Getting Ready for the New School Year - A Webinar

Last week, Dr. Paul Yellin and Susan Yellin, Esq. presented a webinar for ADDitude Magazine on “9 Ways to Prime Your Child for a Positive School Year." The discussion, with slides and a Q&A session at the end, focused on using the remainder of the summer to prepare for a return to what for most students will be in-person learning this fall. More than 700 attendees watched live and over 6,000 more  signed up to watch it later

The Yellins' recommendations included both steps that parents should take and those that were more focused on student readiness - all keeping in mind that it's been a rough year and a half and that students and their families need a chance to engage in summer activities that are enjoyable and that build social as well as educational skills.

Parents were reminded that this summer would be a good time to review their child's IEP or 504 Plan, and seek to make changes to it, if needed, before school begins in the fall. For children who are taking ADHD medication, Dr. Yellin discussed the importance of working with your child's doctor to monitor the effectiveness and side effects, if any, of medication and to keep a "medication diary" to share with your child's prescribing physician. Dr. Yellin spoke about the importance of frontloading and having a "growth mindset'" as discussed by Dr. Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset.

Both speakers mentioned a number of tools, apps, and websites that could build skills that may be needed to begin the next school year primed for success. These included those that were free and fun, like Bedtime Math to others that are more focused in their approach, such as IXL 

You can access this presentation as a video replay, listen to the podcast episode (#363), and download the slide presentation, with numerous slides and suggestions, from ADDitude, all at no charge.

Keeping Open the Possibility of Change

Back in 2010, we wrote about an article written by Robert Dobrusin, a rabbi in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that touched on a topic we think about a great deal here at The Yellin Center - how labels (rather than a description of strengths and challenges) can be unfair to children and how they are insufficiently descriptive of what is really going on with any individual.

Rabbi Dobrusin's article (unfortunately no longer available online) explained how labels have unfairly limited the characters encountered in the traditional telling of the Passover story, a timely topic since this weekend marks both the start of the Passover holiday and Good Friday and Easter. The story of the Exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt, a familiar part of the Old Testament, is told in a ritualized form as part of the Passover celebration. One key part of this ritual telling is the story of four sons: one wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who cannot even ask a question. Every year, at the Passover meal, families read about these same sons and tell the story of the Exodus to answer these children's questions.

Rabbi Dobrusin noted, "I am troubled by the fact that we don't let them change. Throughout history they will always be wise or rebellious or simple or unquestioning... How can we set them in stone the way we do? There is one simple reason. They don't change because they each have been given a name: wise, rebellious, simple, unquestioning...How much wiser it would have been [if these children had been described] as the one who asked a wise question, the one who asked a rebellious question, the one who asked a simple question, the one who did not ask at all?"

He went on to explain that when we label individuals we can be too quick to jump to conclusions about their actions. Only when we eschew labels and keep open the possibility of change can we then open the door for individuals to move beyond the roles their labels describe to growth and change. Whatever our beliefs, and whatever holidays and traditions we celebrate, it is excellent advice. Indeed, there is strong evidence that labeling or defining children by their limitations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they tend not to see past their label to the possibility of their own change and growth. 

A strikingly similar view of how people can be limited by thinking that their nature is fixed and unchangeable comes from Stanford University psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck. Dr. Dweck has distilled years of research on the topics of achievement and success into her book Mindset, which we often recommend to the families we see here at The Yellin Center.  As described on the Mindset website:

"In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities." 

Whatever you may celebrate over the next few days - Easter, Passover, or just a lovely spring weekend - we hope you have the opportunity to gather with family and friends, to practice your traditions, to eat good food, to appreciate the chance to celebrate together , and to keep an open mind about the people in your life, giving them the room to change and grow.

Illustration of the seder meal from a 1929 Passover Haggadah,
 a legacy from Mrs. Yellin's grandparents
 

New Research Explores Pitfalls of Homework Help

One question we get a lot here at The Yellin Center is how parents and caregivers can help students grow as learners at home, during homework time, or with supplementary educational activities. We love giving parents and students strategies for building up skills at home, as long as these activities are fun and stress-free, especially during the summer. New research out of Tufts University, conducted by Dr. Melissa Orkin, Sidney May, and Dr. Maryanne Wolf, explores the ways in which parents’ helping behaviors during homework time contribute to how kids feel about their work. 

Homework time, especially for struggling readers and students with disabilities, can be a stressful time for kids and parents alike. Often, homework tasks are not differentiated to meet a student at her or his instructional level; this means that students are often sent home to do work independently that they are not yet able to do. This can lead to task avoidance (a tantrum or power struggle, for example) and negative attitudes towards learning or school. In these situations, parents naturally feel the impetus to sit with their child and help them through the task while building up their skills.

When students are given homework tasks that are too hard to complete independently, they may begin to feel incompetent at managing the academic demands. It would be natural to assume, therefore, that helping your child through the task would increase her or his feelings of competence. However, Orkin and her colleagues found that one common type of homework help, which they dubbed intrusive practices, can actually lead to feelings of helplessness. When students feel helpless in the face of academics, or that they will be unable to produce work at the level expected of them, they will often become very frustrated or have an emotional outburst during work time, seeking to avoid the task.

Intrusive homework help practices include things like checking children’s homework or correcting mistakes when reading. These types of behaviors can contribute to a product (or achievement) oriented learning environment rather than a process-oriented learning environment. Ideally, we want children to value the process of learning, not the output. Sometimes this means taking a step back during homework time and allowing mistakes to be made. Fostering a process-oriented environment also entails providing specific, effort-based praise rather than intrusive corrections during reading or writing that limit the student’s autonomy while working. It’s important for parents and teachers to endorse growth and effort rather than “prescribed standards of success.”

Taking a step back and letting your child make mistakes can be extremely difficult, but research continues to show that encouraging risk-taking while building academic skills is incredibly important for helping children develop a love of learning and a growth mindset. It may take some getting used to, but next time it’s homework time at your house, see what happens when you let mistakes happen while offering up a healthy serving of effort-based encouragement and praise.