A few weeks ago, I spoke at Lehman Learning Center (Seattle), and the theme of the presentation was titled, “The Canary in the Coalmine Kids”. Simply, the talk highlights what I have observed during the last 18 years: an amazingly sensitive group of young people are coming into this world in troves for they are truly treasures waiting to unfold and be discovered, like canaries. At the same time, our social environment, as well as our global landscape, have become more toxic due to have to immediate-gratification pacing, an expanding level of stress, and chemicals within our water and food source. Many of our systems are guiding us on the fast-track to somewhere other than peace, harmony, and balance. As a result, we have more students today experiencing stress-related symptoms than ever before. For more information, check out: http://www.topcounselingschools.org/campus-mental-health/
So what are we going to do about this “canary in the coalmine” phenomenon? I believe we already have the answers for I see extraordinary changes taking place within individual cases as I make my way through the education advocacy path. In a nutshell, I am a firm-believer in taking time to establish understanding, creating and nurturing relationships, and building upon relevance and meaning in our work.
For example, recently at a Functional Behavior meeting, the high school administrator lead the conversation by applying principals of “mindfulness”; facilitating the conversation toward understanding and a deeper awareness of the student and her behavior. This is in direct contrast to forcing themes of control and zero-tolerance policies down our throats, which often are typical of these conversations. Specifically, the meeting was called for the student broke “one of the codes of conduct”. As a result, both parents and staff members acknowledged the meeting as “important” and “leading the student toward her development and self-awareness”. Mindfulness! Which is simply about taking time to understand rather than knee-jerk responding to everything from a position of fear, worry, and control.
Earlier the same week, I saw the importance of relationship take form. While attending an Evaluation meeting, where the team was called upon to review a variety of assessments guiding us toward better understanding, we frequently heard about increased levels of behavior like outbursts, melt-downs, and refusal to do work. It appeared that the school was ready to place the student in a more-restrictive setting, a special classroom with more adult supports and less students. However, the conversation went on much longer than expected and we were unable to address the possibility of placement in a different program. It seemed there was a sense coming from the staff that they already had established in their minds what was in the child’s best interest, and they even reminded of this by saying, “We are all here to do what’s in your daughter’s best interest”. Nevertheless, we were never able to get to the change of classroom issue for the dialog continued to address my client’s pleas for understanding related to his daughter’s need for relationship, connection, and emotional stability. As a follow-up to the meeting, a few days later, the parent informed me that his daughter had demonstrated the most successful week at school since September, highlighted by work completion, few outbursts, and no room-clearing melt-downs. And this all developed as a result of a new relationship established with a key staff member at school, who was assigned to help her move successfully through the school day. I see this all the time. In fact, just this morning, as I was preparing the write this article, another client wrote me about her high school son who was doing wonderful in school following a change of case managers for her son “really likes the new teacher and feels she likes him as well”. So often, many of our sensitive students need to feel liked, cared for, and appreciated through relationship-building whereas, learning, academics, and meeting standards alone, just doesn’t make the impact we are looking for anymore.
Finally, in light of learning, and meeting standards, years ago, our schools took a wrong turn when our instructional system was taken over by publishing firms and text-books. Most students are not inspired by the texts and in fact, are motivated to learn by one of the following variables:
- When a teacher shows passion for the subject; students take to learning like mosquitoes to light. Inspiration is contagious.
- When a teacher co-creates his or her activities from their own artful craft of lesson design, students are more engaged, especially, if the activities take on multi-modal approaches to learning beyond reading and writing alone.
- When a teacher presents lessons within the context of the student’s lives, the relevance and meaning take form in deeper engagement. For example, when teacher’s use contemporary songs or movies to make a point within the context of their lessons. this creates a bridge toward learning.
Again, within the last few days, I attended an IEP (special education) meeting which highlighted the importance of relevance and meaning: Though the young man was diagnosed with ADHD, and struggled with focus and attention in most classes, he excelled in science and social studies and was one of the most involved and engaged students for he always raised his hand to participate and shared his insights at every available moment. In contrast, in reading, writing, and math class, he was frequently observed fussing with things, off-task, and at times, took extended bathroom breaks to get away from the lessons. When we asked the question about “What makes science and social studies so different?”, it was clearly described that these classes featured “hands-on learning” and encouraged a lot of dialog and conversation. In further conversation, related to this student’s learning style, the use of manipulatives and discussion were featured as his best means of connecting with learning. So the new IEP would feature more applications of both hands-on approaches to reading and math as well as additional time with discussion as a pre-writing activity so he would have a better jump-start with the writing activities. We see this everyday in this line of work: When students are able to apply their interest, their connection, or their unique hyper-focus toward learning, then the anxiety levels drop, the motivation levels increase, and achievement becomes most evident. It’s human nature; when you are engaged in something you enjoy, your worries, your problems, and your concerns fade away. It’s no different when people spend hours knitting, drawing, or playing puzzles as a form of relaxation and bringing calm to their day.
As long as we continue to go down the path lacking mindfulness, and not taking in account the impact stress plays in our children’s lives, we will likely see more students with ADHD, Autism, and other sensory-related challenges at epidemic levels. Like canaries in the coalmine, we are sending our children into the cave every day and they are telling us something: Their actions and behaviors are guiding us to make changes to the traditional school model. A model which has taken a major detour from what was once founded upon “developmental practices” and a “child-centered approach” to learning. Its time has come. We need to acknowledge the truth that presents itself every day: our children are calling out for something different. And it is based upon more in-depth understanding of their needs, creating deeper relationships at the core, and being innovative through more meaningful and relevant learning activities. Simple.