us are very good at the over supporting come on just a second when we over support we tend to further disempower kids and we actually move the needle further in terms of how they experience anxiety it disempowers them all together yes I'll take a quick question like it's a great question
011so self-reports same thing so much of the research comes in two ways either kids self-reporting they feel that way or kids that are going to get help and what we do know about kids right now those that are are being deemed most resilient they are more likely to get more help so that's absolutely correct and important context to bring up I appreciate you sharing that even the self report report studies I think we have to think about that too because more people are talking about it so even if they're not getting help if they're reporting it it could be a bit of a celebration in the uptick that kids are recognizing it about themselves it's a great question okay so in three chunks tonight gonna situate kind of how we got here Mental Health metrics
012indicate we're not likely being as successful as we hope to and growing resilient kids and how that's connected to mindset so how did we get here and what actually is it how many feel like you have a pretty confident understanding about what mindset is a growth mindset is fairly confident okay we're gonna revisit some of that because we're at different places in the room doesn't appear that we all have a common understanding of that but mindset alone in absence of the context isn't gonna get us as far as we like so we're gonna talk about the context piece as a part of the conversation tonight - so growth mindset matters we know it we know it can help we're gonna talk about what it is then we're gonna talk about what we've learned we've been
013talking about this for the better part of 30 years and it hasn't taken root and isn't pervasive across our country at the minute so what is it that we've learned about that what are those changes in context and what are the newest leaders in thinking inviting or asking us to do better differently and finally have five top recommendations for what we can do as parents and educators to foster resilience moving forward so with that Carol Dweck is kind of the mother of all mindset research she started about 30 years ago when she paid attention to the way that kids respond differently to failure it was fascinating to her that some kids it seemed to do alright with that and not let it become part of their identity and others would abandon whatever it was that
014they were doing and not bounce back as quickly as others so in her research she established one simple belief about ourselves guides a large part of our lives not just academics relationships career choice performance without the athletic or otherwise how we parent and we can cultivate change it choose it differently all the time so there's a lot of Hope in her message she noticed it she identified it she said there's two different mindsets a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and they're not fixed in and of themselves huge that it wasn't fixed she noticed that persons that exhibit a growth mindset tend to be more resilient and she defined that as being more optimistic to continue in times are tough her third big piece is that she started watching how we as adults parents teachers
015educators otherwise would praise kiddos after they've succeeded at something about how smart they were how talented they are and she started to disrupt that by saying maybe we take a look at praising the effort how hard they work to get there versus what the outcome was so given our minds that's changed all the time I'm just gonna pose two questions to you instead of having us to take a mindset quiz to kind of gauge where yours is that today remembering it can be moved at any time thinking just about yourself my intelligence and skills are something very basic about me that I can't change very much would you strongly agree with that agree disagree or strongly disagree I'm not gonna have you share out just want you to self-reflect and I am a certain kind
016of person and there isn't really much that I can do to change that the latter one speaks to more like what persons would call personality traits and funny I'm artistic I'm good at math so the degree to which we strongly agree with those is the degree to which today our mindset is more fixed there's a bajillion quizzes online free that go deeper into this but they pretty much ask questions about two things intelligence and skills personality traits how do you think your kids would respond think about the different ages of your kiddos and if you were to pose that question today where are they at I'll fix today in thinking of those two I do have a favorite quiz because it's not so repetitive I'm happy to share the resources afterwards really like this one
017because it teases out the difference between where kids might be on a continuum for different traits so happy to get it I have a resource list that I'm happy to share with you but do you want to say that's a free one online it's not copyrighted and I'm happy to show that as a resource afterwards one of the things we shared with your teachers is that whether or not or what their mindset is about whether or not they can make a difference with kids tends to make a real difference and impact kids learning so we asked your teachers my students intelligence and skills are something very basic that they can't change very much and regardless of the circumstances of the kids we serve I can make a significant difference in their success and well-being this
018is super important because our parents can impact this as well again I'm a teaching and learning person been running around helping teachers and lead perfect the craft of how we serve kids for a long time the number one factor attributed to correlate to student learning is whether or not a teacher has the efficacy to believe he or she can get it done if teachers believe we can get it done that is the highest correlation to whether or not our kids will have learning gains that's overwhelming for me for a person that has been running around helping teachers improve their craft and we know that matters too but what we believe about our kids and ourselves matters more I think there's a direct extension with our parents to worried about our profession right now and we
019know we have a teacher shortage here teachers are working awfully hard and anytime I get to talk to parents I like to invite them to think about how we support our teachers and wellness and taking care of them so they can continue to take care of our kids in ways that are gonna make the biggest difference okay so there's two mindsets the fixed mindset and the growth mindset and the growth mindset leads to a desire to learn because we believe intelligence can be developed we are not born with the fixed amount of intelligence it's interesting when Dweck did research with two groups of kids with no other controlling for as many variables as possible when they taught kids about growth mindsets versus the other group that they didn't they outperform their peer group just by
020learning that their mother intelligent wasn't fixed we can't control for everything but that's pretty interesting from her early research like I said it's all on a continuum for all of these things they're they're kind of correlated characteristics of a fixed mindset tend to believe intelligence and talent are fixed in growth we believe that they can be developed character said the fixed believes effort is fruitless isn't gonna matter how hard I try character is another growth and remember these can all be developed believes effort is the path mastery it matters repetition matters think about your own kids or your in your own experience where it didn't matter characters have fixed beliefs failures define who we are in a growth mindset view failure as temporary fixed mindsets tend to hide flaws characteristic characteristics of growth believes mistakes
021are part of learning it's interesting we talked about this with your teachers on in pre-service too the one thing that we know separates our country from other countries is that because we tend to be kind and supportive and and super well intentioned we give help faster in the classroom than any other country around the globe and what that does over time with the best of intentions is our students start to think there's a right answer they start to get nervous about getting things wrong they get frustrated more quickly and it actually supports the development of a fixed mindset that productive struck struggle and allowing kids step two to let kids know that we're gonna allow them to productively productively struggle super important in their classrooms characteristics of fix tend to avoid challenges have a growth
022embrace challenge same thing when researchers study our kids with kids across the country or across the globe when we put different learning tasks out on tables in our country our kids tend to go to the ones that they know they're going to be able to do in other countries kiddos will go tackle ones that might challenge them they're conditioned to try to reach for a higher bar it's really big interesting I think for parents to think about - and what that looks like in our own homes as well characteristics have fixed we intend to ignore feedback growth persons have a growth mindset welcomed it and use it to change we view feedback as personally critically if we're more fixed we improve and grow and sometimes we feel threatened by other people's success if we have
023a fixed mindset versus if we have a growth mindset we can view other's success as inspirational just take a look at that think about where you're at with that well your kiddos might be out with that remember the intentionality about how we can move and grow quickly significant to the conversation of mindset so how do we teach it to our kiddos depending on that how old your kiddos are in most online curriculums if you google search the free ones or even in some of the the ones that we've the site districts or sites pay for Angela Duckworth is still coming up as interesting and a valuable resource to teach kids about grit she went one step further from Dweck's work study people that were successful in the military and she determined or coined this word
024grit in her definition grit means to persevere she made it clear that grit is a behavior that happens only if you have a growth mindset so she took Dweck's worth where resilience is still defined as being optimistic to do so and went one step further saying grits can be the drive that allows you to persevere what's interesting her research is champion all over the place people are buying curriculums it's actually become a test at some schools where persons take a grit self-assessment and admissions places look at that to determine who might be most successful it's an absolute counter intuitive way to apply grit because we know it can be developed but it's fascinating that the research has kind of gone that way for certain places people actually get a great grade on a report card
025in places across our country there's a spaceport on the report card the second great solid resource that talks about mindset in references Dweck's work is eduardo Briceno he very much coins this I can't do it just ad yet it's a simple thing with our kids to teach if we can't do something just add the the key word yet and we support work towards it moving forward this is on the resource page again to share but just two quick little videos they're short they're pretty impactful lots of high school kids have seen them but they're a great resource to be showing with upper elementary and middle school as well okay so what's going on we know mindset super important we know we've been talking about it for 30 years so why is it that we're not
026seeing resilient kids popping up it's complicated it's not gonna be simple three stakeholder groups are teaching us kind about what we might want to be thinking about and learning from in terms of if you want to get better at this back up just one slide wanted to make sure there's a couple buzzwords and education rigor being one of them we all think that we have it everybody thinks they have a common common understanding what it looks like and the reality is we all think very differently about it same thing with mindset it's been very very misunderstood so we're gonna listen to and pay attention to what teachers are telling us we might be able to do a little bit better about what researchers are telling us we might be able do a little bit better
027and the third one that I would argue is the most important is what the current context that's happening right now that we might be wanting to pay attention to if we want to get better at supporting and developing our resilient kiddos so teachers are saying we know it works ninety-eight percent of our teachers said they know that when they see kids exhibiting a growth mindset it makes the difference twenty percent of teachers said I think I'm good at it or I have the resources I need eighty five percent said they want to learn more about this I think a huge part of this is just having a conversation with the principal yesterday who said we're all in our school is all in social-emotional learning and we are constantly talking about in developing the whole child
028but at the end of day if we don't have a partnership with the home I'm not I'm not sure we're gonna make it I'm not sure we're gonna get as far and move the needle as much as we want to so the partnership I think with the parents is really important equally important researchers agree with teachers saying whoops we might have missed that at the implementation starting thirty years ago when we started talking about growth mindset hasn't been very good what we know that we're we missed up those educators is we worked really hard to teach the concept well to our kids in isolation we put up posters we talked about growth versus fixed mindset and the difference that could make in a kid but we didn't necessarily always look at the practices of our
029schools or our classrooms to see if they supported that nor is adults in the classroom did we get transparent about our own and kids have called us out on that saying you know what you've been talking about that but if I'm not seeing that modeled and the vulnerability in that in a classroom or even from our parent group kids are actually moving and saying that they they kind of check gave up on that and move over to the fixed mindset growth mindset got reduced to simply praising efforts and it's more than that we know understanding what's going on with our kids and not just learning the difference between the two mindsets it's gonna take more than that our kids also said we're struggling with when teachers or parents just say just keep trying harder just
030keep trying harder that can position them as not adopting or wanting to adopt a growth mindset too I think additional research has talked us about if we're only praising kids when they succeed about their effort we we might be miss stepping there too we can learn from that if we're thinking about how we celebrate and appraise their efforts and their strategies even if they're not successful that's healthy as well again on the resource page one of my favorite little videos I found this summer is this little soccer coach who was coaching four-year-olds and he watched the enthusiasm of his four-year-olds come into the game not sure that they loved the game but they sure loved being together he talked about having a dandelion picker and a hugger and they were just all out loving the
031opportunity to be on the field together until he started to watch during the game the enthusiasm at its peak involve the goalie upon a breakaway picking up the goal and rather than moving it over to the side to make sure that the kids didn't score moved it over so they did because he was so helping the other team and so he watched all this enthusiasm and how excited the kids were playing and then he watched the kids emotions change and their love of the game change and they're even liking of being out on the field change based on where the attention was coming from parents so if kids kicked it hard in a long ways and there was a lot of that going on of course it's a part of the game of soccer that
032we're gonna clap for and cheer to teach the game but he watched in a series of one game in the course of one game four-year-olds come off crying didn't want to play anymore because they weren't getting cheered for for their efforts only some kids were and only some behaviors were it's it fascinating it's fascinating to think about again in the resource page I'm happy to share with you ok but most important people that are rethinking mindset are taking a look at what we found to be significant amongst kids the four factors found affect ongoing resilience ingridt students tend to believe about themselves they set goals either with support or on their own their feelings they have strong feelings about their social connectedness and they can self-regulate in the earlier research we saw this so I'm
033just gonna have you pause and think for a minute which of those do you see affecting on our kids most positively today and which one of those might you be most worried about I'm just gonna have you think on that first a few seconds how many said that one is the one that you're most concerned about the third one students feeling about their social connectedness is um the biggest change we've seen in the last decade for sure 68% of the gens ears indicate they feel like nobody really knows them well we talked about that earlier what we know about getting them connected in-person gatherings are crucial for reducing that loneliness and yet young people's preference for face-to-face communication has decreased substantially over the past six years participation in prom alone the needle is moved this
034I think is the most interesting dichotomy of our kids self reporting they're saying you know what I don't need to spend time face-to-face I'm feeling lonely don't want to go to something that might require that face-to-face that interaction I think this is significant for us to be thinking about in terms of parents and educators and the kids that we serve I just this weekend tucked my um youngest in to you know murder University of Minnesota was overwhelmingly happy to see an apartment situation where so much of it was common ground tons of common ground where peeps go out and share living space even though it's an apartment like thing rooftops grills study places to get kids out of their apartments and in the common areas as an intentional effort to do so so who are
035these i Jenner's they are born between 1995 and 2012 how many have a 1995 to 2012 kiddo the bulk of us let's see if this resonates with you they're also known as Generation Z or post Millennials most grew up with a smartphone had an Instagram account before they started high school and don't remember a time before the Internet pretty interesting right if you've not been in the common sense media how many have ever been to common sense media it is a fantastic free source I think it does a really good job of balancing research it's not inflammatory it doesn't tell you exactly what to do with your kids it gives a kind of a balanced approach saying here's what our kids are saying here's what research is saying here's some resources and tools to help
036you and it's all free so over the big overarching question because we know context is significant over the last decade is all right how much is social media playing in this whole development or disruption of resiliency other persons in the parent series we'll talk more about that but the end of the day it's both it depends on the kid depends on the researcher it depends on what kids are engaged in beyond social media for sure it's very complex it's a hard time to be a parent or educator because there's a lot of conflicting research out there we know we kind of got it wrong the needle move pretty solid like we're gonna be all in digital everything schools went that way we have online textbooks we had all kinds of we're all in and then
037the needle kind of went all the way back to say oh my gosh look what we've done look what we're doing to our kids and now I feel like the needles kind of in the middle and we're acknowledging it depends on the kid oh we do know there's a positive correlation between the use of digital media and mental health problems especially if we get up to over set the better part of seven hours a day where we're spending it that much time on that that seems to be the magic number okay so what are new people telling us we might want to be thinking about in terms of mindset and resiliency how many of heard of brené Brown she's my new fave she's doing an awful lot to expand on previous research on resiliency mindset
038and kids and adults she's not just about kids number one thing that resilient people have in common you think she's gonna say that in her research a tolerance for discomfort so when you think about your kids right now and to what degree are your kiddos comfortable with being uncomfortable because I can tell you my youngest isn't he has created he's used the word cringe as a noun verb adjective everything he walks the room and sees something he's like that's cringe that's to cringe that would be cringe this is cringe it's all about the cringe so we talked a lot about this all right where's that coming from and how do we get more comfortable and being able to tolerate that discomfort Renee says these are the most common factors of resilient people they're resourceful and
039have good problem-solving skills I think one of the most important things we can do as parents is think about how do we teach our kids what does it look like to allow them to practice solving problems in our home beyond academics they're more likely to seek help which goes back to the question that was posed earlier it's a really good thing they hold the belief they can do something that will help them manage their feelings and cope they have social supports available to them and they're connected with others family or friends when you think about that and think about as a parent which one of those you have the most influence to support if you're not familiar with Brunei she's kind of gone mainstream beyond her TED talks she has one of the top three
040most viewed TED talks in the world she's got a host of books but she's recently just on Netflix it's about an hour long that's pretty good too it's great for us as parents as educators there's pieces of that but depending on older kiddo is might be relevant as well highly recommend er okay so we're gonna jump into the five strategies to foster resilience in our kiddos first one researchers are saying is to recognize that we all have one affixed in a growth mindset about different things and to get familiar with our own so I'm gonna have you reflect for just a minute not gonna ask you to be sharing this out cuz it's personal but in terms of our own mindsets where or in what situation they be taking a risk embrace the challenge admitted
041a mistake or welcome feedback or where might that be a good opportunity for you to do so and I would ask do your kids know about it the one thing our kids are telling us is they learn best about resilience when they have an adult that talks about not just that they should get it done or that they need to do this but that shares their own stories maybe where something didn't work very well and this is what we did to get through it or maybe it was something that did work pretty well and this is what we did to prepare for it but how is sharing our own experiences about how we overcome challenges well what we can over do do to overcome something now resonates with our kids significantly second one share the
042neuroscience behind the value of the growth mindset with our kids that's interesting because neuroscience does just know people didn't just think it up it's rooted in science there are brain scans brings change when we practice having a growth mindset and learning new things letting our kids see what that looks like there's all kinds of little videos that allow for that to resonate with our kiddos the good news is it doesn't ever stop so for those of us that are aging well it might not go as quickly as we'd like it to we can always continue to remap our brains in such a way third one identify fixing growth mindset language and respond when we hear fixed mindset language our teachers tend to be pretty good at this part if they're focusing on a mindset so
043I'm gonna have us practice that just for a minute if you hear your kiddo saying one of those things what might you say to redirect or respond I'm gonna give you a good minute half to do that by yourself or with the shoulder partner behind you or beside you pick a couple how could what might you say to redirect that fixed mindset language it's no right or wrong answer but I'm gonna give you a minute to take a look that - did you say something like that I'm gonna thought you two take it one step further so well this is what I can what we can use to disrupt and we here fixed mindset their own kiddos are in our classrooms if we're gonna go one step further what do you say if your kid
044oh no what might you say to your kids that really worked hard and when they really work hard cuz it happens to all of us and they didn't do well so beyond disrupting the fixed mindset language our feedback very much can help support a positive growth mindset what we say in those settings so I'm just gonna have you think about that and I'm gonna give you a three my face stolen from other people what part of the process taught you the most I know I didn't go as well as maybe you wanted it to what actions can you take to get there my favorite of the three anything worth doing often doesn't come easily what support do you need so that you can be successful I'm here to help I'm here to help okay fourth
045strategy to foster resilience creating a culture of belonging getting kids connected to other kids and our kids connected to adults I think as parents this one is overwhelmingly huge we notice a big change in my life I've disrupted in a in a divorce the better part of 10 years ago and the change to the context of how quickly I could get my kid back into the same kind of connections we had with families pretty huge still talked about it with my little yet today so when you think about that what is it that we do or what can we do to get kids connected to other kids and adults because we have a lot of control over that as parents no right or wrong answers but I did that I was talking with a friend
046the other day and the way that they get connected around their dinner table resonated with me sometimes I think the intentionality behind the questions we posed at the dinner table might afford us them some of the biggest space to be connecting with our kids and my friend shared that he and his boys do highlights and bummers every single meal so a highlight or a bummer and a detail and then each kid has to they've just been doing it for so long it's a habit or a routine they pose a question about somebody's highlight or bummer so not only are they connecting in such a way that's a habit I think it's also interesting that they allowed space for the bun so it's not always just about everything that's going well and allowed space for them
047to be sharing feedback and an offering support not too and finally I'm going to show the bus video - in part I'm not showing videos because this is being live-streamed and if I show a baby then they have to edit it out because that's a copywriting fraction so it's okay for me to have the links there and I can't post them as a part of this or that's a snafu so that's why I'm happy to share the resources with you but we're not showing them here why number five create a safe space for our kids to take risks to solve problems and to navigate conflict and allow space for them to practice this one's generating quite a bit of tension I would say maybe in the last six months to a year thinking about alright
048so if our kids are having an issue at school certainly we want to support them but how have we allowed them to navigate that on their own first did they go talk to their teacher first if that's where the issue resonated with has they tried to connect with that kid and work it out with the kid and resolve it with a kid I know in my own parenting I stepped in way too quickly the better part of a decade best of intentions trying to support my kids but talk all the time about this with my kids now so just stepping back enough to pose the question because a lot of times when a kid comes to us they want us to help them they want some support they want advice that whatever but to pause
049and do that one question what do you think you should do you think would be best here before we offer our own sage advice and years of experience there so I want to think about that for a minute what does that look like to create a space in a home where kids know and some of you likely have it going on all the time where kids feel it's like it's too safe to take a risk to solve a problem or to navigate their own conflict I think it's interesting to think about the degree or the line of which we decide to enter because it's something our kiddo can't likely handle on their own in a way that they're gonna be able to be successful if something got too big and finally the last one is
050to carry like crazy I don't think we can love them up too much I do think it's interesting to be thinking about what researchers and esteemed parents and colleagues that have are being successful in developing resilience kids are telling us find that balance keralite crazy but allow our kids to be empowered at the same time walk in that balance so with that I'm gonna open it up to a little invite you to think about instead of concern if we were going to create the conditions collectively together what would we hope the narrative or how adults would respond to this look like instead of concern not a right answer anybody want a popcorn went out I'm gonna have to have you say that louder pride confidence anybody else action resilience not a wrong answer actually like
051all those better than just the one that I had tossed up there hope what might be intent what what we be more intentional about as parents if we're gonna generate that within our own families and beyond what does it look like to make that kind of collective impact in a community I know some fantastic families that their home is a community for other kids they have this going on open doors kids are collecting all the time it's a safe place kids feel empowered there for those of you do that kind of thing huge gratitude for making a difference to kids but just takes one little start I do think it resonates with me big again being the teaching-learning supporter we talked a little bit about this before that we know that the biggest factor for
052kids and learning is whether or not teachers think that they can get it done I would argue the biggest factor in whether or not we're gonna be making an impact creating more resilient kids why than whether or not we think we can get it done and the collective efforts we take and actions we take as a community to do so so with that I'm going to wrap up and thank you for being here and I do want to take questions at the end embedded some time for that happy to try to respond to some of those large group if you have some or I'm happy to stick around afterwards and respond to any you might have in a one-to-one setting as well anybody have a big question they'd like to pose big yes I actually
053appreciate you bringing that up and I don't want to put your super intent on the spot but I don't know if you have a curriculum here across the district or at grade levels would you want to respond to that did you hear the question I would help repeat the question I think as I captured it you were posing the question about some of the classrooms or teachers have some growth mindset materials that they're using that involves some sort of interactive journal or journaling responses that actually go home to the parents to involve the parents as well and so big picture my question is do we have some sort of social-emotional curriculum or mind set expectations so that's pervasive or is that just happening at the classroom level so the specifics in terms of the journal
054but a be right there director student services um we redefined her job role in terms of what she along with the social workers and along with teaching and our educational services is doing what we're trying to emphasize is a lot of the strategies that we've been doing with teachers for so long connect with the social-emotional learning the Kagan strategies where there's cooperative groups the ability to think pair share the ability to connect and have that opportunity to move what we're trying to do is we're trying to connect those dots to these teachers to help them understand all of that is part of the social-emotional learning as well so Abby are you in the position to let us know exactly what we are looking at and in what direction we're going one of the things that
055you guys might be seeing your kids may be coming home talking about 5 radical minutes it is a program that really starts to open up those dialogues about connections and relationships and helping kids find to connect with their peers with our teachers and be able to also find safe spaces in their schools the other thing that we are piloting is mindfulness so at some of the schools you may be aware that they're doing mindfulness projects and activities mindfulness is also part of the five radical minutes and so within the five radical minutes there is some journaling and there's some opportunities to make those connections but do we actually have something yet no but that's some great feedback for me to be able to work with the social workers but that's pretty much where we are
056right now but we are continuing to evaluate and look at what else we need to do to support our students as well as our staff our governing board is very committed to the social-emotional learning of our students as a matter of fact a collective design team has just revised our vision and our mission statements along with creating our values and behavior statements and if you think that part of our mission statement includes academic social and emotional growth it's not separating those three it's connecting those three and as you've heard tonight from dr. Benson to have a strong social emotional connectedness helps with the learning they don't they're not separated but they're integrated it's just trying to connect those dots so when you see part of the classroom time spent regarding 5 radical minutes or mindfulness
057it is being able to support the student's academic achievements here's the struggle that schools have we are in a public education system that places such an emphasis on letter grades and the pressure that teachers have held to contribute to their school being an a has been enormous I have a teacher Advisory Council one from each school and the one thing they mentioned to me last week was they finally feel as though they have permission to be human and I think that's big what I ask of our parents is to understand that that academics are important but it can't be separated from the social-emotional growth but the humanists from the connectedness that needs to take place so that our students can be lifelong learners and succeed I appreciate the question and the responses thank you district
058personnel for jumping in on the mindset org free resources there's actually a parent place to do like journaling and things like that to free parent resources so regardless of what's happening in the classrooms well we can be having that kind of dialogue with kids too it's all free I like that one a lot yeah and again it applauded the intentionality of the district to be paying attention to social emotional learning it's interesting State Board of Ed you know meeting on Monday it proved the timeline for they moved up the timeline so in the better part of a couple weeks schools can apply for the extra twenty million dollars a chunk of the twenty million dollars to add counselors SROs that kind of thing too because we're recognizing we need more support for the social-emotional pieces
059across our state for sure yes so not aware of research that situates just mindset with class size but we have tons of research on class size so our teachers will tell us qualitatively that is a whole lot easier to get it done but the less kids that they have in their classroom but we also know that with practice and with strategies we can get it done with bigger groups of kids - the correlation between student learning and larger class size and while it seems like it would be easy to make it's not successful teachers can get it done with a lot of kids in the room very happy to see engagement be also something that your district has take a look at not only is it good for learning the ways that we can connect
060in cooperative learning super good for a kid face-to-face interaction and that's a way to structure classrooms that might be a little bit bigger to make sure kids are responding to each other and teachers can rotate more and circulate and talk to kids that way to appreciate the example of the journal - it's a great way I've got you know more kiddos if I'm a teacher I can connect with my kids one on one if I'm responding to it that way as well it's great it's a great question any other big-picture questions uh-huh and I appreciate that perspective huge because that's talking about the whole child and not just the letter grades that land on report card I'm cautious about like grading for grit but I love that so many of our teachers know our kids
061well enough the ink conferencing with parents tend to bring that kind of thing up and that's really important for us you know to know as parents where our kids might be landing if they're struggling in a classroom and we're not seeing it we need to know so we can respond differently or better I think the comprehensive measures beyond the ADA Athleta grade that was mentioned by your superintendent or just the academics measures beyond that reporting measures beyond that certainly warrant our attention to give parents a whole perspective of what's going on out there kids anybody else you mindful of the on-time departure so you can get back out to the 114 degree heat again thank you for carving out time to spend part of a Wednesday evening with me super grateful that you're here applaud
062you for making an intentional effort to be thinking about your kids and how you support them as parents so thank you very much I'll stick around for individual questions afterwards yes