When we speak about awakening impact, we speak of doing that in a variety of settings, each with varying degrees. However, the true work of awakening impact comes in the work that we do with the students that have the biggest challenges to overcome. I am talking about the ones that many schools give up on, suspend, kick out, dismiss, ignore...the students that if we look beyond the behavior have had trauma in their lives that impact how they act, and react to learning.
As educators, we tend to have a fixed mindset around students and learning. We tend to have a vision for learning, and in that vision we see students that fit the educational "status quo". Yes, I bring it up again, because I see our largest issue in education is that we have put systems and structures in place that are only effective for a certain "type" of student, and if we were to be truly honest that student would be the one that comes ready to learn every day, is internally motivated and engaged, has consistent support from school to home, and is given opportunities outside of school to learn and apply. That's the status qou student that our current system is operating under.
Now, back to my point on the students with the greatest challenges. These students usually are acting and reacting out of root cause issues that have nothing to do with school. They are typically coming from home life environments where they have experienced trauma of some kind, whether directly or indirectly, and as a result they are reactive and in constant fight or flight mode. Research says that we use the same part of our brain to process learning and stress. Now, imagine a student coming from a stressful environment into a learning environment. As their brain is in a stressful state, they are coming and being put into an environment and asked to perform in that environment that is not structured for students coming in with tremendous stress, but rather our "status quo" student that was mentioned above. Imagine these students coming to school each and every day from extremely stressful and traumatizing environments into school where they have to use the part of their brain that is under stress to learn.
Typically what happens, is that these students have no time to decompress, or take down their stress level. They go from home immediately into school where they are asked to instantly work to learn while under stress. In that moment, it all becomes overwhelming for them and instead of being able to take in the learning, they play off of the stress and react out of that, usually in behavior that gets them kicked out of class, and school.
Now, imagine years of that. Imagine a student going through that each and every day. Imagine how defeated they feel right off the bat coming to school each day. Imagine how behavior then becomes the one and only thing they feel successful at, and therefore the one and only thing they know to do in response to their fight or flight.
Now imagine how much instructional time is lost in their school day, and imagine how over time their gap in learning becomes increasingly overwhelming, and the more overwhelming it becomes, the more defeated they feel, and the greater the increase in behavior....it's a cycle.
Here's the thing...there are variables of this that we can't control, but there are variables that as educators we can. The variable that we can control is our mindset around this student, and the learning opportunities that we can establish for them when we have the mindset of understanding why the act, and react they way they do. We can control our actions in the learning environment towards that student. We can control how we establish systems and structures that support those students, and we can control how we treat those students in our schools each day.
Mindset...everything and anything that we do goes back to our mindset around the situation and circumstance.
Right now, I am working on establishing programming in level 4 EBD where students are sent from schools that have given up on them, and this is their one and only hope left. Why is it that we can't establish a more cohesive system and structure within schools to support these students during the day, why is it that because we don't, these students, who have already been transitioned all over in their life, are now being transitioned all over in their school life? Something is wrong with the system....we can do better. We have to do better. We are educators. Enough of the fluffy saying about changing lives. Don't say it, if you have no intention of doing it with equality across all learners. I think it's time we take a critical look at mindset around educators, and educational systems and structures. We cannot afford in this country to continue to have inequality in education across the board. An average of 35% of our students graduating college and career ready is unacceptable, and at the heart of that issue is mindset.
If these students are made to feel "not good enough" at home, and them come to school and are made to feel "not good enough", then where in their world will they ever build any kind of self-confidence, self-esteem, success, sense of worth? Where else will they get that if we refuse to do that in school?
I have no problem saying these bold statements, because if you saw what I am seeing in schools each and every day your heart would feel heavy over this too. It's unacceptable for us in education to give up on these kids. They get that all day outside of school, and it's our job to build them up, give them hope and provide them lots of opportunities to be successful. For many, we are all they have in their day...that's it. It's us...
This post may anger many, but we need to stop dancing around the big elephant in the education world, begin to have courageous conversations around mindset, and start to make changes from undergrad education programs through schools and districts, and states across this country. It's time. We can rewrite the Common Core over and over and over, but until there is a drastic shift in mindset around equitable education for ALL, and drastic shifts in the educational system in this country, there will continue to be thousands and thousands and thousands of students left behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment