This list was started as a collection to include updates, research, and resources to create healthy learning environments and to support the teaching and learning of Social and Emotional core competencies. It now also includes critical perspectives with attention to the ways that the field of SEL has changed. See also: http://bit.ly/edpsychtech and http://bit.ly/safe_schools_resources.
What most helps young people thrive in a challenging academic environment? Answers from students bear out what research has found: social and emotional factors constitute a crucial underpinning for learning.
In recent WKCD interviews at School of the Future in New York City, middle schoolers gave their own examples of how everyday interactions between students, peers, and adults affected how they learned in the classroom.
Their descriptions reflected some key unspoken questions that adolescents bring with them into a school environment:
Will I able to do the work here? Will I be smart enough?
Will I be safe here? Will I be teased or made to feel bad somehow?
Will I get to help decide what happens to me here?
NOTE: For years WKCD has gathered, most of all, the voices and vision of high-school-age youth—although we did publish the popular Fires in the Middle School Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Middle Schoolers by Kathleen Cushman and Laura Rogers (The New Press, 2008). In the months ahead, we aim to include more voices and perspectives from the middle grades.
Abstract "With regards to efforts to imagine more equitable spaces of learning for all students, we are compelled to ask: How can SEL programs address the needs of marginalized, minoritized, and/or historically under-resourced students without deeply considering the cultured context of social interaction and school learning? Although evidence shows SEL programs yield benefits in multiple domains, most programs are based on monolithic approaches that often do not consider dynamics of power and oppression in the context of schooling. In this paper, we discuss the crucial role of culture in SEL frameworks. We propose adopting an interdisciplinary lens to integrate culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) into SEL programs to promote student well-being and academic achievement across contexts."
For full post and access to download paper, please visit:
"Mindfulness is a fast growing trend both in the world generally and in schools. Teachers are turning to the practice as a simple way to restore calm to the classroom, help students find some quiet space, and build self-regulation skills. Some teachers say their personal mindfulness practice has helped them respond more calmly to students and helps them keep perspective. But it’s also important to realize that some of the ways mindfulness is practiced -- sitting still, eyes closed, in silence -- can also be triggers for students who have experienced trauma.
“This isn’t about calming down,” said Sam Himelstein, a clinical psychologist, trainer and author who has spent most of his career working with incarcerated youth. “Calming down is great and it is a skill that youth can get better at. But if we’re talking about mindfulness, at its core, we are just talking about being present with whatever it is.”
Himelstein has worked with teachers who get upset when students don’t want to engage in mindfulness a certain way -- perhaps they don’t want to close their eyes or won’t sit the recommended way. But none of those things are truly about mindfulness, Himelstein said. Forcing students to engage with the practice in prescribed ways may do more harm than good, especially if the student has experienced trauma.
“You never want to force people to close their eyes,” he said. That alone can cause trauma for some kids. “The goal is not to turn people into meditation monks. It’s just about learning to turn inwards and practice self-awareness.”
Himelstein has a lot of empathy for the young people he works with because he was an angry kid. He got into trouble in his early teenage years for drugs, and was sent to juvenile hall seven times. He also spent a lot of time in group homes once released, and it was there that a skilled mentor put him in a leadership position and sparked a desire in Himelstein to do counseling.
Himelstein was lucky that he got into trouble during middle school and was able to get back on track for high school. He was also lucky to be born into an affluent, white, two-parent home in Berkeley, California. His time in juvenile hall showed him what other kids his age were up against.
“A lot of the kids I work with it’s a real uphill battle when they come into the system at [ages] 15 to 16 because they just have so many high school credits to catch up on that it becomes overwhelming,” Himelstein said. “It’s so easy for them to get in the mindset that 'school isn’t for me' and turn that into a core belief.”
When Himelstein explains mindfulness to young people he likes to use a metaphor coined by Larry Rosenberg the dog-mind versus the lion-mind. If a human waves a bone in front of a dog, the dog will track that bone and chase it when it’s thrown. But wave a bone in front of a lion’s face and that lion might eat the human behind the bone.
“The dog can’t see beyond the bone. If I control the bone, I control the dog’s reality,” Himelstein said. But the lion sees a broader picture. He sees the human behind the bone. “That ability to see the larger picture gives the lion more autonomy, more choices.”
Himelstein then directs students to think of the bone as anger or anxiety. Reacting with the mind of a lion allows a person to say, “I’m angry right now,” and that little bit of metacognitive space between the person and the thought allows them to choose how to respond.
“It’s much easier said than done, but that’s what mindfulness is,” Himelstein said. “It’s noticing what’s happening in the present moment with a non-reactive mind.” When he’s presenting to youths, he asks them: Who’s the king of the jungle? The lion. And who doesn’t want to be the king of their inner jungle?
Himelstein has found that teens gravitate to this metaphor because it makes the concept less abstract. They can see how mindfulness will be useful to them and how it could give them an edge. Additionally, the metaphor becomes a language thread Himelstein can return to over and over again. “Lion-mind” is a shorthand for that ability to choose a reaction.
TRAUMA SENSITIVE MINDFULNESS
“A trauma-informed lens is, ‘this behavior may be a result of some sort of trauma.’ Or even better, ‘this may be a way for them to protect themselves,’ ” Himelstein said. There are some common issues he sees when trauma interacts with mindfulness.
Students don’t take the activity seriously
Students are triggered by silence because it feels like a storm is brewing, so they don’t want to be quiet
Students feel too many requests are made of them without the requisite trust being built up
Students exhibit avoidance behavior
Himelstein says building an authentic relationship is key to accessing the trust required to make mindfulness effective. For some kids, chaos is part of trauma so when adults are unpredictable they can’t be trusted. That’s why being a “predictable adult” is a good way to be authentic with kids.
Himelstein also offers these guidelines for teachers using mindfulness:
Don’t force it
Don’t focus on the logistics like sitting with eyes closed
Somatic awareness, like counting breaths, could be a good place to start. “There’s different types of awareness. Sometimes we’re really aware of what’s going on in the mind and sometimes we’re more aware of what’s going on in the body,” Himelstein said.
Think about the child’s window of tolerance and whether he is already triggered or not. “It’s good to strike when the iron is cold in a lot of these cases,” Himelstein said.
Build relationships
When Himelstein works with teachers, he’s conscientious of how different the classroom setting is from a therapeutic one. While teachers aren’t trained therapists, students gravitate towards a trusted teacher and want to share with them. On top of that, teachers are keenly aware of their duty to cover required content.
“They do have the hardest job out of all the direct service folks because they have all this stuff the’ve got to get through,” Himelstein said.
He likes to affirm with teachers right off-the-bat that the public school setting with 30-40 kids in a classroom is already not trauma-informed. It’s a very difficult context in which to build relationships, and the architecture, policies and procedures that can make schools feel institutional only make it harder. That’s why often Himelstein sees mindfulness first-and-foremost as a self-care technique for teachers. If teachers can successfully use their mindfulness practice to create metacognitive distance, they can take their ego out of interactions with kids.
“Classroom management skills that are based in trauma informed principles, which means learning how to redirect, learning how to confront people with a non-aggressive pose, not taking it personally, all of that overlaps to help form a relationship,” Himelstein said.
If teachers can see the trauma-informed approach as a way to better build relationships, he thinks it may feel less daunting. Once those relationships are formed and students trust their teachers, it’s more likely that mindfulness will be an effective tool for them.
Many teachers already see relationship building as a core part of their effectiveness, but one practice Himelstein recommends may be less intuitive in the rush to deliver information to students: active listening. “That’s a super simple concept, but it goes a long way, especially in an educational setting because kids are used to not just being presented to, but talked down to,” Himelstein said.
SELF CARE
Cultivating a trauma-informed classroom is much harder when educators themselves are burnt out. Building relationships, not reacting defensively to student behavior and taking time to listen to students can feel nearly impossible if the adult is barely making it through the day. Classrooms can be stressful places for teachers and even someone who has been practicing mindfulness for a long time may have difficulty calling upon that knowledge when triggered -- just like kids.
That’s why a core part of a trauma-informed classroom is a healthy teacher. There are several categories of self-care, according to Himelstein:
Regular cultivation of relaxation response (3Rs): things like watching TV, going into nature, getting a massage.
Effortful training: These are things like more sustained meditation or exercise where the payoff comes over a longer time period.
Creativity: something that gives purpose and adds vibrancy to life. Writing, reading, painting or other passions are examples.
Advocacy: everything from learning to say “No” (set boundaries), to working at a higher level to impact policy or structural change.
Ultimately, Himelstein wants teachers to be aware of how students who have experienced trauma might be experiencing mindfulness in the classroom so they can respond in more empathetic ways. And, recognizing that sometimes teaching is traumatic and the practice may be more for the adults than the kids.
“You’re casting a wide net,” Himelstein said. “This is how it should be anyway. This is called trauma informed care because it’s often not done this way and when it’s not done it triggers people more. This should just be what engaged teaching is called.”...
Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are a private financing mechanism used to fund social programs. Also termed 'Pay For Success,' SIB financing involves private entities funding projects aimed at improving social outcomes. If by the end of the project period, 'success' metrics are met (according to third-party evaluators), investors then profit by being paid interest on top of the reimbursed government funds for the cost of the project. This page includes a collection of updates and critical perspectives on these profit structures and on Blockchain Identity systems, de-centralized online ledger programs, poised to be the data backbone that would provide 'proof' of 'program impact' for investors.
While we may struggle with delivering and exacting justice here in the adult world, it seems that children as young as 3 have the concept down pat.
In a new study published in the journal Current Biology researchers from Germany are finding that toddlers are not only surprisingly empathetic, but that concepts like restorative justice may come intuitively to them.
When examining children between the ages of three and five, researchers found their subjects focused strongly on carrying out justice and punishment for those who “deserved” it. Not only did the children prefer to give missing items back to rightful owners, but if returning the item was not an option, the participants would protect the item, and ensure another party would not take what did not belong to them. Even more interesting was the fact children of this age were just as willing to respond to the needs of another individual — even if that individual was a puppet — as they were to their own. Researchers believe these findings may give us insight into the core of justice in relation to human nature.
What would it take to weave social and emotional learning (SEL) into the daily fabric of our nation’s high schools? This new WKCD collection includes five case studies of a diverse collection of American high schools where SEL is core, research and commentary, student voices, and educator resources.
This is an excellent resource to hear students' experiences about social and emotional support in their schools. Highly recommend exploring this site and the related videos as great examples of how we can bridge research to practice in support of youth development.
Adolescents’ Interpretations of the Role of Emotion in High School
by C. Horner, T. Wallace & M. Bundick (2015)
Background: To persistently engage in academic tasks and efficiently process cognitively demanding material in school, successful learners must employ various self-regulatory systems—including the regulation of emotional experiences and expressions—in response to social and task-specific demands. Furthermore, emotional information helps students derive meaning from and assign causal attributions to events such as academic and social experiences, which influence motivation for action. Thus, it is important to understand the interplay between learners’ emotions and the school environment.
Research Questions: Two research questions were addressed: (1) What patterns of emotional expression/suppression and emotion coaching opportunities did youth perceive in their relationships with school-based adults? and (2) What social processes do youth attribute to patterns of emotional expression or suppression?
Participants: Youth from urban high schools (N = 72) in California, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh participated in the study.
Research Design: Facilitators used a semiflexible protocol to prompt youth in 10 focus groups to discuss identity and relational development.
Data Collection and Analysis: Focus group sessions were recorded, and NVivo9 software was used to iteratively code and analyze verbatim transcripts.
Findings: Analyses revealed a strong pattern of emotional suppression in the context of relationships with educators paired with high valuation of opportunities for emotional expression. Sustained emotional suppression was commonly attributed to social expectations in schools. We discuss these results in the context of emotion socialization and school culture to suggest implications for research and practice.
"The ability to bounce back from adversity is associated with a variety of skills. Learn more about the resilience research and supports and strategies to address resilience in young people."
"In June 2021, as students and teachers were finishing up a difficult school year, Priscilla Chan, wife of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made a live virtual appearance on the “Today” show, announcing that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), along with its “partner”Gradient Learning, was launching Along, a new digital tool to help students and teachers create meaningful connections in the aftermath of the pandemic.
CZI, the LLC foundation set up by Zuckerberg and Chan to give away 99 percent of his Facebook stock, is one of many technology companies that have created software products that claim to address the social and emotional needs of children. And school districts appear to be rapidly adopting these products to help integrate the social and emotional skills of students into the school curriculum, a practice commonly called social-emotional learning (SEL).
Panorama Education—whose financial backers also include CZI as well as other Silicon Valley venture capitalists such as the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs—markets a survey application for collecting data on students’ social-emotional state that is used by 23,000 schools serving a quarter of the nation’s students, according to TechCrunch.
Gaggle, which uses students’ Google and Microsoft accounts to scan for keywords and collect social-emotional-related data, has contracts with at least 1,500 school districts, Education Week reports.
Before the pandemic temporarily shuttered school buildings, the demand for tracking what students do while they’re online, and how that activity might inform schools about how to address students’ social and emotional needs, was mostly driven by desires to prevent bullying and school shootings, according to a December 2019 report by Vice.
Tech companies that make and market popular software products such as GoGuardian, Securly, and Bark claim to alert schools of any troubling social-emotional behaviors students might exhibit when they’re online so that educators can intervene, Vice reports, but “[t]here is, however, no independent research that backs up these claims.”
COVID-19 and its associated school closures led to even more concerns about students’ “anxiety, depression and other serious mental health conditions,” reports EdSource. The article points to a survey conducted from April 25 to May 1, 2020, by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, which found that 68 percent of students said they were in need of mental health support post-pandemic.
A major focus of CZI’s investment in education is its partnership with Summit Public Schools to “co-build the Summit Learning Platform to be shared with schools across the U.S.” As Valerie Strauss reported in the Washington Post following the release of a critical research brief by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, in 2019, Summit Public Schools spun off TLP Education to manage the Summit Learning program, which includes the Summit Learning Platform, according to Summit Learning’s user agreement. TLP Education has since becomeGradient Learning, which has at this point placed both the Summit Learning program and Along in 400 schools that serve 80,000 students.
Since 2015, CZI has invested more than $280 million in developing the Summit Learning program. This total includes $134 million in reported contributions revenue to Summit Public Schools 501(c)(3) from 2015 to 2018 and another $140 million in reported awards to Summit Public Schools, Gradient Learning, and TLP Education (as well as organizations that helped in their SEL tools’ development) posted since 2018; a further $8 million has been given to “partner” organizations listed on the Along website—which include GripTape, Character Lab, Black Teacher Collaborative, and others—and their evaluations by universities.
An enticement that education technology companies are using to get schools to adopt Along and other student monitoring products is to offer these products for free, at least for a trial period, or for longer terms depending on the level of service. But “free” doesn’t mean without cost.
As CZI funds and collaborates with its nonprofit partners to expand the scope of student monitoring software in schools, Facebook (aka Meta) is actively working to recruit and retain young users on its Facebook and Instagram applications.
That CZI’s success at getting schools to adopt Along might come at the cost of exploiting children was revealed when Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee of the company, who made tens of thousands of pages of Facebook’s internal documents public, disclosed that Facebook is highly invested in creating commercial products for younger users, including an Instagram Kids application intended for children who are under 13 years. While Facebook executives discussed the known harms of their products on “tweens,” they nevertheless forged ahead, ignoring suggestions from researchers on ways to reduce the harm. As Haugen explained, “they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
The information gathered from SEL applications such as Along will likely be used to build out the data infrastructure that generates knowledge used to make behavioral predictions. This information is valuable to corporations seeking a competitive edge in developing technology products for young users.
Schools provide a useful testing ground to experiment with ways to hold the attention of children, develop nudges, and elicit desirable behavioral responses. What these tech companies learn from students using their SEL platforms can be shared with their own product developers and other companies developing commercial products for children, including social media applications.
Yet Facebook’s own internal research confirms social media is negatively associated with teen mental health, and this association is strongest for those who are already vulnerable—such as teens with preexisting mental health conditions, those who are from socially marginalized groups, and those who have disabilities.
There are legislative restrictions governing the collection and use of student data.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of student data collected by educational institutions, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) requires commercial businesses to obtain parental consent to gather data from “children under 13 years of age.” Unfortunately, if a commercial contract with a school or district designates that business a “school official,” the child data can be extracted by the business, leaving the responsibility to obtain consent with the school district.
While these agreements contain information relating to “privacy,” the obfuscatory language and lack of alternative options mean the “parental consent” obtained is neither informed nor voluntary.
Although these privacy policies contain data privacy provisions, there’s a caveat: Those provisions don’t apply to “de-identified” data, i.e., personal data with “unique identifiers” (e.g., names and ID numbers) that have been removed. De-identified data information is valuable to tech corporations because it is used for research, product development, and improvement of services; however, this de-identified data is relatively easy to re-identify. “Privacy protection” just means it might be a little bit more difficult to find an individual.
What privacy protection doesn’t mean is that the privacy of children is protected from the “personalized” content delivered to them by machine algorithms. It doesn’t mean the video of a child talking about “the time I felt afraid” isn’t out there floating in the ether, feeding the machines to adjust their future.
The connections between the Along platform and corporate technology giant Facebook are a good example of how these companies can operate in schools while maintaining their right to use personal information of children for their own business purposes.
Given concerns that arose in a congressional hearing in December 2021 about Meta’s Instagram Kids application, as reported by NPR, there is reason to believe these companies will continue to skirt key questions about how they play fast and loose with children’s data and substitute a “trust us” doctrine for meaningful protections.
As schools ramp up these SEL digital tools, parents and students are increasingly concerned about how school-related data can be exploited. According to a recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, 69 percent of parents are concerned about their children’s privacy and security protection, and large majorities of students want more knowledge and control of how their data is used.
Schools are commonly understood to be places where children can make mistakes and express their emotions without their actions and expressions being used for profit, and school leaders are customarily charged with the responsibility to protect children from any kind of exploitation. Digital SEL products, including Along, may be changing those expectations.
By Anna L. Noble is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
How and when educators, administrators, superintendents, and school boards make decisions about students and families, budget allocation and resource distribution is undergoing a transformation with the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Districts are trying to leverage new technologies to improve efficiencies and increase effectiveness without fully understanding the cost, compromise and collateral effects."
Marika Pfefferkorn segment of webinar 12:30: History/background description of St. Paul, MN data sharing project and related community action 25:35: Algorithms, Big Data, Predictive Analytics 28:35: Student voice - "My past does not predict my future" 35:00: Cradle to Prison Algorithms 36:15: Recognizing Points of Entry
Roxana Marachi segment of webinar
44:00: No Data About Us Without Us Intro 52:24: Student Protest of Zuckerberg backed Summit Digital Learning platform
55:13: Behavioral Data Extraction in the name of SEL/Trauma Informed Approaches
1:10:23: Global Silicon Valley Asset Management / push for technology via privatization 1:15:12: "Online Preschool"
1:17:32: Data Justice Lab (1:21:20 on Data Harms)
1:20:09: Data Exploitation 1:22:09: Chan Zuckerberg screenshot from CDE presentation 2/22/19 1:25:40: CZI funding of data sharing project uses "predictive analytics" with Hoonuit Early Warning & Intervention System to flag "at risk" students
1:28:56: Critical perspectives on Pay for Success, Social Impact Bonds, Impact Investing, and Blockchain related data extraction
1:30:46: Next steps/what Can We Do? Resources and Q/A
Dr. Michelle Frazier Trotman Scott Title: Associate Professor of Special Education Research Interest: Achievement Gap, Special Education Over-Representation, Gifted Education, Under-Representation, Twice Exceptional, Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms, and Increasing Family Involvement. BIO: Dr. Michelle Frazier Trotman Scott is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in the College of Education. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in special education and undergraduate courses in diversity. Her research foci are over-representation minorities in special education, under-representation of minorities in gifted education, the achievement gap, and parenting and she has published in all areas. Prior to her appointment at UWG, Dr. Trotman Scott was a middle school teacher, a middle and high school coach, a principal of a large elementary school and a superintendent of a charter school in Ohio, and then an adjunct professor at The Ohio State University.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson presents his research on how social and emotional learning can affect the brain. Read more about the topic, including how to use social and emotional learning to stop bullying, on the Edutopia website: http://www.edutopia.org/social-emotional-learning
For years, there has been a steady stream of headlines about the soaring mental health needs of college students and their struggles with anxiety and lack of resilience. Now, a growing number of educators are trying to bolster emotional competency not on college campuses, but where they believe it will have the greatest impact: in elementary schools.
In many communities, elementary teachers, guidance counselors and administrators are embracing what is known as social and emotional learning, or S.E.L., a process through which people become more aware of their feelings and learn to relate more peacefully to others.
Feeling left out? Angry at your mom? Embarrassed to speak out loud during class? Proponents of S.E.L. say these feelings aren’t insignificant issues to be ignored in favor of the three R’s. Unless emotions are properly dealt with, they believe, children won’t be able to reach their full academic potential.
“It’s not just about how you feel, but how are you going to solve a problem, whether it’s an academic problem or a peer problem or a relationship problem with a parent,” said Mark T. Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology at Pennsylvania State University.
Echoing the concept of “emotional intelligence,” popularized in the 1990s by Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book of the same name, he added, “The ability to get along with others is really the glue of healthy human development.”
Today’s schoolchildren confront not only the inherent difficulty of growing up, but also an increasingly fraught testing environment, a lower tolerance for physical acting out and the pervasive threat of violence. (President Obama last year characterized school shootings as “becoming the norm.”) Poverty and income inequality, too, create onerous emotional conditions for many children.
“The neural pathways in the brain that deal with stress are the same ones that are used for learning,” said Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, a research and teaching center. “Schools are realizing that they have to help kids understand their feelings and manage them effectively.” He added, “We, as a country, want our kids to achieve more academically, but we can’t do this if our kids aren’t emotionally healthy.”...
"The FBI is encouraging public awareness of cyber threat concerns related to K-12 students. The US school systems’ rapid growth of education technologies (EdTech) and widespread collection of student data could have privacy and safety implications if compromised or exploited.
EdTech can provide services for adaptive, personalized learning experiences, and unique opportunities for student collaboration. Additionally, administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs, are commonly served through EdTech services.
As a result, types of data that are collected can include, but are not limited to:
personally identifiable information (PII);
biometric data;
academic progress;
behavioral, disciplinary, and medical information;
Web browsing history;
students’ geolocation;
IP addresses used by students; and
classroom activities.
Malicious use of this sensitive data could result in social engineering, bullying, tracking, identity theft, or other means for targeting children. Therefore, the FBI is providing awareness to schools and parents of the important role cybersecurity plays in the securing of student information and devices.
Sensitive Student Data
The widespread collection of sensitive information by EdTech could present unique exploitation opportunities for criminals. For example, in late 2017, cyber actors exploited school information technology (IT) systems by hacking into multiple school district servers across the United States. They accessed student contact information, education plans, homework assignments, medical records, and counselor reports, and then used that information to contact, extort, and threaten students with physical violence and release of their personal information. The actors sent text messages to parents and local law enforcement, publicized students’ private information, posted student PII on social media, and stated how the release of such information could help child predators identify new targets. In response to the incidents, the Department of Education released a Cyber Advisory alert in October 2017 stating cyber criminals were targeting school districts with weak data security or well-known vulnerabilities to access sensitive data from student records to shame, bully, and threaten children.
Cybersecurity issues were discovered in 2017 for two large EdTech companies, resulting in public access to millions of students’ data. According to security researchers, one company exposed internal data by storing it on a public-facing server. The other company suffered a breach and student data was posted for sale on the Dark Web.
Inter-connected Networks and Devices
EdTech connected to networked devices or directly to the Internet could increase opportunities for cyber actors to access devices collecting data and monitoring children within educational or home environments. Improperly secured take-home devices (e.g. tablets, laptops) or monitoring devices (e.g. in-school surveillance cameras or microphones), particularly those with remote-access capabilities, could be exploitable through cyber intrusions or other unauthorized means and present vulnerabilities for students.
Recommendations
The increased use of connected digital tools in the learning environment and widespread data collection introduces cybersecurity risks of which parents should be aware.
The FBI recognizes there are districts across the United States who are working hard to address cybersecurity matters in their schools to protect students and their data. For districts seeking assistance, there are numerous online resources, consortiums, and organizations available that can provide support on data protection matters and cybersecurity best practices.
The FBI encourages parents and families to:
Research existing student and child privacy protections of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and state laws as they apply to EdTech services.
Discuss with their local districts about what and how EdTech technologies and programs are used in their schools.
Conduct research on parent coalition and information-sharing organizations which are available online for those looking for support and additional resources.
Research school-related cyber breaches which can further inform families of student data vulnerabilities.
Consider credit or identity theft monitoring to check for any fraudulent use of their children’s identity.
Conduct regular Internet searches of children’s information to help identify the exposure and spread of their information on the Internet.
If you have evidence your child’s data may have been compromised, or if you have experienced any of the Internet crimes described in this PSA, please file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov."
Questions regarding this PSA should be directed to your local FBI Field Office. Local Field Office Locations: www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field
By John Thompson "The good news is that graduation rates are improving across the nation (see this announcement from a few days ago.) The best news is that social science points the way to even greater progress. Ironically, corporate school reformers, who have focused obsessively on improving student “achievement” as measured by test scores, are now shifting attention to graduation rates and away from their failure to improve teaching and learning. Although this pivot is public relations-driven, designed to distract from the lack of gains produced by their competition-driven mandates, educators should welcome it and offer to work collaboratively with anyone who will help improve children’s life prospects.
We must also remind the non-education press that the fundamental reason for test-driven reform, supposedly, was that accountability hawks demanded “output-driven” mandates to replace “input-driven” school improvement. The effort to raise graduation rates is a classic input-driven reform, and it still works. As Jack Jennings reminds us, the old-fashioned input-driven policies that preceded standards and testing were not perfect. The old progressive efforts to build student supports became underfunded, but they produced positive results that are greater than the expensive accountability-driven pedagogies that were supposedly more tough-minded. Now, as University of Chicago researchers are once again showing, those classic methods of investing in mentors and counselors still work, and the path to school improvement requires trusting, loving relationship-building, not winners and losers.
To further prepare students for a meaningful and healthy life, we must heed the findings of Don’t Quit on Me, by The Center for Promise at America’s Promise Alliance. It begins with the seemingly unchallengeable scientific evidence that, “Social relationships are a fundamental need for all humans, built into our biological, neurological and psychological architecture.” The study explains why schools must ramp up the battle against the legacies of “adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), toxic stress, structural barriers such as poverty and institutionalized bias.”
The next era of school improvement must heed a first rule of classroom teachers, listen to the kids and they will teach us how to teach them. The Center for Promise’s Don’t Quit on Me features interviews with students who tell the same stories that I heard throughout my career in the inner city. It is consistent with the way my students would be on track in their early years until they lost the parent who raised them or attended too many family funerals. During their mourning, children would fall off the academic conveyor belt. There was no institutionalized method for helping them get back on track."...
"Teachable moments are opportunities to move one step closer to creating welcoming schools for all children and families. Imagine scenarios like these:
A student walks by your classroom and says, “That’s so gay!” to her friends.
You overhear one student say to another, “How can he be your"...
By David Gamberg [Photo credit: Marty Barrick for Education Week]
"Words matter. They matter in all aspects of life, especially when we are talking about how to define a school. Of course, brick and mortar are only a small part of the story. The academic and emotional climate, both inside and outside the physical space, gets us closer to an understanding of what forms the basis of any school. Throughout our country, we have many opinions, positions, and reform efforts competing to control the narrative not only of what defines a school, but also, more significantly, of what it means to be educated in 2016 and beyond.
My daily travels in the schoolhouse as a superintendent give me an inside look at what constitutes a school. I am fortunate that my professional work over the last 30 years has put me inside dozens of schools and in contact with hundreds of educators, scholars, and support staff. I have also had the good fortune to be in the company of thousands of children and their families. No, I do not consider myself an expert on all things that define a school. I do, however, have a vested interest in seeing that the schools of today and those that are created in the future are shaped with the care and respect they so richly deserve.
The call to have children as young as 8 or 9 years old "college- and career-ready" does not create the same narrative as building a sound foundation in childhood filled with play and creativity. Among the many other more important ways to engage the hearts and minds of our youngest students, we must promote the childhood experience in all its wonder.
Schools have always existed as an expression of how a given community values its children, and how a society looks at the future—a covenant handed down from one generation to the next. The problems that beset our social, political, and economic well-being as a nation are, in fact, not born at the doorsteps of our schools. They are certainly not derived exclusively from the province of our public schools. The crumbling roads, bridges, and tunnels of the infrastructure that is the lifeblood of a thriving economy demand our attention, as does the scourge of substance abuse wreaking havoc on families of every demographic group.
Local neighborhood and even family issues that confront all generations, from toddlers to senior citizens, are ever-present in our daily lives. If schools do play a part in shaping our future—and I believe they do—how we articulate the issues matters as much as how we marshal the will and resources to meet these challenges.
The calls to shutter schools, to replace and dismantle them, are being offered by those with a variety of other interests. These are not the solutions we should accept. They create a hostile dialogue that reflects the worst in our democratic discourse. In the last 10 years, we have witnessed a rapid decline in civility, an unfettered belligerent approach to the questions central to the teaching and learning process.
Words matter in how we discuss our schools and the issues that confront all communities. How this conversation occurs has changed in recent decades across the entire country, from small rural towns to large suburban and urban communities. Technology affords us wonderful ways to gather data points that could promote change, but it may still fail to foster a deliberative and thoughtful dialogue regarding the seeds of our problems. The most basic elements of our humanity must not get lost in the pursuit of a faster, data-driven decisionmaking process. Such is a key element of our current fascination with a punitive, high-stakes testing environment designed to sort and select students and teachers.
So, what truly defines a school? For me, the exchange between child and adult is at the heart of it. That exchange may be subtle or vigorous—not rigorous. Rigor, which shares roots with the Latin rigor mortis, implies severity, rigidity, and stiffness—all connotations that restrict the learner and the learning process—while vigor implies energy and dynamism.
Yes, words matter. The best learning occurs when both teacher and student are in pursuit of a deeper understanding. It is a quest that is based on love, one that is filled with authentic, joyful, challenging, and impactful experiences. A school is a place of respect and wonder.
The search to create, discover, reveal, and share is an unending journey that occurs in the best of our schools: the child immersed in beautiful poetry, the student acquiring the skill of using a watercolor-paint brush, the rendering of a museum-quality display of artifacts. Scientific experiments, research papers, debates, and discussions centered on classic literature are the means through which students explore and discover ideas. Unpacking the essential elements of contemporary issues and having students learn to take responsibility for their actions coalesce to teach valuable lessons that extend beyond the school walls. Students who present their learning before a panel of adjudicators and get so immersed that they lose track of time are then at their optimal disposition to learn. No reward or punishment necessary.
All members of a community, from custodians to teachers and principals to kindergartners, are the learners of a true school. A climate of fear and hostility, or a tone of acrimony and mistrust, will yield neither a school that serves the needs of children nor the globally competitive country that some imagine will arrive when we replace the old with the new. Schools of the future—no matter their size, technological sophistication, or cost-effectiveness—should always begin with the best qualities of our humanity.
We must choose our words carefully in this fight. We must strive to retain the core values that define a school as a place that upholds the tenets of our democracy and cares about people, rather than a place that efficiently manages the system or pits stakeholders against one another. "Education," in the words of John Dewey, "is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."
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