Category Archives: Education at School

Children now ‘biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against children’

January 10, 2024Education at School, PsychologyPadho Leekho

Children now ‘biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against children’

Police data shows 52% of alleged offenders in England and Wales are minors – a situation exacerbated by ‘accessibility of violent porn’

Boys are watching violent porn on their smartphones then going on to attack girls, police have said, as new data showed children are now the biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against other children.

Police data shows there has been a quadrupling of sexual offences against children, in what officers say is the most authoritative analysis of offending against youngsters.

The report from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said the offending by adults against children was usually more serious, but said they were alarmed by the growth of sexual offending by those aged 17 or under.

In one case a child of four was referred to police after allegedly using a smartphone to upload an indecent image of a sibling. Police declined to give any more details.

In 2022 a total of 107,000 reports were made to police in England and Wales alleging sexual offences against children, ranging from rapes and, in a quarter of cases, to the making and sharing of indecent images.

The NPCC said 52% of alleged offenders were children, compared with around one third a decade ago.

Police received reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children aged 10 to 17 where the suspect was classed as a child, the overwhelming majority being boys.

Ian Critchley, the NPCC lead for child protection, said: “This is predominantly a gender-based crime of boys committing offences against girls.

“I think that is being exacerbated by the accessibility of violent pornography and the ease with which violent pornography is accessible to boys and, therefore, a perception that is [normal] behavior, and that person can carry out that behavior that they are seeing online in the most violent way against other peers as well.

“Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed, not just in relation to 11- to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well. That accessibility has really exacerbated that and I think this is a debate that does need to be had in our society.”

A third of attacks take place within the family, the most common setting for abuse, and eight out of 10 victims knew their attacker.

Police said it is estimated as few as one in six offences are reported to them.

Critchley said the clear-up rate – where someone is charged or cautioned – was 12% where a child is physically attacked and 11% for indecent images offences. The clear-up rate for child-on-child attacks is 15% for sexual assault and 12% for rape.

He said offences involving AI were already being reported to police. These include “nudification” where the photo of a person – usually female – is digitally stripped of clothing to make it appear as if they are naked.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) announced it was increasing the capacity and raising awareness of its helpline through which adults can report suspicions about child abuse. The charity last month said it was taking 14 months for a defendant in a child abuse case to stand trial after being charged, placing a greater strain on victims.

Wendy Hart, the deputy director for child sexual abuse at the National Crime Agency, said about 830,000 adults in the United Kingdom are estimated to pose a danger to children. “The severity of offending has increased, as have the complexities faced by law enforcement in tackling it,” she added.

“We are now seeing hyperrealist images and videos of abuse being created using artificial intelligence, for example, while the rollout of end-to-end encryption by technology platforms makes it a lot more difficult for us to protect children.”

The story of the year: the big Byju’s exposé

December 28, 2023Education at School, Start-upPadho Leekho

The story of the year: the big Byju’s exposé

Author Pradip K. Saha talks about his investigation into one of the most explosive stories of the year

For 12 years, Byju’s, one of India’s most valued ed-tech start-ups, aggressively sold dreams of academic success to Indian parents and students. Its valuation crossed $10 billion in 2020 with global investors pumping in money.

This year, Byju’s fall from the ed-tech throne was as staggering as its rise. Signing up the likes of Lionel Messi as brand ambassador, turning a blind eye to complaints of frustrated parents who were unhappy with the learning product, raising multiple rounds of million dollar investments, delaying the revelation of FY21 results, and its subsequent opacity about FY22 and FY23, have each led to Byju’s notoriety.

Its questionable company practices created a sense of cynicism among global investors: funding in the ed-tech sector is, as a result, at an all-time low since 2015. Journalist Pradip K. Saha, author of The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech For A Ride, talks about his investigation into one of the biggest stories of the year.

So much has been already reported about Byju’s. So what are the new revelations in the book?

Four years ago, when we at The Morning Context decided to cover ed-tech, the biggest company was Byju’s. It was the bellwether of the entire industry. I wanted to know how this company convinces parents and if it is actually helping anyone. Byju’s draws in the parents and then it’s like going down a rabbit hole. The book goes behind the scenes, includes my conversations with Byju Raveendran [founder of Byju’s], and has a lot of fresh reporting.

It explores how salespersons aggressively sold the product to the economically weak, the toxic work environment, and instances of mass lay-offs.

You have described Byju’s hard push to convince parents to buy the learning app for their school-going children. Please explain why this is problematic?

While I have mentioned case studies of several unhappy parents in the book, there is this one case I haven’t written about: that of an autorickshaw driver in Bengaluru. He told me that a Byju’s salesperson insisted that he buy the app, even when he had no money to pay for it (nearly ₹70,000 for three years with a down payment of ₹15,000). He was told he could pay in instalments. Then there was a grandmother who hoped to help her grandson fare better at school. She was poor, but the salesperson struck a deal. This, however, pricked his conscience, and he quit the company.

What often happens is that children lose interest in the app, and then when parents seek a refund, the salespersons switch off their phones. There is no way to measure the learning outcomes on Byju’s. And that is the biggest problem. That is why it lost customers, people cancelled their subscriptions and the company had to fall back on investors and could not make a profit.

We have no idea about the company’s financials in 2022 and 2023; your investigation also found that phantom fundraising companies had alleged a connection to the Art of Living Foundation.

Byju’s serially raised money from venture capitalists, and the earlier ones such as Ranjan Pai’s Aarin Capital and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative made a killing by exiting at the right time. With every subsequent round of fund-raising announced, the valuation of the company increased. This is how the game works.

Between 2015 and 2021, Byju’s kept scaling up. It hired more sales people, did more marketing, was the chief sponsor of Indian cricket teams, and signed up the likes of Shah Rukh Khan as brand ambassadors.

On a consolidated basis, the last publicly declared financials of Byju’s show a loss of ₹4,588 crore, 19 times the loss incurred in the previous fiscal. In July 2022, we broke the story of phantom fundraising, and that the announced $300 million from Sumeru Ventures and Oxshott Capital never landed. Media worldwide followed up the story. In an interview after the FY21 results, Raveendran said: ‘who cares about $300 million? I can raise $300 million in a week’.

Raveendran’s arrogance and the funding winter led to a crash in investments in ed-tech in FY23. What impact has the Byju’s story had on the sector as a whole?

A: The unethical practices at Byju’s have dented the confidence of global investors in the Indian ed-tech sector. From an all-time high of $4,165 million in 2021, investments in ed-tech start-ups dipped to $172 million in 2023. But the industry will survive. Now investors in ed-tech are asking questions they never asked before: about profitability and learning outcomes. And that’s a good thing for the sector.

Source:- https://www.thehindu.com/education

How do you discipline an in-school overdose?

December 26, 2023Education at School, PsychologyPadho Leekho

How do you discipline an in-school overdose?

Perched above a major highway in central Los Angeles sits an unassuming high school where students are all too familiar with the sound of ambulance sirens. This fall, the principal has called an ambulance about five times because of suspected student drug use.

“We’re just extra cautious,” he says.

“Before, if the kid had a migraine, the kid had a headache, the kid looked a little tired. OK, let’s rest. Let’s get you going. Now, let’s check the blood pressure. If it’s high, let’s play the safe side. Let’s just call the ambulance.”

His school is part of a bold new experiment at Los Angeles Unified School District: Instead of the traditional, zero tolerance approach to student overdoses, LAUSD is piloting a focus on rehabilitation. But that effort comes with some stigma, and so we aren’t naming the principal or his school over district officials’ concerns that it become known as a “drug school.”

This pilot project is a response to a growing number of student opioid overdoses on LAUSD campuses. A student died in a school bathroom after a suspected fentanyl overdose in September 2022. After that, LAUSD began stocking naloxone in schools. Since then, the district says it has administered the opioid overdose reversal medicine 55 times.

And the problem goes far beyond LA: In 2021, fentanyl was involved in the vast majority of all teen overdose deaths – 84% – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among adolescents, fentanyl-related overdose deaths nearly tripled from 2019 to 2021, with almost a quarter involving counterfeit pills that didn’t come from any pharmacy.

Today, students caught with illegal drugs at school often face all kinds of consequences – including expulsion, suspension and possibly a criminal charge.

But amid the rise in teen overdoses, school systems across the country – from LA to Portland, Ore., to Prince George’s County, Md. – are beginning to change their approach.

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has been a driving force in this shift away from discipline and toward rehabilitation. He says schools “have a moral and professional obligation” to provide students with support, not just punishments.

“We never treat that child, that student, as a criminal element or someone who broke a rule. We ought to address the root causes of the problem rather than focusing on the possible consequence.”

What it looks like to focus on rehab

Medical attention is the top priority following a suspected student overdose on campus, the LAUSD principal says.

“The first concern is: Let’s get you well.”

After a student has been cleared and sent home from the hospital, his school’s efforts shift to getting the student back into the classroom.

Administrators and the school’s psychiatric social worker work with the student’s parents to create a re-entry plan. These plans are tailored to meet each student’s individual needs following an overdose, whether they’re struggling with addiction or accidentally overdosed on a counterfeit pill.

Check-ins with the in-school counselor, therapy sessions and out-patient rehabilitation with the nearby children’s hospital are all available at little to no cost to the student’s family.

And then, the principal says, “when the student does return, it’s a matter of making sure that we’re constantly monitoring.” That’s not just on school administrators and the psychiatric social worker, but also teachers, hall monitors and other school staff.

Sometimes “dailies” are part of a re-entry plan – paper cards that teachers sign each class period to show that the student showed up to class and stayed until the end. Some students are granted cards that get them out of class if they need to go see a counselor or therapist during the school day.

And students aren’t the only ones who need help with re-entry. The school’s psychiatric social worker, who we also aren’t naming, says a big portion of her job in the aftermath of an overdose is talking parents through very tough situations.

“Oftentimes parents have struggles with the idea that their student does have a substance abuse [problem],” she says. She does her best to educate parents on today’s changing drug landscape and how the family can best help their child, including by consenting to rehabilitation services.

The school has partnered with a community mental health organization to provide therapy for students at school. Therapists with the organization stop by every Friday for check-ins with specific students, and to be available for anyone who needs it.

Rehab is an expensive approach that takes a lot of resources

LAUSD isn’t the only district moving toward a rehabilitation model. Administrators at Prince George’s County Public Schools, in Maryland, are also exploring a transition away from zero tolerance. But they cite an important hurdle: It’s expensive. Someone has to foot the bill for the programs, and hire the staff to help parents navigate them.

Richard Moody, the supervisor of Student Engagement and School Support for Prince George’s County, is still trying to figure out how to pay for a rehabilitation model.

“We have a whole list of inpatient and outpatient programs, but a lot of them don’t service adolescents,” he says. Moody also finds that sometimes undocumented students and parents will avoid treatment programs all together for fear of filling out paperwork and putting their names in a system. The principal in LA says that’s a big reason the school decided to provide services on campus.

Like LAUSD, Prince George’s County is hoping to circumvent these barriers by hiring in-house care for students, but Moody says the timeline for that is uncertain.

His district has to rely on grant funding to hire new positions, like in-house substance abuse counselors, but it’s been a months-long wait to hear back on those grant applications.

A fast-evolving crisis meets slow school bureaucracies

The drug landscape may be changing quickly, but school bureaucracies are slow. It can be hard for districts to keep up.

At LAUSD, the principal is taking it day by day. Especially since the rehabilitative model comes with a lot of extra work.

When asked what keeps him going, he says, “The second week of June.” Getting the students to graduation, clean and armed with habits for a healthier life.

Source:- https://www.kqed.org/mindshift

7 Strategies to ignite active learning

December 16, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

7 Strategies to ignite active learning – and help students see its benefits

At its core, active learning relies on a collaborative, student-centered approach. As Vanderbilt University professor Cynthia J. Brame explains, “active learning approaches also often embrace the use of cooperative learning groups, a constructivist-based practice that places particular emphasis on the contribution that social interaction can make.” One would think that students embrace such a model, but an unexpected complication of creating a learning environment around active methods is sometimes a show of student resistance. After years of a more passive experience, many students can be loath to do something different, even if the end result will be more fulfilling. In “Students Think Lectures Are Best, But Research Suggests They’re Wrong,” Edutopia editor Youki Terada cites a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). As Terada shares, the research study showed that “strategies that require low cognitive effort — such as passively listening to a lecture — are often perceived by students to be more effective than active strategies such as hands-on experimentation and group problem-solving.” Why might that be?

PNAS researchers Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestin answer this question when they “identify an inherent student bias against active learning that can limit its effectiveness and may hinder the wide adoption of these methods.” Essentially, students perceive that they are most successful in traditional, teacher-directed classrooms. There are any number of reasons they might feel this way, from having never experienced anything different to worrying about what might happen if they are asked to do what feels like more. To combat this problem, the study suggests that teachers explicitly share with students why a more active approach is better and then continue to reinforce its benefits. They write: “The success of active learning will be greatly enhanced if students accept that it leads to deeper learning — and acknowledge that it may sometimes feel like exactly the opposite is true.”

Teaching students is not just about communicating content; it is also about being instructive about how to access learning. If we are not explicit about the “why” behind the ways in which class is structured, students will form their own assumptions about what works. It is not enough, therefore, to create a student-centered classroom model and expect everyone to get on board without knowing the rationale behind an active learning approach. Instead, developing a space in which all learners (vocal or otherwise) can flourish is also dependent upon explaining what is happening as it occurs, gathering student voice along the way, and course-correcting as needed.

The Big Question

Midway through sharing new information, the teacher pauses and asks students to write down an area of confusion so far. Then, students either post their questions on the wall and respond in writing or hand them to the teacher to share with the group anonymously.

Clears up confusion
Encourages a culture of welcoming mistakes and misconceptions
Normalizes not knowing and asking questions
Allows students to communicate in a variety of modalities
Gives everyone a voice

Connection, Prediction

Before starting a daily objective, students pose a question or idea that makes a connection to prior learning. Then, they develop a prediction about what they are about to learn and share their thoughts with classmates via pairings or small groups.

Encourages the use of higher-order, critical thinking skills
Provides an avenue for students to share at low risk (i.e., in smaller groups) rather than in front of the class
Allows the teacher to see how students make meaning of the daily objective in front of them

Question Everything

For a specific timeframe within the class period, students are asked to phrase any response to a question in a shared space (an online document, chart paper, board, etc.) as an open-ended question. Then, students answer the question by posing yet another question of their own in the same space.

Engages students in critical questioning
All participants have a chance to respond to one another in an accessible space
The teacher can be on the lookout for misconceptions and adjust instruction accordingly

Images and Inspiration

Using a visual image (a photograph, drawing or similar), the teacher asks students to “free write” for a short period of time about what the image inspires. Depending on the course subject, students could write their conjectures about what they see or engage in a more creative approach.

Allows students to make their own meaning of an image before the teacher directs learning more specifically toward the daily lesson
Encourages students to learn in a different way (i.e. visually)
Helps to facilitate a more inductive approach to course content

One Sentence

For an upcoming extended writing project that may be intimidating, ask students to write just one sentence from the assigned prompt. Then, put them in small groups to examine one another’s sentences and discuss the challenges they face.

Embraces the concept that all learners struggle, and that collaboration is key to surmounting obstacles
Teaches students with multiple points of view to help one another
Breaks a formidable task into more manageable chunks

Rephrase, Please!

Sometimes, ideas get lost in translation. In this activity, students are asked to take the key ideas taught during direct instruction and phrase them in their own words. They can then post their phrases on a wall, share in groups, or be called upon randomly.

Helps students make meaning of new concepts in their own heads
Acts as a check for understanding for the teacher to see where struggles might still exist
Empowers students to think critically about the salient ideas presented

Stump the Teacher

Students form groups and create a series of quiz questions on course content. Then, groups take turns posing questions in an attempt to stump the teacher. If the teacher cannot answer enough questions correctly, the class wins!

This gamification technique increases student engagement
Teachers provide students with the opportunity to engage in a role reversal
By creating the quizzes, students learn material more actively

Active learning is dependent upon the act of critical thinking. With the strategies and accompanying rationale provided above, teachers working with multiple grade levels in a variety of content areas can find at least a few approaches that work to increase the involvement of everyone in the room.

Tempting though it might be to rely on vocal students to carry student discourse each day past the point of awkwardness and toward whatever a teacher might wish to highlight, resisting that urge is key to ensuring that every child in the room is an active learner. Even the loudest students in the room who verbally process information may be more passive than we suppose. So, finding more effective ways to involve all students in each day’s learning is an effort that is well worth the time. That way, when a teacher leaves the classroom thinking, “Wow. They were really with me today,” that thought will apply to not just the few students who always like to talk — it will also accurately represent the experience of the entire class.

Source:-https://www.kqed.org/mindshift

Why Is Math Important?

December 14, 2023Education at School, MathPadho Leekho

Why Is Math Important?

9 Reasons Why Math Skills Improve Quality of Life

Math isn’t just an important subject in school — it’s essential for many of your daily tasks. You likely use it every day to perform real-life skills, like grocery shopping, cooking and tracking your finances.

What makes math special is that it’s a universal language — a powerful tool with the same meaning across the globe. Though languages divide our world, numbers unite us. Math allows us to work together towards new innovations and ideas.

In this post, learn why math is important for kids and adults. Plus, find out why learning even the most basic math can significantly improve your family’s quality of life.

Why is math so important in life?

You simply can’t make it through a day without using some sort of basic math. Here’s why.

A person needs an understanding of math, measurements and fractions to cook and bake. Many people may also use math to count calories or nutrients as part of their diet or exercise routine.

You also need math to calculate when you should leave your house to arrive on time, or how much paint you need to redo your bedroom walls.

And then the big one, money. Financial literacy is an incredibly important skill for adults to master. It can help you budget, save and even help you make big decisions like changing careers or buying a home.

Mathematical knowledge may even be connected to many other not-so-obvious benefits. A strong foundation in math can translate into increased understanding and regulation of your emotions, improved memory and better problem-solving skills.

The importance of math: 9 benefits of a great math education

Math offers more opportunities beyond grade school, middle school and high school. Its applications to real-life scenarios are vast.

Though many students sit in math class wondering when they’ll ever use these things they’re learning, we know there are many times their math skills will be needed in adulthood.

The importance of mathematics to your child’s success can’t be overstated. Basic math is a necessity, but even abstract math can help hone critical thinking skills — even if your child chooses not to pursue a STEM-style career. Math can help them succeed professionally, emotionally and cognitively. Here’s why.

1. Math promotes healthy brain function

“Use it or lose it.” We hear this said about many skills, and math is no exception.

Solving math problems and improving our math skills gives our brain a good workout. And it improves our cognitive skills over time. Many studies have shown that routinely practicing math keeps our brain healthy and functioning well.

2. Math improves problem-solving skills

At first, classic math problems like Johnny bringing home 42 watermelons and returning 13 of them can just seem a silly exercise. But all those math word problems our children solve really do improve their problem solving skills. Word problems teach kids how to pull out the important information and then manipulate it to find a solution.

Later on, complex life problems take the place of workbooks, but problem-solving still happens the same way. When students understand algorithms and problems more deeply, they can decode the facts and more easily solve the issue. Real-life solutions are found with math and logic.

3. Math supports logical reasoning and analytical thinking

A strong understanding of math concepts means more than just number sense. It helps us see the pathways to a solution. Equations and word problems need to be examined before determining the best method for solving them. And in many cases, there’s more than one way to get to the right answer.

It’s no surprise that logical reasoning and analytical thinking improve alongside math skills. Logic skills are necessary at all levels of mathematical education.

4. Math develops flexible thinking and creativity

Practicing math has been shown to improve investigative skills, resourcefulness and creativity.

This is because math problems often require us to bend our thinking and approach problems in more than one way. The first process we try might not work. We need flexibility and creativity to think of new pathways to the solution. And just like anything else, this way of thinking is strengthened with practice.

5. Math opens up many different career paths

There are many careers that use a large number of math concepts. These include architects, accountants, and scientists.

But many other professionals use math skills every day to complete their jobs. CEOs use math to analyze financials. Mailmen use it to calculate how long it will take them to walk their new route. Graphic designers use math to figure out the appropriate scale and proportions in their designs.

No matter what career path your child chooses, math skills will be beneficial.

Math skills might become even more important for today’s kids!

Math can certainly open up a lot of opportunities for many of us. But did you know that careers which heavily use math are going to be among the fastest-growing jobs by the time kids today start their careers? These jobs include:

Actuaries
Statisticians
Data scientists
Software developers
Cybersecurity analysts

It’s not just STEM jobs that will require math either. Other popular, high-growth careers like nursing and teaching now ask for a minimum knowledge of college-level math.

6. Math may boost emotional health

While this research is still in its early days, what we have seen is promising.

The parts of the brain used to solve math problems seem to work together with the parts of the brain that regulate emotions. This suggests that math practice can actually help us cope with difficult situations. In these studies, the better someone was with numerical calculations, the better they were at regulating fear and anger. Strong math skills may even be able to help treat anxiety and depression.

7. Math improves financial literacy

Though kids may not be managing their finances now, there’s going to be plenty of times where math skills are going to make a massive difference in their life as an adult.

Budgeting and saving is a big one. Where can they cut back on their spending? How will budgeting help them reach their financial goals? Can they afford this new purchase now?

As they age into adulthood, It will benefit your child to understand how loans and interest work before purchasing a house or car. They should fully grasp profits and losses before investing in the stock market. And they will likely need to evaluate job salaries and benefits before choosing their first job.

8. Math sharpens your memory

Learning mental math starts in elementary school. Students learn addition tables, then subtraction, multiplication and division tables. As they master those skills, they’ll begin to memorize more tips and tricks, like adding a zero to the end when multiplying by 10. Students will memorize algorithms and processes throughout their education.

Using your memory often keeps it sharp. As your child grows and continues to use math skills in adulthood, their memory will remain in tip top shape.

9. Math teaches perseverance

“I can do it!’

These are words heard often from our toddlers. This phrase is a marker of growth, and a point of pride. But as your child moves into elementary school, you may not hear these words as often or with as much confidence as before.

Learning math is great for teaching perseverance. With the right math instruction, your child can see their progress and once again feel that “I can do it” attitude. The rush of excitement a child experiences when they master a new concept sticks in their memory. And they can reflect back on it when they’re struggling with a new, harder skill.

Even when things get tough, they’ll know they can keep trying and eventually overcome it — because they’ve done it before.

Source:- https://www.prodigygame.com/

Banishing Mathematics Anxiety in Students

December 6, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

From Fear to Confidence: Banishing Mathematics Anxiety in Students

Do you feel a rush of excitement when given a mathematical challenge to solve? Or does the mere thought of doing calculations make your heart race and palms sweat?

If you belong to the latter group, you’re not alone.

Researchers estimate that about 17 percent of the population experience mathematics anxiety.

Attitude, not aptitude

Cognitive scientist Sian Beilock, author of books “Choke” and “How the Body Knows Its Mind,” shared that the anxiety of just preparing for a mathematics exam triggers pain responses in the brain.

Her finding suggests that being anxious about the subject is not just about being bad at it. There is something about the anxiety itself that potentially impedes our ability to focus, think in the moment, and to want to learn and study the subject even more.

That’s why on top of thinking about how we teach students mathematics content, she urged educators to also think about how they’re preparing students to have a positive attitude.

Our top 5 research-backed tips to overcome mathematics anxiety

Every student has the potential to be a great at math(s).

Speaking of mathematics, why not join in the fun and put your students’ skills to the test in World Maths Day – the largest online mathematics competition in the world? It’s not only a great way to boost engagement, it also helps students who are struggling discover their inner mathlete.

In celebration of World Maths Day, we dive deeper on how to help students overcome their fear of the subject. Here are our top five practical strategies to minus your students’ anxiety and multiply their confidence.

1. Group peers with different ability together

Also known as mixed-ability grouping, grouping students with different skill levels promotes collaboration and encourages higher-ability students to help their peers better understand the material.

It provides students with the opportunity to learn from their peers and to observe different approaches to problem solving. This creates a supportive and inclusive learning environment where all students can feel confident in their abilities and make progress in their skills.

Mixed ability grouping also helps to break down the barriers between students and encourages critical thinking and a growth mindset, all of which are essential skills in mathematics and in life.

2. The power of books

Young students reading books in a library corner

Books and stories are powerful tools for banishing anxiety in younger learners. By reading about characters who face similar challenges in mathematics, learners develop an empathy for the characters. In the process, this helps them overcome their own struggles and gain confidence in the subject.

When using these texts in class or with learners individually, don’t forget to engage in follow up discussions and activities to draw out the key experiences of the characters and connect these to the emotions that students may be feeling.

If you’re looking for mathematics stories to introduce to students, Reading Eggs is a good place to start. An online learn-to-read program, it has a digital library of over 3,500 books for students to explore.

3. Just breathe

For older students, deep breathing exercises can help reduce the negative impacts of math(s) anxiety. They are short, effective and can easily form a part of a lesson.

Get students into a comfortable position and ask them to close their eyes and start paying attention to the pace and depth of their breathing. Are they taking deep breaths or shallow ones? Are they breathing quickly or slowly?

Becoming aware of our breathing can help us become more mindful of our body’s response to stress.

4. “I feel…”

Did you know just 10 minutes of expressive writing can alleviate students’ anxiety?

Also known as journaling, expressive writing has been proven to improve people’s general health and well-being. Researchers also applied this technique to a specific stressful event in students’ lives: sitting for a test.

They found that when students with mathematics anxiety spend 10 minutes before an exam writing down how they feel in that moment, they no longer freeze under pressure. Penning down their feelings helps students acknowledge their anxious thoughts, and to set them aside.

5. Let the games begin!

The Value of Games and Gamification with Mathematics

Games are an effective teaching tool to enhance engagement and enjoyment. They are not only fun, but they also support the development of essential skills and improve fact fluency.

Games have the potential to demonstrate that learning can be measured not just by grades but by competencies. It helps students see failures as a part of the learning process.

Looking to boost your students’ confidence through exciting, game-based learning?

Join in the fun and be a part of World Maths Day! It is a free online competition that challenges students from around the globe to compete and enhance their mathematical skills.

The competitive, gamified elements in World Maths Day engages students in an entertaining and interactive way, while promoting a positive attitude towards learning mathematics. The event also provides an excellent opportunity for students to develop their mathematical skills, overcome their anxiety to unleash their inner mathlete.

What is World Maths Day?

World Maths Day (8 March 2023) is a global celebration of mathematics where millions of students aged 5 to 18 across the world compete in Live Mathletics challenges. It’s all-inclusive, free, and open to schools as well as students learning from home.

If you don’t have a Mathletics account, you can sign up for a free World Maths Day account here. Have any questions? Check out the World Maths Day FAQ page for more information or contact us here.

Are we passing on our own mathematics anxiety unknowingly?

Adults need to be aware that our own anxiety can influence how younger children perceive it too. When adults model anxiety themselves, children can pick up on it. According to a study, girls also tend to be more affected by mathematics anxiety than boys.

Ros McLellan from the University of Cambridge shares how parents and teachers should be mindful of how they may unwittingly contribute to a child’s anxiety. To help our children or students, we first need to tackle on our anxieties and belief systems in the subject.

Beilock also stressed the importance of being clear that our mathematical ability is not fixed. Rather, it is something that can be improved through practice.

When we understand and address the causes of students’ mathematics anxiety, we can transform that nervousness into motivation and help them unlock their full potential.

Source:- https://www.mathletics.com/

Inside America’s School Internet Censorship Machine

December 5, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

Inside America’s School Internet Censorship Machine

AROUND DINNER TIME one night in July, a student in Albuquerque, New Mexico, googled “suicide prevention hotline.” They were automatically blocked. The student tried again, using their Albuquerque Public Schools district–issued laptop to search for “contact methods for suicide.” Blocked. They were turned away again a few hours later when attempting to access a webpage on the federally-funded Suicide Prevention Resource Center. More than a dozen times that night, the student tried to access online mental health resources, and the district’s web filter blocked their requests for help every time.

In the following weeks, students and staff across Albuquerque tried and failed to reach crisis mental health resources on district computers. An eighth grader googled “suicide hotline” on their take-home laptop, a ninth grader looked up “suicide hotline number,” a high school counselor googled “who is a mandated reporter for suicide in New Mexico,” and another counselor at an elementary school tried to download a PDF of the district’s suicide prevention protocol. Blocked, blocked, blocked—all in a state with among the highest suicide rates in the US.

Thanks in large part to a two-decade-old federal anti-porn law, school districts across the US restrict what students see online using a patchwork of commercial web filters that block vast and often random swathes of the internet. Companies like GoGuardian and Blocksi—the two filters used in Albuquerque—govern students’ internet use in thousands of US school districts. As the national debate over school censorship focuses on controversial book-banning laws, a WIRED investigation reveals how these automated web filters can perpetuate dangerous censorship on an even greater scale.

WIRED requested internet censorship records from 17 public school districts around the US, painting a picture of the widespread digital censorship taking place across the country. Our investigation focuses on Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), one of the largest school districts in the US, which provided the most complete look at its web-filtering systems. APS shared 36 gigabytes of district network logs covering January 2022 to August 21, 2023, offering an unprecedented look at the kinds of content blocked by US schools on a daily basis. Our analysis of more than 117 million censorship records confirms what students and civil rights advocates have long warned: Web filters are preventing kids from finding critical information about their health, identity, and the subjects they’re studying in class.

“It’s just like another form of oppression,” Brooklynn Chavez, a senior at La Cueva High School in northeast Albuquerque, says of the district’s filters. “It’s like an awful kind of feeling.”

It’s a problem that’s not going away. This summer, APS installed Blocksi web filters on all student and staff devices. According to our analysis and interviews with APS staff, the results seemed to be disastrous. During the nearly three months APS used the Blocksi filter, it blocked more than a million network requests a day, on average, including searches for mental and physical health services; words related to LGBTQ+, Black, and Hispanic communities; websites for local youth groups; thousands of student searches for harmless information; and tens of thousands of news articles

APS, which installed Blocksi in May, stopped using the filter on most of its devices in August due to its restrictiveness, Harris says, and returned to the GoGuardian filter it used before the switch. Our investigation raises questions about the appropriateness and implementation of GoGuardian’s filter as well.

In May, before the district switched to Blocksi, the GoGuardian filter blocked an eighth grader from searching for “suicide prevention.” It prevented a third grader from searching the word “latina” and a sixth grader from searching “black man.” When an 11th grader googled “Obergefell v. Hodges ruling,” instead of a list of websites with information about the landmark United States Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, the student saw a gray screen with APS’s logo and the message: “Restricted. This website has been blocked by your administrator.”

It is difficult to determine who exactly is responsible for a given content restriction. While APS administrators set the network policy for the entire district, individual teachers can also choose what to filter with GoGuardian—including whether to turn off the internet entirely for a particular student or class during a lesson, according to Harris. Outside of school hours, parents can also use the Blocksi and GoGuardian parent apps that APS provides to set their own restrictions on their kids’ school-issued devices.

Blocksi did not respond to multiple requests for comment or answer detailed questions about censorship of APS web activity.

Jeff Gordon, director of public relations for GoGuardian, tells WIRED, “GoGuardian regularly evaluates our website categorization to ensure, to the best of our ability, that legitimate educational sites are accessible to students by default.” He said more than 7,600 school districts use the company’s web filter and referred all questions about whether the blocked activity in Albuquerque was appropriately censored to the district.

Sithara Subramanian, an 11th grader at La Cueva High School, says she began to run into her school’s GoGuardian filter on a regular basis around the time remote learning ended. “It got kind of intense when we went back to school, like educational websites were being blocked,” Subramanian says. The censorship has been particularly frustrating for her biology and anatomy studies. “It felt like they were trying to restrict our education rather than enhance it.”

“My son says the filters make the internet useless,” Sarah Hooten, the mother of Henry, a 13-year-old former APS student, tells WIRED. Henry says that he couldn’t use YouTube to look up information for a report he was assigned about rainforests. “I know it’s partly to do with blocking kids from doing what they aren’t supposed to be doing,” Henry says. “But it’s also just the school not understanding what they are blocking.”

What Went Wrong

THE SCALE OF censorship we found in Albuquerque’s schools shows how web filters can twist seemingly simple decisions to block unwanted online content into policies that render the internet near impossible to use.

In one instance, an APS staff member was unable to view The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize–winning 1619 Project, a historical exploration of slavery and its consequences in the United States, because of an apparently misguided keyword block in the district’s Blocksi filter. The district’s web-filter blocked websites containing the keyword “avery.” This blocked hundreds of attempts to access the website of a printing company, Avery.com, although APS officials could not explain why “avery” was keyword-blocked. But because the URL for the 1619 Project includes the word “slavery,” it was also blocked. So was a Stanford University lecture about slavery, a Wikipedia map of slavery in the United States, and several articles about a controversial Florida curriculum about slavery.

While most of the keywords WIRED reviewed are meant to restrict pornographic content and games, some appear to have unintentionally caused broader restrictions that prevented students from accessing legitimate educational content. A ban on the word “assault,” for example, blocked news articles at least 60 times, including stories from The Atlantic, CNN, and the Associated Press. In total, APS blocked students accessing news websites nearly 40,000 times.

“It’s not the right approach to try and censor information because we are afraid of how they are going to react to it,” Caitlin Vogus, deputy director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press foundation, tells WIRED. “If anyone in our society has a stake in reading about school shootings, it’s the students themselves.”

The banned keywords also show that someone—APS could not say who—blocked access to critical health websites. For example, the websites of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Planned Parenthood were keyword blocked. CDC web pages, including many specifically pertaining to Covid-19, were censored as many as 1,607 times. Planned Parenthood pages were censored more than 50 times in Albuquerque while Blocksi was in use.

APS communications director Monica Armenta tells WIRED that, “to the best of my knowledge,” the district didn’t purposefully block URLs containing “avery” or the websites of the CDC and Planned Parenthood.

“We regularly referred our families and staff to the CDC for guidance on Covid,” Armenta says. “We did not find any issues with students or staff accessing CDC, Planned Parenthood, or ‘avery’ during school hours.” At the time of Armenta’s response, the district was no longer using the Blocksi filter that restricted those websites.

Nearly three-quarters of the blocked activity WIRED examined was not explicitly tied to a keyword, and the data APS provided did not explain why those web pages triggered the district’s filters.

Blocksi says it sorts content into 79 preset categories to make its blocking decisions. Those categories include “alternative beliefs,” “abortion,” “sex education,” “folklore,” and “meaningless content.” School staff can choose which of those categories to block, allow, or block with a warning.

GoGuardian says it uses machine learning algorithms that scan the content and context of a page, rather than just pick out keywords, to decide whether it’s appropriate for students. But WIRED’s analysis of censorship logs from APS raises questions about the effectiveness of GoGuardian’s filter at judging context. For example, between January and August of 2023, the district’s GoGuardian filter blocked more than 1,580 websites with the word “gay” in the URL. While that included domains and URLs that contained sexual content, many did not appear to have any sexual content at all. On May 18, the district’s GoGuardian filter blocked a La Cueva High School 10th grader’s one-word Google search for “gay.”

Harris, Albuquerque’s educational technology director, says the word “gay” shouldn’t have been blocked on its own but might have triggered another rule in the filter. After googling “gay” on her own computer, she speculated that GoGuardian might have blocked the search because the results page includes Google Maps listings for several bars in Albuquerque that cater to LGBTQ+ customers, and the district has chosen to block content related to alcohol on its devices.

GoGuardian’s filter can trigger automatic alerts to school staff about browsing activity. During an interview with WIRED, Harris received a GoGuardian Smart Alert notifying her that a student was looking at potentially dangerous material online. “This poor child is getting targeted because [they searched] ‘how to draw grass,’” Harris says. “And so it’s probably thinking ‘grass’ is marijuana.”

Harris says APS allows staff and students to request that content be unblocked. Several of the students who spoke to WIRED say they wouldn’t feel comfortable asking administrators to unblock content.

Tiera Tanksley, a research fellow who studies youth and technology policy at UCLA, tells WIRED that schools need to consider the consequences of over-filtering, especially when technology like GoGuardian’s Smart Alerts automatically notifies adults about what kids are looking at online.

“We have to remember who’s using school-issued devices,” Tanksley says. “It’s already baked in that these are going to be lower income, probably people of color, just because of the economic disparities. Getting flagged multiple times trying to access inappropriate content is opening the door for other types of disciplinary disparities,” she argues.

During the 2022-2023 school year, 66 percent of APS students identified as Hispanic, 20 percent as white, 5 percent as American Indian or Alaskan native, and 3 percent as Black, according to data published by the school district. Nearly 68 percent of the district’s students received free school meals, which is a rough reflection of how many families live near the poverty line and slightly higher than the national average.

Our investigation found that both the Blocksi and GoGuardian filters used by APS censored a wide range of words, websites, and online resources related directly to race and ethnicity. And students who spoke to WIRED say they were frequently blocked while attempting to research historical events that involved racism or violence.

When a 12th grader at the city’s Atrisco Heritage Academy High School tried to ask Google for information about “structural racism black community,” GoGuardian blocked their search, records reviewed by WIRED show. It also nixed a ninth grader’s search for illustrations of Black people, a seventh grader’s search for “pueblo indians,” a fourth grader’s image search for “immigrant,” and a ninth grader’s image search for “el mobimiento [sic] chicano”—the Mexican-American Chicano Movement of the 1960s.

Blocksi’s filters blocked similar search terms, including “how oppressed are black people.” And it blocked hundreds of attempts to access legal information for immigrants at USCIS.gov. On July 27, it prevented an APS staff member from opening the form used to apply for US citizenship online, APS records show.

Chavez, the La Cueva High School senior who leads their school’s Native American Student Union, says the district’s filters have hindered their attempts to research Indigenous heritage and Indigenous protests. ”Because I can’t find information on certain Indigenous topics, I’m wondering about kids who are younger than me, Indigenous kids who are trying to look up their heritage, trying to learn about their heritage,” Chavez says. “It frustrates me because they can’t. It’s not easily accessible, especially during school hours.”

Content related to gender, sexuality, and identity was also blocked across Albuquerque. For instance, the district’s web filters prevented six students from visiting pages at the Trevor Project, one of the nation’s leading LGBTQ+ youth advocacy groups. Even the websites of local youth nonprofits, including Together for Brothers and the Southwest Organizing Project, were restricted. Three different middle schoolers, on three different days, searched for “pride flag” and were blocked.

In a statement to WIRED, Casey Pick, director of law & policy for the Trevor Project, characterized APS’s censorship as “dangerous” and “unethical.”

“Blocking content inherently suggests that it’s something that is inappropriate or that people shouldn’t see or know about,” says Josh Block, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who focuses on the civil-liberties-focused nonprofit’s LGBT and HIV Project. “That certainly has a message that reverberates beyond just the computer screen.”

Gordon, the GoGuardian spokesperson, says the company “does not block searches or restrict access to legitimate educational sites by default, nor do we block LGBTQIA+, reproductive health, or racial justice websites by default.”

Web pages belonging to the ACLU were blocked 68 times.

Safety vs. Education

THE CONSEQUENCES OF school web filtering reach far beyond Albuquerque. Virtually every school in the US uses an automatic web filter, largely due to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) passed by Congress in 2000. The law requires schools and libraries to block “child pornography” and other content deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors” in order to be eligible for federal technology aid known as E-rate funding.

In districts like Albuquerque’s, which invested millions to provide take-home computers to students, the filters have increasingly come to govern kids’ online lives both inside and outside of school. Our investigation found that nearly 10 percent of the blocks between January 2022 and August 2023 occurred on weekends.

The filters catch plenty of content that district officials say should legitimately be blocked—some students try to look at porn, many try to play online games during school, and a significant portion of the content blocked by Albuquerque’s filters appears to be pop-ups, advertisements, and spam. Harris says the district has intentionally chosen to block students from accessing generative AI tools; during the three months it was in place, Blocksi prevented more than 41,000 attempts to access ChatGPT.

“There are hundreds of thousands of sites that are being created every day that we don’t have the resources to vet and look at all the time,” Harris says. “We do the best with our resources and our stance really is to limit the amount of filtering and teach digital citizenship.”

Since CIPA was first proposed in 1998, critics and supporters alike have raised concerns about the impact of web-filtering technology and the balance between free access to information and safety.

“I am very concerned about censorship,” the law’s primary sponsor, late Arizona Senator John McCain, told The New York Times in February 1998. “But I think we need to act to try and provide some rules, otherwise we may find ourselves in a situation where Americans say, ‘Look, this has got to stop; we are willing to sacrifice some of our civil liberties to protect our children.’”

Students and civil rights groups have continued to fight against web censorship. In 2011, the ACLU launched a “Don’t Filter Me” campaign that encouraged schools to stop using web filters that blocked LGBTQ+ content. The campaign culminated in a 2012 case in which a federal court ordered the school district in Camdenton, Missouri, to stop using a filter that explicitly blocked non-adult LGBTQ+ websites.

In the decade since that ruling, students have consistently complained about school web filters’ allegedly discriminatory blocking patterns. A student in Hawaii claimed his school’s Securly web filter was labeling sites that had “gay” in the domain as pornography. In Park City, Utah, students complained that they were allegedly prevented from searching for words including “gay,” “lesbian,” and “queer.” And in Katy, Texas, student protests and an ACLU complaint last year forced the school district to stop using a web filter with a category that the complaint said had been titled “Alternative Sexual Lifestyles (GLBT) Global” and blocked access to the Trevor Project and other LGBTQ+ support organizations’ websites.

Victories against inaccurate and potentially dangerous web filters are rare. In September, a nationwide survey conducted by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that a majority of students believe their school’s web filter hinders their ability to do schoolwork. In schools with web filters, 71 percent of students agreed that it was sometimes hard to complete school assignments because web filters were blocking access to essential information. The same percentage of students said they’d been blocked from visiting websites they felt they should have been allowed to visit. And LGBTQ+ students reported being blocked from content at higher rates than non-LGBTQ+ students on both questions.

More than half of the teachers who responded to CDT’s survey (57 percent) agreed that their school’s web filters made completing assignments harder. Thirty-seven percent of teachers believed their school’s web filters were more likely to block content associated with LGBTQ+ students, and 32 percent believed the filters were more likely to block content associated with students of color.

Chavez, the senior at La Cueva High School in northeast Albuquerque, says they and many other students at their high school have stopped using their APS-purchased Chromebooks altogether. Instead, they say, students now bring their personal laptops from home to school. But other students say they don’t have that option.

“It totally inhibits me from doing proper research or slows down my whole workflow,” Mateo, a senior at another APS high school who asked that we not use his real name, says of the district’s filters. But his school won’t allow students to bring personal laptops, meaning he has no choice but to use the filtered internet.

“I think it’s kind of redundant and almost offensive,” Mateo says, “that they would try to censor everything to such an obscene degree.”

Source:-https://www.oedb.org/

This Strategy Helped My Students Learn to Disagree Respectfully

December 2, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

This Strategy Helped My Students Learn to Disagree Respectfully

“What will you remember about our class?” I asked my English class in May, during the last month of their senior year. My students sat quietly considering the question.

“I will remember how we would disagree, but we were still very respectful, and I just loved it. I loved how much respect we hold for one another,” one of them said.

I nodded to show that I understood and that this was also important to me. I, too, was struck by how artfully my students disagreed. In a year full of tumult, geopolitical strife and a general COVID hangover, I often found myself marveling at how my 17- and 18-year old students calmly and respectfully disagreed about a range of topics, including their perspectives on the Black Lives Matter movement and the nuances surrounding it, Donald Trump’s decisions during his presidency, and the moral complexities surrounding George’s choice to shoot Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.”

How did this happen? In short, I decided to experiment with Spider Web Discussions, a strategy that leverages the web of connections between and among learners as they volley a discussion idea back and forth. I learned about this revolutionary classroom practice in Alexis Wiggins’ 2017 book, “The Best Class You Never Taught.” The idea is simple. The teacher coaches students before and after the discussion, sharing norms and modeling sentence starters, but during the discussion, the teacher remains silent.

We practiced this strategy regularly throughout the year. During every discussion, we placed a piece of paper at the center of our circle that read: “The goal is that we understand this work and ourselves more.” This consistent goal drove our conversations and the development of a set of norms that we used to foster a culture of respect and to ensure that every voice was heard.

Over time, students developed social skills and strategies for listening and effectively expressing disagreement. I began hearing my students say things like, “I see what you’re saying, but I disagree because…” and “I hear where you are coming from, but can I ask a question?”

I had been teaching writing and English at this rural public PreK-12 school for nearly five years, but this year felt different. My students developed a real respect for civic discourse and the skills for entering into it.

That was the last class I taught at the high school before moving into my new role as an assistant professor at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska, where I teach a course for pre-service teachers on educational technology.

Applying This Strategy to My Work With Pre-Service Teachers

Working with pre-service teachers is quite different from teaching high schoolers. One of the challenges is to find ways to model great teaching while delivering the content my students need. As I reviewed the content in my educational technology course for undergraduates to prepare for the fall, I couldn’t help but think about how there were so many complex issues that called for open dialogue, one of the most obvious and timely being pedagogical and instructional shifts related to the emergence of artificial intelligence tools. I wanted to draw from my experience with Spider Web Discussions to engage my students in thoughtful discourse around AI in the classroom and recreate that environment where students could safely disagree as some raised concerns and pitfalls, while others embraced possibilities.

I wondered if I could use the strategy to get us not just experimenting with AI tools, but also talking about ethical issues and questions that were on our minds. I decided to use the practice with a text we read, “The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom,” which included practical step-by-step directions that can allow both teachers and pre-service teachers to wade into the waters of AI.

Before our first Spider Web Discussion, we watched a video of high school students using the strategy, which offered a clear view of what this type of discussion looks like. It illustrated students holding their text, “Romeo and Juliet,” pointing to specific sections, asking questions and disagreeing respectfully. At no point in the video did the teacher talk. Instead, she coached her students both before and after they started.

As my students began discussing the text, I found myself wanting to say so much. But, I restrained myself and was surprised again and again to see that my students brought up all of the points I had been itching to talk about.

The Importance of Creating Safe Spaces for Open Discourse

As a social constructivist, I wasn’t surprised that in addition to student learning, this form of discourse led me to learn a lot too. Over the next few weeks, as we continued using the strategy, students — without my direction — started to send me articles, video links and movie recommendations that all tied to our discussions around AI. It was clear that the conversation was moving outside the classroom and curiosity was piqued. What surprised me most was that the ideas they shared differed so much from my own, and how that created learning opportunities for me. For example, without letting my students take the lead, I would not be thinking about the environmental implications and the morality of graduating high school students who have never used AI. This strategy allowed me to make space to learn from and with my students.

As a former high school English teacher, I can’t help thinking about Frankenstein — the moral dilemma that emerges as a theme and author Mary Shelley’s warning about the unbridled pursuit of science and technology weighs on my mind. Similar ethical issues have arisen in our discussions around AI. The thing that gives me peace is that we’re talking about these issues in our class.

We’re talking about challenges and consequences of using these tools, such as how these technologies may perpetuate racism, the impact of implicit bias in decision-making, and the risks students face from AI hallucinations and prompt drift (the decrease of a generative AI tool’s ability to follow instructions over time). We’re questioning the equity issues that arise as AI tools move behind paywalls. And as we explore tools, student’s are openly conversing about how this is affecting their pre-service teacher education. For example, is it a bad thing that just as these aspiring teachers are learning to write lesson plans, we’re exploring tools that create them — and create them fast?

As the teacher and facilitator, these questions can give me vertigo, but what I’ve found so far is that even as we zoom in on existential questions, we find our way back to classroom practicalities. The reality is that some of my students will experience frustration as they get jobs in districts that ban AI tools. Others will feel pressured to use tools despite their questions and hesitations. While Spider Web Discussions can get wobbly at times, they’ve created space for us to explore tough conversations with less fear and they’ve set us up to learn and grow together.

Source:- https://www.edsurge.com/

17 WAYS TO HELP STUDENTS LEARN TO FIT IN WITH THEIR PEERS

December 2, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

Are you looking for ways to teach students learn to fit in with their peers? If so, keep reading.

1. Assess the appropriateness of the task to ascertain (a) if the task is too easy, (b) if the task is too complicated, and (c) if the duration of time scheduled to finish the task is sufficient.

2. Stop the learner from becoming overstimulated by a learning experience(e.g., monitor or supervise learner behavior to limit overexcitement in physical learning activities, games, parties, etc.).

3. Do not force the learner to interact with others.

4. Provide a predetermined signal (e.g., hand signal, oral signal, etc.) when the learner begins to exhibit unacceptable behavior(s).

5. Provide the learner with duties in group situations so peers may view the learner more positively.

6. Get the learner to be the leader of a cooperative learning experience if they possess a mastery of skills or an interest in that area.

7. Praise those students in the classroom who properly interact with the learner.

8. Assist the learner in finding unacceptable behaviors and teach them ways to change those behaviors.

9. Notify others who will be working with the learner (e.g., teachers, the principal, clerks, etc.) about the learner’s tendency to ignore the consequences of their behavior s.

10. Intervene early and often when there is a problem to prevent more severe problems from happening.

11. Give the learner logical consequences for unacceptable behavior(e.g., for disturbing others during group learning activities, the learner should have to leave the learning experience).

12. Make sure the learner does not become involved in overstimulating learning activities.

13. Talk with the learner to explain that they may be trying too hard to fit in and that they should relax and let friendships develop naturally.

14. Embody appropriate social behavior for the learner at all times.

15. Alter or adjust situations that cause the learner to demonstrate behaviors that are extreme.

16. Consider using an adaptive behavior management app. Click here to view a list of apps that we recommend.

17. Click here to learn about six bonus strategies for challenging problem behaviors and mastering classroom management.

Source:- https://www.theedadvocate.org/17-ways-to-help-students-learn-to-fit-in-with-their-peers/

The Content Every High School Student Should Learn (But Doesn’t)

December 2, 2023Education at SchoolPadho Leekho

A teacher provides feedback on a student’s work.

Key Points

1. While core literacies remain pillars of democracy, we need to add new content areas to ensure future-ready students.

2. From healthy living to civics, young people must learn how to take care of ourselves, one another and the planet.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not have a nationalized curriculum. The combination of local and state control allows for extraordinary leverage on outcome decisions and content alignment. Our country’s preservation of state’s rights empowers schools and states to contextualize both policy and implementation. Federal oversight comes, typically, with leveraged grants to encourage participation. The policies articulated in the No Child Left Behind Act and Every Student Succeeds Act fall into this category.

In many high schools in the nation, the traditional course sequence and graduation requirements remain static: four years of English, three years of math, three years of science, etc. Both mathematical and language literacies still hold major importance for every graduate. And, as the world becomes more complex and unpredictable, new consideration should be given to the required core content.

We talk a lot about the most innovative learner-centered schools that combine personalized, competency-based and project-based learning co-designed around real-world experiences. Here, content emerges from student interest in high-purpose topics while also linking to standards or competencies. These learning environments are challenging the Carnegie status quo and sit on the horizon of education. While important signals for the future of learning, they remain the minority.

Updating content areas would accelerate learning around three core types of skills expected by schools: core skills (typically the skills of writing, reading, mathematics, history, arts found in state standards), technological skills (industry skills earned through CTE programs, work-based learning, apprenticeships, career pathways, etc.), and transferable skills (durable skills, XQ). Weaving in the content below will create engaging and future forward ways to nurture the core, technological and durable skills while preparing young people to govern, contribute and thrive as adults.

Next-Gen Economics

Every learner should engage in learning about entrepreneurship. Releasing a generation of empowered problem-solvers equipped with the tools to contribute to ventures that have both financial and/or social impact, helps future generations find their sense of purpose and ownership. Uncharted Learning, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and KnoPro from NAF all provide resources to embed entrepreneurial experiences and content.

Additionally, with both our country and many individuals experiencing significant debt, financial literacy remains low for graduates. Yet, it can have the most profound outcome on financial stability. Budgeting, credit, borrowing, and investing increase the long-term probability of financial stability for graduates. Both entrepreneurship and personal finance are well-represented in those who choose the CTE Finance or CTE Business and Administration career clusters, but this is not universally available. Many free or low-cost resources exist (see list here).

Artificial Intelligence

While school leaders and educators still are in the early stages of understanding the impact of AI, there is no doubt that it will rapidly become immersed in the education sector (likely in hyper-personalized learning of core skills and support for learning design and assessment). However, every graduate should understand the core principles of AI functionality and how to use it to augment intelligence and performance. These skills will be requisite in almost every future professional career. TeachAI.org recently released a guide for AI implementation while some districts, like Gwinnett County Public Schools, offer an AI CTE program pathway.

Civics and Citizenship

While often found in civics classrooms, the content remains less about good citizenship and more about the structures and function of government. While the structures and function are important, every student should understand their role in a democracy through political processes, how to move an idea to action, and community organizing for change. For example, the United States, with less than 50% of eligible 18-29 year old voters participating in elections, is in dire need of core education in civics. Organizations such as iCivics and Citizens and Scholars offer innovative and engaging approaches to civic education.

Media Literacy

Few other influential forces impact the current (and future) generations like digital media. The power of disinformation, misinformation, bias, etc. propagated through heavily financed algorithms will only increase. High school graduates need the tools and filters to process and evaluate everything they see online to better understand ways to get to the truth. Advances in AI around image, audio and video generation will make discernment of fact even more difficult. Resources such as Civic Online Reasoning at the core of every high school curriculum will have a significant positive change for future generations.

Healthy Living

Data shows the declining mental and physical health of adolescents. A generation struggling with mental and physical health increases the emotional and financial costs of a nation. While physical education programs have changed significantly over the years (like less dodgeball and rope climbing and more yoga and personal fitness), students still disengage from physical education. Accelerating, personalizing and customizing healthy living as part of core learning will increase the odds of healthy adults. Healthy food programs such as Food Corps and innovative physical education programs that focus on personal fitness can be integrated into the school day.

Place and Sustainability

Too many learners graduate high school with little to no knowledge about their local context and the long-term social, economic and ecological factors that drive the success or demise of a community. Every learner should graduate not only with a deep understanding of their own place, but should also know how to understand and impact future communities. Finding local purpose to inspire students through the creation of high-impact projects (Teton Science Schools’ Place-based Education, High Tech High) and building content around sustainability standards (Cloud Institute) can increase the long-term vitality of local and regional communities.

Neuroscience

One of the last frontiers in understanding the human body (along with the microbiome) is the brain. Every day, students are bombarded with outside stimuli that impact their brains from substances (alcohol, vaping, drug use, etc.) to technology (media, phones) – all while going through one of the more significant changes in the human brain – adolescence. Teaching relevant neuroscience could improve choice-making, mental health and learning in general (Global Online Academy, University of Wisconsin Neuroscience Training Program). By graduation all students should be able to describe the conditions and processes for how they learn and how they manage stress.

Data Science

Data science has surfaced over the last decade as critically important in many higher ed institutions and professions. Too many young people graduate high school never having had to create a spreadsheet, let alone organize, analyze and synthesize large amounts of data. Given the continued acceleration (again hyper-charged via AI) of data creation, every graduate needs to understand how to find, interpret, organize and analyze data in every form (YouCubed).

Current Events

While traditional history has expansive coverage in schools, most learners experience fact immersion rather than relevance and understanding. Every high school learner should experience history through a modern-day lens to both understand the throughline (see Throughline podcast) and the repeated themes of history — war, peace, power, oppression, freedom, religion, etc. — to find hope and skills to imagine a more peaceful future. Facing History provides a Current Events toolkit for those ready to jump in.

Systems and Futures

Understanding both systems thinking (the complex interactivity of multiple elements) and futures thinking (aptitudes for transformative vision-seeking over short-term solutions) is critical in a complex and uncertain world. By explicitly creating content and experiences around these concepts, young people are better equipped to anticipate and address current and future challenges.

To be clear, literacy remains paramount and a core pillar of society. While as a nation we still greatly struggle with literacy rates, we cannot wait to adapt our current content base toward possibility, opportunity and contribution. If a high school does not have the support or resources to complete redesign, rethinking the core curriculum may be an alternative first step when state or local policy allows. Replacing or merging the typical core content with the ten content areas above better supports the current generation of students to tackle an unpredictable and uncertain world.

Source:- https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/11/20/the-content-every-high-school-student-should-learn-but-doesnt/