SIT UP

LISTEN

ASK QUESTIONS

NOD

TRACK THE TEACHER

This got me thinking about what engagement looks like for young children and how engagement might be misinterpreted as “naughty” or “inappropriate” behavior.

Young children show engagement in several ways – but it usually doesn’t look like the above-described behaviors.  When children are excited by the activities going on around them, they often get revved up.  They might yell out, or move around animatedly.  Jumping up and down is not unusual.  But one of the most important ways that young children show that they are actively engaged in the material is by moving closer to it.  You might see children crawling closer to you during a read aloud, even standing up and touching the book.  Take a look at this video of Lillian reading “The Napping House”.  Do you see how engaged the children are in the book?  Notice how she allows their proximity and even encourages it.  Notice how some children are completely transfixed by the book and how others are moving around.

The Password to view the video is Lillian

The general premise is that children need more than “smarts” to be successful in school and in life.  There are a variety of other “skills” or “dispositions” that may be more important to nurture in children than the academic skills that everyone is so busy pushing.  These are “perseverance” or “stick-to-it-iveness”, “cognitive flexibility”, “grit”, “endurance”, and other hidden character traits.

The Amazon review says,

How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. Through their stories—and the stories of the children they are trying to help—Tough traces the links between childhood stress and life success. He uncovers the surprising ways in which parents do—and do not—prepare their children for adulthood. And he provides us with new insights into how to help children growing up in poverty.

Early adversity, scientists have come to understand, can not only affect the conditions of children’s lives, it can alter the physical development of their brains as well. But now educators and doctors around the country are using that knowledge to develop innovative interventions that allow children to overcome the constraints of poverty. And with the help of these new strategies, as Tough’s extraordinary reporting makes clear, children who grow up in the most painful circumstances can go on to achieve amazing things.

This provocative and profoundly hopeful book has the potential to change how we raise our children, how we run our schools, and how we construct our social safety net. It will not only inspire and engage readers, it will also change our understanding of childhood itself.

A lot of the research hits really close to home as many of the examples are from Chicago.  He explores Fenger High School, the 100’s of Roseland, Arne Duncan, and CPS.  I’ll give you the wrap up once I’m done, but this might be the new “must-read” for all teachers.