Even though I’m a teacher, I’m also a student. I love to learn, especially outside of the stress and rigidity of a classroom environment. I devour nonfiction books that help me to learn about psychology, history, and medicine, and the more I learn, the better I am at teaching. Two years ago I completed a graduate-level class on executive functioning after attending a Learning and the Brain conference, and these experiences were so eye-opening for me. They changed how I saw myself and gave me such practical hands-on tips for supporting neurodiverse and neurotypical adolescent students as they face challenging and everyday tasks. If you’re a teacher, I highly recommend Marydee Sklar’s course: Building Executive Function Skills in the Classroom. Students need, now more than ever, support in initiating tasks, organizing their work, planning ahead, creating realistic short-term and long-term goals, and monitoring their behavior. If students don’t have these skills, we can’t expect them to successfully complete a science fair project, a research essay, or study for a midterm exam. While teenagers naturally struggle with these tasks because of their developing brains, I have noticed a greater struggle with executive functioning in this age of smartphones and constant connection to social media. I have even noticed these changes in myself. My attention is easily diverted by email notifications, texts, and the allure of Instagram reels. My time in Guam and my research has inspired me to work towards changing my habits and behaviors so I can live a healthier, happier, and more productive life, and I hope that I can inspire healthy changes in my students as well.
This fall I read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein and Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth to educate myself on what steps young people can take to be successful and resilient. I am currently reading The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt, and it was so worth the long wait for it to become available at my library.
I thought Range was a great fit if you’re someone (like me) who enjoys Malcolm Gladwell’s combination of research and anecdotal, person-driven storytelling but you were skeptical about some of his arguments in Outliers. Epstein pulls from sports, chess, art, and psychology to discuss how difficult, slow learning paired with a wider breadth of experiences leads to greater success and mastery. I was particularly interested in the chapter about education and how teachers (including me) can be too quick to give students the answers rather than having the patience to have them find patterns and puzzle through the steps and challenges themselves. Epstein argues that there is a “desirable difficulty” in education that will pay off in the long term in creating lessons that are more memorable and skills that are more established. I also loved that breadth of experience is seen as essential in creating transferable skills and sparking creativity and mastery. The coordination and agility of various sports can complement each other, for example, and as our world becomes more abstract and complex, students need to learn how to make connections across domains and disciplines to categorize, synthesize, and revolutionize. Rote memorization and hyper specialization can make the solution seem simple, but we can miss innovative approaches or even basic solutions if we create too narrow of a focus. He says, only partially as a joke, that the best time to have chest pain is when cardiologists are away at a conference because their approach is so routine to the problem that they may not treat it correctly. It reminds me why a liberal arts education, an openness to reading widely, and the freedom to experiment with interests and activities are so important.
Duckworth, similarly, makes compelling claims about how students can be successful. Her main point is that sticking to something that matters to you and that you find fulfilling for a sustained period of time is a reliable marker for future success. So much of students’ learning, in my experience, is in their extracurriculars where they can experience leadership and teamwork, face novel problems, and discover what lights their fire and makes them excited. It is that passion that makes a job a career and a career a calling. It is a calling, rather than a job, that sparks joy in the face of the mundane and creates a sense of purpose, which inspires grit when challenges arise. I feel like the buzzword for students now is resilience and how important it is for students to adapt to hardships, but, Duckworth argues, it is much easier to face hardships when you have a long-term goal in mind that matters to you. Why spend long nights studying for an exam or finishing your English essay when you cannot connect it to your goals for your ideal adult life? Why suffer through something like early morning swim practice or repetitive piano lessons if you don’t care about it? Finding your passion will help you to endure a number of struggles because your eye is on your future goals. As students are making decisions about what they want to study and who they want to be, I think it is essential that they can explore widely and honestly to find their fulfillment.
I am grateful that my parents supported my curiosity by letting me attend creative writing classes. I remember my mom set up a creative writing workshop when I was in middle school, and it was the first place where I could really explore my idea for a novel. In the summer before my junior year of high school, my parents saved up for me to attend a summer program at Boston University where I took classes about history and creative writing, and my passion for storytelling was cemented. As a high schooler, I wrote creatively but also in my school’s newspaper because I wanted the opportunity to practice my writing and to see my name in print. I wrote book reviews because everything I cared about came back to stories. I even pushed myself to briefly write sports articles for a local paper, a genre that did not stick for me. I knew that my end goal was to be a writer, and this blog is another step towards that ultimate driving goal.
Additionally, as students face hardships, their self-talk and beliefs about themselves matter. Intelligence is not set in stone, and students are capable of growth. A growth mindset helps students to avoid the toxicity of pessimism and embrace the changes they need to make to improve and flourish in the face of and in spite of obstacles. I have a fixed mindset versus growth mindset bulletin board in my classroom as well as a self-affirmation display. It’s so easy to say “this is too hard” or “I give up” rather than “I can master this with practice” or “This will require a little more effort,” but this distinction is so important. I am guilty of this all or nothing, fixed mindset at times, but I must practice what I preach. My mom’s lesson (taken from Anne of Green Gables) has always been my best reminder of growth mindset: “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.”
Lastly, Duckworth argues for the importance of consistency and sticking with something for an extended period of time. I feel tempted to try everything, and if you know me, you know that so many things can capture my attention for a short period of time. If I had to list my weaknesses, it would easily be that. However, it is the things that I was consistent in that shaped me the most and that I found the most success in. Those activities like my summer job and Battle of the Books have still shaped me today and helped me to establish the discipline and perseverance that support my success.
I could go on and on about the scientific findings and implications of The Anxious Generation, but it boils down to a simple and urgent finding: children are being given smartphones and unrestricted access to social media far too early while simultaneously losing access to the freedoms and challenges of a play-based social childhood. As a result, depression and anxiety are on the rise and children struggle academically, socially, and emotionally from the impacts of their addiction. I’m currently having my Speech students create a persuasive argument about whether or not teenagers should have access to social media, and the research is overwhelmingly informing me what a disservice we are doing to this generation by plugging them into screens constantly. I highly urge anyone who works with kids or has a child to read this book so you can see for yourself how social media companies are harming children and destroying the milestones and memories that should be marking young people’s lives. It is clear to me as a teacher how social media is changing and hurting the lives and experiences of teenagers, and I hope that research findings like these will encourage families to make healthier changes.
Watching: Tom and I watched The Hunt for Red October and Clue for a very Tim Curry weekend. Dad has quoted “Crazy Ivan” and “Which way did he go? To the starboard!” since I was a kid, so it was nice to have some context for it. I loved watching it without any real knowledge of the plot so I could be surprised throughout! Clue was a cozy rewatch for me and a first time watch for Tom.
Eating: I’ve had a cold for the past week, so I’m focusing on making healthier meals that are quick and straightforward. America’s Test Kitchen is always my go-to for reliable recipes, and their Mediterranean Cookbook has been a great resource for me.
Wearing: I bought a fanny pack, and it made exercising at the park so much easier! Whoever designed women’s clothes clearly didn’t think about where we would put our keys, wallet, and phones! I demand pockets!