Most U.S. Teens See Anxiety and Depression as a Major Problem Among Their Peers

Pew Trust shares an article about how teens are stressed.  (link)

Here's the beginning of the article:

"Anxiety and depression are on the rise among America’s youth and, whether they personally suffer from these conditions or not, seven-in-ten teens today see them as major problems among their peers. Concern about mental health cuts across gender, racial and socio-economic lines, with roughly equal shares of teens across demographic groups saying it is a significant issue in their community.

"Fewer teens, though still substantial shares, voice concern over bullying, drug addiction and alcohol consumption. More than four-in-ten say these are major problems affecting people their age in the area where they live, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17.

"When it comes to the pressures teens face, academics tops the list: 61% of teens say they feel a lot of pressure to get good grades. By comparison, about three-in-ten say they feel a lot of pressure to look good (29%) and to fit in socially (28%), while roughly one-in-five feel similarly pressured to be involved in extracurricular activities and to be good at sports (21% each). And while about half of teens see drug addiction and alcohol consumption as major problems among people their age, fewer than one-in-ten say they personally feel a lot of pressure to use drugs (4%) or to drink alcohol (6%).

Research on Writing Instruction: self expression and interaction with peers key

There’s not a lot of quality research on good writing, but a recent report summarized the finding of 14 high-quality studies.  Here’s an article about the research and here’s one really interesting finding (my underline): 

Beyond a well-structured writing course, Slavin and his colleagues noted that in these studies of writing, the classes were “exciting, social and noisy.”

“Motivation seems to be the key,” Slavin and his colleagues wrote. “If students love to write, because their peers as well as their teachers are eager to see what they have to say, then they will write with energy and pleasure. Perhaps more than any other subject, writing demands a supportive environment, in which students want to become better writers because they love the opportunity to express themselves, and to interact in writing with valued peers and teachers.”

Encourage Your Employees to Share What They Know

Harvard Business Review  “Why Withholding Information at Work Won’t Give You an Advantage,” by Zhou (Joe) Jiang 

Many of us hide what we know at work because we don’t want to lose the power or status that we think the piece of knowledge gives us. But recent research shows that hoarding information often backfires and can negatively impact the withholder’s growth and development. As a manager, it’s your job to create a culture in which your employees feel comfortable sharing information and speaking openly about their concerns. One way to figure out why your staff is holding back information is to use third-party, anonymous surveys. Then act on this feedback to gain back their trust. And make sure the people you manage understand the consequences of knowledge-hiding. Those who are keeping information in order to protect themselves may not understand that they are actually doing the opposite. Use trainings, newsletters, bulletin boards, and other communication channels to help employees understand why sharing knowledge with your teammates is important.

Grades Versus Comments: Research on Student Feedback

The most recent Marshall Memo has this short piece about grading and learning.  I thought you’d find it interesting.  I thought that the focus on WHY we would give grades and/or comments was refreshing!

Thomas Guskey on Grades and Comments

            “Are comments on student work superior to grades?” asks assessment guru Thomas Guskey (University of Louisville/University of Kentucky) in this article in Phi Delta Kappan. “It depends… The research on this issue is far more complicated and more highly nuanced than most writers acknowledge.” Guskey cites several studies that provide helpful guidance for K-12 educators.

            • A 1958 study by psychologist Ellis Page – Secondary-school teachers gave numerical scores on their students’ assessments and then converted the scores into A, B, C, D, F grades. Three randomly-selected groups of students then got their papers back with:

-    Numerical and letter grades only;

-    Numerical, letter grades, and standard comments for each grade:  A: Excellent! Keep it up.  B: Good work. Keep at it.  C: Perhaps try to do still better?  D: Let’s bring this up. and F: Let’s raise this grade!

-    Numerical score, letter grade, and individual comments based on each teacher’s personal reactions and instructional priorities.

Page compared the impact of these three approaches by looking at how students did on their very next assessment. Here’s what he found: students in the first group did no better; students in the second group did significantly better than those in the first; and students in the third group did better still. The conclusion (which has been confirmed by subsequent studies): grades are helpful only if they’re accompanied by teachers’ comments.

            What’s striking about this study is that the standard, boilerplate comments given to the second group of students had such a positive impact. The comments involved very little work for teachers, but made almost as much difference as the much more time-consuming individualized comments given to the third group of students. Guskey believes a little-recognized insight from Page’s study is the nature of the standard comments. First, each of these seemingly robotic comments communicated the teacher’s high expectations and the importance of students’ continued effort. Second, all the comments made clear that the teacher was on students’ side and willing to partner with them to improve. Instead of saying You must raise this grade, the comment was Let’s raise this grade! – conveying, I’m with you in this, we can do it! In other words, says Guskey, “The message teachers communicate in their comments may be what matters most.”

            • Benjamin Bloom’s mastery learning – In the late 1960s and 1970s, Bloom promoted the idea that on formative assessments, students should receive a grade of Mastery or Not Mastery. Bloom defined Mastery as the clearly described level of performance that teachers believe would deserve an A, which then becomes the standard of mastery for all students. Students scoring below Mastery on formative assessments are in a temporary state, not there yet, and should receive diagnostic and prescriptive instruction from the teacher and additional chances to demonstrate mastery. Bloom believed that with sufficient time and skillful corrective instruction, 95 percent of students can achieve Mastery. In short, Bloom believed in comments to guide under-par performance to mastery grades, guided by clear expectations up front.

            • Ruth Butler’s 1988 study – Fifth and sixth graders took a test and were then divided into three groups, each receiving a different type of feedback:

-    Grades from 40 to 99 based on students’ relative standing in the class (norm-referenced or competitive grades);

-    Individual comments on students’ performance on the objective (criterion-referenced or task-focused);

-    Both competitive grades and task-oriented individual comments.

The study found that students in the second group did best, indicating that competitive grading is not an effective practice, and task-focused comments can boost learning by giving students specific information on their performance and suggestions for improvement. What’s interesting is that the competitive-grades approach benefited high-performing students, maintaining their interest and motivation, while undermining the interest and motivation of low-performing students.

            Guskey adds that the nature of the comments is the key factor. In Butler’s study, they were task-oriented and instructionally helpful. Additional research by John Hattie and Helen Timperley reinforces the idea that it’s the quality, nature, and content of teachers’ comments that make a difference.

            • Guskey’s conclusions – First, he says, grades – whether they are letters, numbers, symbols, words, or phrases – are not inherently good or bad: “They are simply labels attached to different levels of student performance that describe in an abbreviated fashion how well students performed.”

            Second, grades should always be based on learning criteria that the teacher has clearly spelled out. Grades that compare students to their peers do not move learning forward. In fact, says Guskey, “Such competition is detrimental to relationships between students and has profound negative effects on the motivation of low-ranked students, as the results from the Butler (1988) study clearly show.”

            Third, assessments must be well-designed, meaningful, and authentic, and grades should reliably and accurately measure the learning goals and provide useful information to guide teachers and students to improve learning.

            Fourth, grades by themselves are not helpful. “Grades help enhance achievement and foster learning progress,” says Guskey, “only when they are paired with individualized comments that offer guidance and direction for improvement.” And of course those comments must be followed up with time and support for students to improve their work.

            Fifth, students and families must understand that grades don’t reflect who students are, but their temporary location on the learning journey. “Knowing where you are is essential to understanding where you need to go in order to improve,” says Guskey. This metacognitive awareness also makes students better judges of their own work and increasingly self-sufficient as learners.

            Finally, Guskey sums up the collective wisdom of researchers, especially Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues, on effective comments on students’ tests, essays, products, performances, or demonstrations:

-    Always begin with what the student did well, recognizing accomplishments or progress.

-    Identify the areas that need improvement.

-    Offer specific guidance on steps the student needs to take to meet the learning criteria.

-    Communicate confidence in the student’s ability to achieve at the highest level.

“Grades Versus Comments: Research on Student Feedback” by Thomas Guskey in Phi Delta Kappan, November 2019 (Vol. 101, #3, pp. 42-47), available at https://bit.ly/2P3DSnW for PDK members, or for purchase; Guskey can be reached at guskey@uky.edu.

Set Aside Time for Important Projects

adapted from Harvard Business Review"Getting Your Team to Do More Than Meet Deadlines"  link

When it comes to our to-do lists, many of us prioritize checking off tasks that are easiest to complete or are due first, regardless of importance. The result? Some important tasks never get done. Managers can help employees by having them set aside proactive time for work that is important but not urgent. Ask them to block time on their calendar each week. For these periods to be effective, they must be distraction-free: Shut off email, Slack, and your phone. While it might be tempting to answer a quick request from a client, this sense of being “always on” negatively affects productivity. Managers might even consider blocking off this time on employees’ calendars themselves. Survey your team to gauge interest, or try a six-week experiment to learn how much time you should block off, or which days work best. Sure, employees could do this for themselves, but having a manager make clear that proactive time is important sets the expectation for focused work and prevents critical projects from falling through the cracks.

From Marshall Memo 816

Troubling Data on Youth Suicide

            In her New York Times Personal Health column, Jane Brody cites statistics on the increase in suicides and suicide attempts among young people. From 2007 to 2017, the suicide rate among 10-to-24-year-olds increased by 56 percent, making it the second-leading cause of death in this age group (after accidents). Suicide attempts have quadrupled over the last six years, a statistic that is probably an undercount. “We’re in the middle of a full-blown mental health crisis for adolescents and young adults,” says psychologist/author Jean Twenge (San Diego State University). “The evidence is strong and consistent both for symptoms and behavior.”

Because of the shame generally associated with suicide, families often shroud the issue in secrecy, and there isn’t the kind of national mobilization that would normally accompany this kind of data spike. “We invest heavily in crisis care,” says John Ackerman, a suicide prevention expert at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, “which is the most expensive and least effective means of preventing suicide.” The key, he says, is identifying vulnerable youth as early as elementary school, helping them cope with stress, and teaching them what to do if they have a crisis. This can be as simple as regularly checking in on young people’s emotional status. “It’s not putting ideas in their heads to ask directly whether they’ve had thoughts of suicide or dying,” says Ackerman. “That doesn’t increase their risk. Rather, it’s relieving. You actually reduce the risk if you help kids talk through these difficult issues.”

What is causing the increase in suicidal ideation, attempts, and deaths? Experts point to several factors:

• Social media and communication patterns – “Kids never disconnect,” says Henry Spiller, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center. “They go to bed with their smartphones. It may be cyberbullying. It may be envy.” Twenge agrees: “There’s less face-to-face time spent with friends. It’s now the norm to sit home Saturday night on Instagram. Who’s popular and who’s not is now quantifiable by how many people are following you… There’s a lot of negativity, competition, and jockeying for status…”

• School-based interactions – Suicide data for young people track the academic year – September to December, January to May – which is not true of adults. This suggests that negative social interactions in and around school are the areas that educators, families, and health care professionals have to monitor.

• Sleep – Teens’ quantity and quality of sleep can affected by going to bed late and night-time social media activity. “The brain can’t slow down and relax,” says Twenge. Kids shouldn’t look at the blue light of their devices less than an hour before bedtime. Parents can set limits, such as setting their kids’ phones to shut down at 9: 00 p.m.

• Information and means – Kids with smartphones have unfiltered access to Internet sites that tell them how to harm themselves. And some homes give young people unguarded access to firearms and potentially lethal medications and other substances.

• Sometimes a perfect storm – School, social, and family problems can converge to create a crisis. “Ultimately,” says Ackerman, “it’s a combination of economic, social, and technological factors that come together along with family and school issues, and kids are less equipped to tackle these problems.”

“Time to Sound the Alarm Over Youth Suicide” by Jane Brody in The New York Times, December 3, 2019, https://nyti.ms/2Po5dCF

Supporting Kids Asking "Big Questions"

From Marshall Memo

Questioning, the Most Basic Teaching Tool

            In this article in Phi Delta Kappan, Anne Bruder (Berea College) remembers that her fifth-grade teacher in northern Michigan thought she was trouble. Young Anne asked way too many questions: Why was Lansing the state capital? How and why had the region’s Chippewa Indians vanished? Why did all fractions need to be reduced to their lowest terms? What really caused the Challenger explosion? And why were boys allowed to violently pelt girls during dodgeball?

“In my youthful taxonomy of questions,” says Bruder, “I’d hopscotch between the factual and the philosophical, from the instrumental to the open-ended; all felt urgent to me and, I suspect, disruptive to her… I suspect she saw me as taking up too much space in the room or as being, quite simply, annoying… She glared at me sideways through her thick acrylic glasses. Her nude nylons squeaked as she passed by my desk, ignoring, as always, my incessantly raised hand.”

The teacher tried moving Bruder to the back of the room, then to the front, and finally sent her to the school’s social worker, who got pelted with more of Anne’s questions: Where was she from? Did she have kids? How did she feel about Ronald Reagan? Did she listen to Madonna? Wasn’t the teacher being unreasonable? Bruder liked the social worker, and they ended up agreeing on a behavior modification contract: If Bruder managed to limit her questions to five a day and kept that up for a whole week, she could spend an hour helping out in a kindergarten class. If she went over the limit, she’d go to the principal’s office.

Bruder loved working with little kids, posing questions that aroused their curiosity and got their little hands waving in the air. Back in the fifth-grade classroom, she accepted the limits. “When my teacher begrudgingly gave me permission to ask one of my five measly questions,” she says, “I’d concentrate and condense the chain of 12 interconnected curiosities spinning through my mind down to one meaty layered query. My ‘may I ask you a question?’ soon became my shorthand for ‘may I have some space to wonder about these things that fascinate me?’” If the teacher was in a good mood, this sometimes opened up new learning for everyone in the room.

The contract worked, but it left Bruder with what she calls a “lingering verbal tic” – feeling she had to ask permission to ask a question. Finally, in college, a professor said to her, “Your questions are keen, important. Keep asking them. Ask even more. But stop asking for permission from me or anyone else.” This was terrifically liberating, says Bruder. Finally she was released from “the anxious tic of a 10-year-old with a tiny budget for her curiosity.” This class and others in college and graduate school came to resemble Socratic dialogues: “I began to see myself as someone with a keen voice in the classroom, someone with agency and ability to determine how I might use this question superpower to understand my world more fully.”

Bruder went on to become a college English professor, and she knows that the questions with straightforward answers that she used to spend hours researching in the library, her students can now Google in seconds. But the Internet doesn’t answer the kinds of questions she dreamed up as a 10-year-old, and those are the ones she wants her college students to grapple with: How did it feel to be a girl in America at various points over the last 200 years? What happens to a democracy when radical ideas take center stage? Why should we still care about a sermon Ralph Waldo Emerson gave in 1838? Students come to her office asking lower-level questions that can be answered by Google, but don’t ask enough of the kinds of questions that require engaging deeply with books, footnotes – and of course thoughtful classroom discussions.

“I’ve come to see that for my students, asking the more unwieldy questions takes confidence and humility,” says Bruder, “both of which my teaching must nurture. My students need to be bold enough to voice an inchoate or controversial speculation that might, in the end, fizzle out – or prove explosive. To do so, they must trust me enough to know that I’ll help them when their questions get tangled. They need to know that I won’t leave them hanging and that I’ll use my own questioning tone to reflect back to them what I think they’re trying to ask. And they need to believe, in some unshakable way, that my classroom is a hospitable place for their messiest queries.” Since many of her students are the first in their families to go to college, this sense of safety and belonging is especially important. She wants them to feel okay asking the kinds of questions she was discouraged from asking in fifth grade.

When Bruder says to one of her college students, “May I ask you a question?” it has an entirely new meaning than when she spoke those words as a 10-year-old and as a 20-year-old. “Now, directed to my student, it tells her: ‘I see you. I recognize you as a full participant in our work together. I acknowledge that you are capable of seeing and knowing something new and exciting. I want to hear what you think. Come and think alongside me, alongside all of us in the room.’ Each time I ask for my students’ permission, I’m reminded of the power and the magic of our most basic teaching tool to forge connections and help us all move into the unknown together.”

“May I Ask You a Question?” by Anne Bruder in Phi Delta Kappan, December 2019/January 2020 (Vol. 101, #4, pp. 57-60), https://bit.ly/34kJM9W; Bruder is at brudera@berea.edu.